Since the 1980s, feminists and researchers showed that the legal definition of refugee is based on heterosexual male experiences and patterns (Freedman 2008, 2010 ; Stichelbaut 2009). In Switzerland, following the international evolution, “gender-specific persecutions” have progressively been taken into account through the law, through the jurisprudence and through a specific institutional practice of the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) (Barzé 2012 ; Miaz 2014). More than this evolution, this contribution questions how gender spreads through and plays in the asylum decision-making.
In this paper, I focus on the practices of the decision-makers of the State Secretariat for Migration. First, I will argue that, more than the notion of “gender-specific persecutions”, the categories of refugee and of “vulnerable person” (d’Halluin 2016) rest on gender categories (sex, sexual orientation, gender identity) which intersect with others such as race/ethnic group, socioeconomic situation, age, handicap. Secondly, the practices and judgements of the street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky 1980) of the SEM are influenced by gender stereotypes, intersecting with ethno-racial ones (Darley 2014) and shaping their moral judgement, their emotions and, possibly, their decisions.
