Ballin, ‘Four Challenges, Three Identities and a Double Movement in Asylum Law’, 2023

Samuel Ballin, ‘Four Challenges, Three Identities and a Double Movement in Asylum Law: Queering the “Particular Social Group” after Mx M’, Australian Feminist Law Journal, 2023

Abstract

This article examines the construction of identity and the ‘particular social group’ (PSG) under the 1951 Refugee Convention. In particular, it analyses the ways in which the identity of a non-binary asylum claimant is discussed in the Mx M case in the UK, and what the implications of this might be for the project of queering the PSG. The article identifies four central challenges for queering and navigating the PSG, informed by Judith Butler’s notion of a ‘double movement’. These are the demand for recognition; the threat of erasure and/or misrepresentation; the contestation of universal, objective and/or essentialist categories; and the inseparability of violence from resistance. The article argues that strategic flexibility offers the greatest potential for individual claimants and for the wider project of queering the PSG, rather than trying to resolve the challenges by consistently adopting any single approach to PSG construction.

Keywords: Asylum law, queer theory, Judith Butler, membership of a particular social group, Refugee Convention