Female Asylum‐Seekers in the Netherlands: An Empirical Study

In: International migration: quarterly review, Band 39, Heft 3, S. 86-98

Abstract

This article presents the findings from a study into the chances for refugee status, or a temporary residence permit, for three cohorts of male and female asylum‐seekers to the Netherlands. The study investigated whether men and women with similar backgrounds in terms of country of origin, social and demographic characteristics have a similar likelihood of obtaining permission to stay in the Netherlands.The quantitative findings are corroborated with an in‐depth qualitative study of refugees' files from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND), as well as with an experiment in which decision‐making personnel were asked to judge hypothetical case studies of refugees in which gender as well as other gender‐specific properties were systematically varied.We recommend that further in‐depth studies be conducted to capture elements in the decision‐making process that could not be investigated in our kind of large‐scale study.