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Asylum, Social Group Membership And The Non-State Actor: The Challenge Of Domestic Violence, 36 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 767 (2003), Michael G. Heyman

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that the current approaches to asylum claims based on "social group" membership under the U.N. convention Relation to the Status of Refugees are deeply flawed. The Refugee Convention confers asylum on persons persecuted for their membership in a particular social group. Courts have struggled with the boundaries of the social group definition, and there appears to be no coherent way to reconcile all of the court decisions on what groups qualify as social groups under the Refugee Convention.

This Article suggests that courts adopt a consistent definition of what constitutes a social group. The definition proposed in …