Gendered and Racialised Epistemological Injustice in FGM-safeguarding

This paper explores FGM-safeguarding in the UK through a decolonial lens. Based on an analysis of the development of law and policy relating to ‘Female Genital Mutilation’ in the UK alongside data collected in focus groups with people of ethnic Somali heritage living in Bristol, we argue that the current legislation and policies, as well as their delivery, are steeped in colonial Othering. We demonstrate that legislative and policy approaches operate through a gendered and generational binary in which non-White mothers are othered as migrants (regardless of citizenship status) for whom anachronistic culture is deemed determinative, whilst their daughters are claimed as British. In this construction, ‘FGM’ operates as the symbolic marker that designates un/belonging: the uncircumcised girl is rescuable and claimed as ‘one of us’, whilst the circumcised mother is considered a mutilated political subject for whom belonging is foreclosed.


Introduction
This paper explores FGM-safeguarding 1 in the UK through a decolonial lens.In a climate in which sharp distinctions have been drawn between EU citizens and non-EU migrants constructed largely through contrasting representations of gender relations (Akkerman, 2015;Brubaker, 2017), 'FGM' has been presented in political debates as the axiomatic example of the so-called patriarchal and 'unacceptable cultural practices' (Goodman, 2010) that migrants bring with them.Abolition campaigning has become a cause celebre which has united far-right activists, human rights organisations, feminists, politicians across political divides and many survivors themselves. 2 On the back of this campaigning, in 2015, the UK government introduced a series of legislative changes and policy initiatives designed to prevent and eliminate 'FGM'.Amending and building on past legislation, these changes introduced mandatory reporting with criminal consequences and designated it the duty and responsibility of teachers, health practitioners, social workers and police to educate, record, report and investigate families 'at-risk', a category which included any girl whose mother had undergone FC/FGM.Families targeted for intervention were those with ethnic heritage in countries with high prevalence rates of FC/FGM.
In 2018, a group called Somali Parents Against Stigmatisation (SPAS) contacted the University of Bristol to ask for research to be undertaken into FGM-safeguarding.The authors of this paper responded to this request and met with representatives of the organisation who explained that they were experiencing FGM-safeguarding as stigmatising and racist.They told us that they had complained to the City Council, sought to get traction with the press, and were preparing a play on the topic.Despite these efforts, they felt that their voices remained unheard or were actively being ignored.They wanted us, as academics, to put our weight behind their words and use our positions of privilege to lend legitimacy to their concerns.The series of meetings that followed were intense, emotional and often challenging.Their outrage was tangible and their experiences shocking.Some initially saw our comments about a need for impartiality, ethics and rigour, as part of the same silencing mechanisms they had experienced elsewhere in the city.Collectively, they were pragmatic about the classed and racialised operation of power, and not infrequently, had to negotiate gendered imbalances within their own campaign group.
Following this research experience, this paper explores FGM-safeguarding law and policy in the UK through a decolonial lens, an approach which often takes the form of historicising, deconstructing and 'talking back' (Tuhiwai Smith, 2021)all of which are tactics employed herein.In the first section of the paper, we historicise and deconstruct, examining the 'view from above' as we trace the development of FGM-safeguarding law and policy in the UK from the colonial era to the present day.In the second section, we expound the 'view from below', amplifying the voices of our participants as requested by them.We argue that current legislation and policies, as well as their delivery, are steeped in colonial Othering.We demonstrate that legislative and policy approaches operate through a gendered and generational binary in which non-White mothers are othered as unassimilable migrants (regardless of citizenship status or place of birth) for whom anachronistic culture is determinative, whilst their daughters are claimed as British.In this construction, 'FGM' operates as the symbolic marker that designates belonging: the uncircumcised girl is rescuable and claimed as 'one of us', whilst the circumcised mother is considered a mutilated political subject for whom belonging is foreclosed.Through this analysis, we provide evidence to demonstrate the ongoing relationship between colonial political discourse and present-day legal coloniality.
