Public Lecture with Dr. Victoria Canning

‘I’m just no good’: the internalisation of degradation for women seeking asylum in Britain, Denmark and Sweden

This public lecture with Dr. Victoria Canning, Senior Lecturer at the University of Bristol, is being co-hosted by Durham University's Centre for Research into Violence and Abuse and the Centre for Social Justice and Community Action.

Please note: The lecture will last from 1-2pm and will take place in Elvet Riverside 1, Room ER141 (Durham, DH1 3JT). A smaller discussion will then take place from 2-3pm in 32 Old Elvet, Room 113 (Durham, DH1 3HN), which is a 5 minute walk away. Please therefore indicate whether you would like to attend just the lecture or the discussion as well (where spaces will be more limited) when you order your ticket. The event is free to attend and open to all. If you have any questions please contact: durham.criva@durham.ac.uk.

Abstract: The intensification of bordering in Northern Europe has had devastating implications for people seeking asylum. Externalised controls have enabled increased deaths at Southern European borders, whilst reductions in family reunification rights have gendered implications for people seeking sanctuary. Likewise, the manifestation of internalised controls have created chasms in access to welfare, healthcare and support in the aftermath of sexual violence or torture.

This paper focuses on the convergence of these – endoborders and exoborders (Canning, 2019) – as a means to highlight the lived impacts of everyday bordering in the lives of women seeking asylum. Focusing on narratives from oral histories as well as ethnographic reflections and activist participation with women and women’s groups in Britain, Denmark and Sweden, it addresses the ways in which the impacts of previous or ongoing subjections to gendered violence are compounded by time (temporal harms) and the reduction in access to emotional or psychological support (emotional and relational harms). By embedding structural limitations in the lives of people seeking asylum, gendered harms are exacerbated, and responses to them overlooked, undermined or deliberately ignored. The outcome is often the manifestation of degradation – a doubly detrimental experience for survivors of sexual violence or torture.

Biography: Victoria Canning is senior lecturer in Criminology at the University of Bristol. She has spent over a decade working on the rights of women seeking asylum, specifically on support for survivors of sexual violence and torture. As part of her recent ESRC fellowship, Victoria undertook research in immigration detention centres, asylum centres and deportation centres in Denmark and Sweden. She argues for the abolition of such spaces, and campaigns with various activist groups across the UK and Europe in regard to this. She is also author of the British Society of Criminology book prize winning monograph Gendered Harm and Structural Violence in the British Asylum System and consultant on the Bafta award winning documentary series Exodus: Our Journey to Europe.