Colby and Freedman (eds), ‘Representing Violence Against Women: Asylum, Voice, and Testimony’, 2026

Georgina Colby and Jane Freedman (ed.) 2026. Representing Violence Against Women: Asylum, Voice, and Testimony. Liverpool Liverpool University Press.

Abstract

This timely interdisciplinary volume brings academic research into dialogue with women who have experienced the asylum process, activists, and NGOs. It reveals the obstacles that women are confronted with during asylum processes, when relaying their testimonies that involve violence. Women’s voices are marginalized and often erased because of multiple barriers within refugee status determination procedures and asylum and refugee reception systems. Conditions need to change so that women can voice their testimonies and know that they will be listened to and heard, and that their voices and experiences will “count” within asylum processes and lead to effective protection. This book is a site of knowledge exchange between women survivors and activists, and policy makers. It contains first-hand accounts of the asylum processes by women survivors and activists and offers examples of how the arts and humanities might open up avenues of expression and testimony for women seeking asylum through practices of co-production, creating safe spaces of representation for women to talk about their lived experiences of violence and exile but also, and crucially, resistance and resilience.

Table of Contents
Introduction: Violence Against Women: Asylum, Voice and Testimony, Georgina Colby and Jane Freedman

Part I Asylum Policies and Processes
1. Gendered Harms and the Asylum Process, RASHIDA MANJOO
2. Structures of Violence: How European Asylum Systems Fail Women Seeking Protection, JANE FREEDMAN
3. Access to Protection for Women Seeking Asylum in the UK, Christel Querton and JENNIFER MORGAN
4. Torture Beyond the State: The Limitations of Gendered Recognition and Responses to ‘Torture’ for Refugee Women, VICTORIA CANNING
5. But Where are the Women?’: Women Living Under the Threat of Destitution, Detention, and Deportation, LUCY WILLIAMS

Part II Lived Experiences of Women Seeking Asylum
6. Voices From the Frontline – Women on Being Asylum Seekers, Refugees and their Mental Health, BAOBAB WOMEN
7. ‘Our Right’ – The Work of Apna Haq: An Interview with Zlakha Ahmed, ZLAKHA AHMED, In conversation with GEORGINA COLBY and JANE FREEDMAN

Part III Amplifying Women’s Voices through the Arts and Humanities
8. Representing Gendered Structural Violence in the Asylum Process: The Refugee Tales, GEORGINA COLBY
9. Tell Me How It Begins: Valeria Luiselli’s The Lost Children Archive and Tell Me How It Ends, AMY SARA CARROLL
10. The Joy of Communicative Ethics, MARIA TAMBOUKOU

Afterword: Understanding Violence Against Women, Asylum, Voice and Testimony, GEORGINA COLBY and JANE FREEDMAN