In undertaking this research and presenting it through a decolonial framework, weas White academicshave transformed our understandings of the topic, and we hope through publishing this paper to challenge others to do the same.Within and outside of academia, we have endeavoured to provide platforms as and when requested for marginalised Others to speak and be heard and to advocate for policy change.We take note of Moosavi's (2020) caution with regard to 'jump [ing] on the decolonial bandwagon' and speak here for no one but ourselves.Our starting point is that decolonial work should be a priority for all critical scholars.

A Decolonial Approach
The decolonising of law and policy is in its infancy.Although multiple steps have been taken with regard to decolonising pedagogy (Adébísí, 2023;Nienaber, 2011;Rigney, 2020), law itself typically remains protected by its apparent neutrality or colourblindness (Crenshaw, 2019) and by its hegemonic position as the foundational framework for the nation-state system (Adébísí, 2023;Mills, 1997).While many agree that coloniality and complicity in coloniality remain key features of European and International jurisprudence as well as national legislation in many post-colonial states (Agozino, 2020;Chimni, 2006;Tamale, 2020), others have yet to be persuaded.The claim of an ongoing relationship between colonial-era laws and epistemology and present-day legal coloniality has been dismissed by would be naysayersincluding law-and policymakerson the grounds that (a) 'it's history'; that (b) it's 'not our responsibility'; and because (c) other factors such as poverty and social exclusion can always be more readily blamed (Farmer, 2020;Midzain-Gobin and Smith, 2021;Tamale, 2020).This paper provides a unique contribution to challenge such conservative voices and moves the decolonising debate forward through its deconstruction of laws enacted in the postcolonial context including in recent years, detailing the influence of colonial epistemology within the law and tracing the legacies of this epistemology in present-day legislation.Laws, we might add, which are currently being copied and enacted across the globe in various glocalised formats (Kandala and Komba, 2018).
Post-colonial and decolonial scholars argue that colonial exploitation was underpinned by a European political epistemology which presented itself as disinterested, universal and totalising: as, quite simply, the truth (Mbembe, 2019). 3This 'truth' was premised on 'abyssal thinking' ( de Sousa Santos, 2007) in which a superior West was set against an Othered and inferior 'rest', resulting in other knowledges and forms of knowledge being discredited, subsumed or silenced (Said, 2003).This schema relied on The Enlightenment narrative of progress in which non-European societies were understood only in relation to (idealised) 'modern' European societies and consequently as primitive (Fanon, 2008).This relational status means that even when accomplished in European values and skills, 'the native' can never achieve full subject status but only ever aspire to an ambivalent mimicry, captured by Bhabha (1984:132) in the phrase 'not quite/not white'.For Baxi (1992), the role of law in the colonial encounter was that of 'the state's emissary', calling to mind the figure of a seemingly benign diplomat who is nonetheless skilled in real politic, excels in political cunning and will not hesitate to use violence in the interest of the colonising power.Law was the means by which land grabs were legitimated and also the means by which colonised people were broughtviolentlyinto being as subalterns (Adébísí, 2023;Baxi, 1992;Tamale, 2020). 4What Quijano and Ennis (2000) termed 'coloniality' is the ongoing manifestation of this epistemology which remains embedded in international law and relations in the 'postcolonial new world order' (Sharma, 2020), and within Europe is perhaps most strikingly found in the treatment of migrants who, even when purposefully selected for their likeness by assimilationist immigration regimes, are at best tolerated rather than fully accepted (Carver et al., 2022).
