Sexing the Leviathan: When Feminisms and Crimmigration Meet

Abstract

Despite crimmigration being the topic of a growing field of scholarship, there is a dearth of gender research that explicitly engages with crimmigration theory. This lacuna has prompted calls for increased research on gender and crimmigration. However, the dilemma for feminist scholars is that crimmigration theory has developed with little reference to gender. Thus, there needs to be a sexing of crimmigration theory to unearth its gendered assumptions and biases. In this chapter, I begin this examination by drawing on theoretical and empirical contributions to the field of feminist criminology to analyse the experience of three women who came to Australia seeking refugee protection but were treated akin to a criminal offender at many stages of their journey. This analysis indicates that crimmigration theory ignores and misrepresents many women’s experiences of the intersections between criminal and immigration law. Nevertheless, it also shows that feminist perspectives can enrich our understanding of crimmigration law and calls on contributions from feminist researchers to contribute to the sexing of crimmigration theory and examinations of the gendered aspects of crimmigration law.