Producing FGM in U.S. Courts: Political Asylum in the Post-Kasinga Era

This article tracks the production and legacy of the strategically essentialized identities that made Fauziya Kasinga's case winnable. Examinations of subsequent cases of U.S. asylum-seekers who claimed to flee female genital cutting, often referred to as female genital mutilation, or FGM, in court proceedings, demonstrate ways in which the Kasinga decision restructured the possibilities for African claimants to apply successfully for FGM-based political asylum, while feeding global efforts to eradicate female genital cutting in Africa.