However, post-colonial and decolonial scholars were rightly critiqued for failing to take sufficient account of gender (Lugones, 2008;Mohanty, 1984).European colonialism involved the imposition of hierarchical gendered identities derived from the heteronormative 'man and wife' model of European patriarchal society as well as hierarchical racial identities (Oyěywùmi, 2003;Tamale, 2020).In law as well as governing discourse, 'native' women were not only constructed in relation to their White counterparts but also in relation to 'native' men: as 'the state's emissary', Baxi (1992:253) argues, law presented 'its credentials to the people's law as an accomplice in patriarchal domination'.Despite the apparent liberationist discourse of legal campaigns against sati, twin infanticide and FC/FGM, the economic interests of the colonisers were always paramount.For example, the missionaries who gave evidence in London in 1929 to the (anti-FGM parliamentary) Committee for the Protection of Coloured Women in the Colonies boasted of their successful campaign to get colonial governors to ban women from 'heavy [public] work' and used the platform as a means to lobby for more government funding for their (claimed) successful training of girls and women for domestic work. 5Despite often being at odds with each other, missionary and government initiatives to ban 'FGM' in colonial Kenya and Sudan cohered around divesting local women of their status and power, the consequences of which were raised by Jomo Kenyatta at the time (1979[1938]) and have been discussed by Anderson (2018), Pedersen (1991) and Boddy (2007).Again a clear legacy can be found in Western immigration regimes in which family norms are central in 'the drawing of national, cultural, and racialised boundaries, as they serve to distinguish between those who do family 'properly', like 'We' do it, and 'Others' with 'deviant' family practices' (Welfens and Bonjour, 2021:214).The colonial belief that the measure of civilisation was how a society treated its women continues to pervade international law and policymaking, and while patriarchal and/or misogynistic cultures are typically held to blame for 'deviant' family practices, it is women rather than men who were and remain the primary focus for intervention (Boddy, 2007;Oyěyùmi, 2003;Tamale, 2020).Furthermore, distinguishing between generations within families was also key to colonial policy interventions seeking to save and civilize (Cunneen, 2008).Most notably, child removal policies were in operation in multiple colonies, and for many decolonial scholars, effectively remain ongoing given the disproportionate numbers of indigenous children taken into state care (Mohamud et al., 2021;Nyamu and Wamahiu, 2022;Schmidt, 2022).
We begin our analysis by historicising and deconstructing the development of FGM-safeguarding law and policy in the UK.For this section, we rely on government articulations in the form of all mentions of the topic in the Houses of Parliament as recorded in Hansard, all legislative provisions in original and amended form, relevant national policy documents such as records of oral and written submissions to the Westminster Home Affairs Committee and the Scottish Government, National Health Service policy documents, briefings from the Ministry of Education, etc., and material from relevant colonial archives in Durham, Kew and Liverpool.We then turn to data collected through gender-specific focus groups (at our participants' behest) in the summer of 2018 with people of Somali-ethnic heritage living in Bristol, with the aim of understanding the impact of FGM-safeguarding in a city which was established as the 'model' example of good practice which others should follow (Carver et al., 2022;Karlsen et al., 2019).After securing funding and ethical approval and reaching an agreement on the research design, six focus groups were organised with a total of 30 participants (men n = 9; women n = 21).Three groups were recruited through SPAS comprising of two groups of adult women and one of adult men, all of whom were parents.The other three groups (one of mothers, one of fathers and one of young adults) were recruited separately through pre-existing contacts and snowballing.Somali-heritage people were chosen as a focus for the research because strong anecdotal evidence suggested that they were predominantly affected by safeguarding measureswe have analysed why this might be elsewhere (Carver et al., 2022).Focus groups were conducted in English with translation support as required, along with creche facilities and refreshments.The transcribed data was subject to thematic analysis, and the participants were invited to a presentation of the analysis-in-progress to ensure validity.The final report was presented at a public event to stakeholders, participants and other locals, and an overview of the key findings made available in English and Somali.We refer below to 'fathers', 'mothers' and 'young person' to emphasise that participants were recounting their experiences of safeguarding from these role-based perspectives.
The View from Above: The Gendered and Generational Binary in Law and Policy The policy of preventing and eradicating FC/FGM through criminalisation has a problematic history in the UK.Parliamentarians were first notified of the issue and urged to intervene in 1929 in a debate on the 'Colonial Policy In Relation To Coloured Races' when the focus of concern was Kenya.In 1949, a similar debate took place focusing on Sudan.In both instances, the agitators for change were missionaries and the parliamentarians who spoke in the House relied heavily on their reports (AER, 1929;Hansard, 1929 and1949;Hills-Young, 1944).Deeply embedded within a Christian framework, the missionaries presented uncircumcised girls as innocent children who could be saved from the corrupting and backward influence of their culture and raised (literally and figuratively) to become Godfearing and useful domestic labourers. 6In contrast, while all natives were Othered, adult women were perceived to be particularly backward, described in one 1924 Medical Department Circular in Sudan as 'ignorant, obstinate, brutal, and … quite capable of stirring up trouble' in comparison to native men whose main failing was understood as their inability to exert control over their women (in Boddy, 2007:173).The diverse opinions on FC/FGM presented to the Committee for the Protection of Coloured Women in the Colonies demonstrate multiple contrasting standpoints within and between government officials and missionaries which belie the notion of a single colonial mind, 7 but nonetheless, the politicalpublicdiscourse on 'FGM' that prevailed coalesced around and was constructed on a gendered and diametrically opposed binary: the uncircumcised child at risk and her unsalvageable circumcised mother.This binary produced a hidden border within families, whereby the child could become if not 'one of us', then at least someone 'like us', while the mother was deemed 'forever lost' to the forces of savagery. 8This representation was resisted by individuals and collectives (most notably as expressed by Kenyatta, 1938) and was a major factor in policy failure at the time (Boddy, 2007;Bunei and Rono, 2018).However, these complicating counter-narratives had no discernible impact on parliamentary discourse in the metropole through the colonial era or when the topic was revisited in the 1980s.
In the context of migration from the commonwealth and the hostile and racist politics of the early Thatcher years (Tyler, 2013), far more extensive debates on the topic took place in the Houses of Parliament by way of the three attempts to pass the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Bill which was eventually enacted in 1985 (HMSO, 1985).In these debates, the colonial binary was rearticulated and reinforced.The Act implicitly (and this was explicitly debated in parliament with intervention from the newly formed Commission for Racial Equality) constructed White British girls and women as agents of their own destiny, products of an equal society, and thus capable of making informed choices uninfluenced by cultural notions of femininity about cosmetic vaginal surgery if their 'mental health' needs so required (s.2(1)(a)).In contrast, girls and women of migrant heritage were constructed as determined by misogynistic cultures and irrevocably bound to traditional 'custom or ritual' (s.2(2)). 9While many parliamentarians, including those responsible for bringing the Bill, argued passionately that this languageintroduced by Thatcher's Conservative governmentwas racist and inappropriate in the postcolonial context, ultimately an 'us and them' mentality won through: Female circumcision is a disgusting racial practice imported into this country which should be stamped on completely.If racialism means the support of the ungodly, then I am against the support of the ungodly and I am a racialist, although in many ways I am not.(Earl of Halsbury, 1985) This binary was maintained through the repealing of the 1985 Act and its replacement with the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 (HMSO, 2003) and remains law today (s.1(2)(a) and s.1( 5)).Further, the 2003 Act refers to 'girls' throughout, but the Definitions section specifies that 'girl includes woman' (s.6(1)).In this way, migrant and migrant-heritage adult women are infantilised and constructed as not having mental capacity to make decisions about their own bodies. 10As such, women are brought into being in this legislation as subalterns, which is to say constituted as legal subjects who, like their 19th century counterparts, are legally 'disabled' (Baxi, 1992;Carver, 2016Carver, , 2019)).
Analysing very similar anti-FGM provisions in Australian legislation, Pardy et al. (2020:275) observe that such laws operate through 'symbolically obliterating women as law-bearers'.This holds true for the UK both in the colonial context when, as colonised natives, (mutilated) women were held to be uncivilisable, and in the post-colonial context when pity rather than disgust dominated parliamentary debates.In the very brief airing given to the 2003 Bill in its passage through parliament, parliamentarians presented a united stance in placing the blame squarely not on women per se but on their misogynistic cultures, repeatedly stressing that 'FGM' was 'a cultural practice' of 'child abuse' that was 'deeply ingrained in the social fabric of these communities' (Baroness Scotland, then Home Secretary, 2003).Once again, non-European societies were constructed in relation to an idealised Europe apparently free of misogyny and free of pressures on women to change their bodies in accordance with the prevailing desires of the male gaze.
Women from 'these communities' or 'cultures' were conspicuously absent from all these debates.Given such women's typical positioning as marginalised subalterns, this perhaps should not be surprising, but Rogers (2003) has argued that the conceptualisation of female circumcision itself is significant in this silencing: the physical 'mutilation' is taken to represent a metaphorical mutilation, which results in adult circumcised women being assigned a political subject position of 'mutilated woman'one who can never be even 'quite white'.In Rogers' (2007:141) analysis of the Australian government 'consultation' on the passing of anti-FGM laws in the 1990s, she argues that this construction precluded women from affected communities from engaging in the debate as 'thinking, speaking being[s]' and positioned them instead as 'stagnant object[s] who must be toldand clearlyhow to think about the practice of "genital mutilation".'This is also seen in the UK, where one of the most dominant phrases to reoccur across party lines and across the decades was the need to 'send a message' which 'marks our abhorrence' (Hillary Benn MP, 2003) or in the words of Baroness Gaitskell (1983): The point is that such people are not in a position to teach us anything about sexual behaviour.What have they to teach us about intimate sexual matters?Absolutely nothing.
In this discourse, positioned as subalterns, 'such people' are denied any credibility or capacity as 'knowers', an example of testimonial or epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007).By the time of the debates leading up to the Serious Crime Act 2015 (HMSO, 2015), however, there was a different approach with a discourse of inclusion even if inclusion itself was not ultimately achieved (Carver et al., 2022).Women positioned as subalterns in these debates were not altogether silenced but their voices were nonetheless effectively limited to the role of (wrongfully) 'mutilated woman'.This included vocal anti-FGM campaigners such as Leyla Hussein and Nimco Ali, who had initially struggled to get effective national media coverage and the ear of politicians, whose voices were amplified when they used their own negative experiences of infibulation in their campaign work.For example, whenas the founders and directors of the charity Daughters of Evethey gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, the Chair (Keith Vaz MP) (HAC Oral Evidence, 2014) opened by congratulating them on their political campaign but then asked: Leyla Hussein, you describe yourself as a survivor as opposed to a victim of FGM, but you will have both been through this harrowing and torturous process.What we are keen to hear from youwe will hear evidence from others about other aspects of policy-is your own personal experience, because I think it will help others understand, first of all, how to avoid it.It will also help us as parliamentarians, who have not been through this, to understand exactly what is involved.(emphasis added) Positioned as a mutilated and subaltern woman, she was constructed as only having expertise in personal experience, with the Chair disinterested in her views on matters of policy.Throughout their oral evidence, both women tried to steer the conversation onto topics which they saw as important (education, law) and on which they had expertise and knowledge but were redirected back by the Chair to voice their personal stories. 11As Abusharaf (2007), Njambi (2004Njambi ( , 2009)), Omede Obiora (2003) and Toubia (2004) have documented, a singular, limited and titillating horror story of 'FGM' dominates campaign literature in the West and when African activists are invited to speak in/to the West, it is typically only for the purpose of regurgitating this singular story.With reference to a different colonial context, Baxi (1992: 260) eloquently argues the same point: 'the colonial law which cast me in the figure of approver disapproved of me (while appropriating to itself the use of my testimony) as a person of low morals'.In this way then, Spivak's subaltern remains effectively silenced but this time through a whitewashed inclusion rather than an outright rejectiona process which aligns with Bhambra's (2021) notion of epistemological injustice.
There was, however at least initially, also some space for those positioned as subalterns to contribute from positions of expertise, that is, as full political subjects.Of the 57 written submissions to the Home Affairs Committee's inquiry into 'FGM', a handful were contributions from grassroots campaigners or groups.One of those, FORWARD (HAC Written Evidence, 2014:223) not only recommended a wide range of measures including mandatory reporting and strengthening the law but also insisted that 'FGM support systems must, at the core, be survivor-centric.This means that support systemsincluding well-women's clinics must be designed following consultation with women affected by FGM'.They further argued that all policies and legislative provision should be pursued with a 'Do No Harm' approach, highlighting the risk that 'nuances and complexities' could easily be lost when put into operation through state or local authority machinery.The organisation emphasised that criminalising approaches and stigmatising language (highlighting two adjectives frequently employed by politicians: 'barbaric' and 'backward') should be kept in check, and in cases where intervention was necessary, the best interests of the child should be prioritised.The final report of the Committee (HAC, 2014) effectively ignored these nuanced recommendations. 12When parents were mentioned, it was not as potential survivors, but in relation to criminalising any potential failure on their part to protect their children (para.92).This subsequently became law in 2015 by way of an amendment to the 2003 Act to include the offence of 'failing to protect [a] girl from risk of genital mutilation' for those with parental responsibility or with caring responsibilities (s.3A).It was to the children, not the parents, that the state felt it owed a duty of care: The failure to respond adequately to the growing prevalence of FGM in the UK over recent years has likely resulted in the preventable mutilation of thousands of girls to whom the state owed a duty of care.This is a national scandal for which successive governments, politicians, the police, health, education and social care sectors all share responsibility.
(HAC, 2014:10) The debates in parliament in the run up to the passing of the 2015 Act echoed this sentiment, re-articulating the binary of the colonial era through an underlying construction of parents as Other/migrants and children as 'British'.Parliamentarians spoke about how 'Governments of all colours […] have failed British girls who are subject to this horrific abuse' (Helen Jones MP, 2014, emphasis added). 13 The fact that there had been no successful prosecution under the 1985 Act or the 2003 Act to that point, was repeatedly cited in parliament as evidence of this failure. 14Given that both Acts were purposefully symbolic and enacted 'to send a message' about something already prosecutable, this perhaps should not have been quite so surprising, but this prima facie assumption coupled with the similarly problematic claim that 60,000+ British girls were at risk pushed government to action (Karlsen et al., 2022;Pantazis et al., forthcoming). 15Thus, the 2015 Act and accompanyingstatutoryguidance sought to dynamise regulated professionals including police, teachers, health practitioners and social workers, to mandate proactive action.Following the recommendations of the HAC (2014:7), regulated professionals were all co-opted into the National Action Plan which held that 'FGM is a severe form of gender-based violence, and where it is carried out on a girl, it is an extreme form of child abuse.Everyone who has a responsibility for safeguarding children must view FGM in this way'.Health practitioners were instructed to ask female patients from ethnic/national backgrounds where FC/FGM is practiced, whether they had had 'FGM', if so what type, at what age, to advise them of its illegality (or as phrased in parliament: 'send the message') and the potential health consequences and to record this on the newly-set-up NHS FGM-Enhanced Dataset.In education, 'FGM' was included along with cyber-bullying, child sexual exploitation, mental health and radicalisation in the government's safeguarding guidance: 'Keeping Children Safe in Education' (Topping, 2014).Teachers were encouraged to monitor the behaviour of children from affected communities by, for example, timing toilet visits and being 'vigilant' with regard to emotional or behavioural changes (HAC, 2014).Schools were urged to take action if it came to their attention that a family from an affected community was going on holiday.Social workers then undertook visits to these families accompanied by police (Karlsen et al., 2019).All of the above agencies and all regulated professional had to comply with the mandatory reporting requirement brought in through the 2015 Act (s.74). 16In the various documents, flow charts and posters produced by the government for regulated professionals to educate them about these changes, the single most significant risk factor is presented as being that one or both the parents come from an FGM-practicing community.As the Home Affairs Committee concluded in 2014, '[i]f the future mother is identified as having undergone FGM or is from a practising country, it is likely that if they give birth to a girl, that child will in the future be at risk unless preventative steps are taken'.It is notable that in the single successful prosecution for FGM in the UK (in 2019), there was no history of practice in the families of either parent (R v. N).Further, this claim ignores the fact that the most prominent and active campaigners against FC/FGM in the UKincluding many unsung heroes quietly undertaking effective local community work as well as more prominent media figures (Carver, 2021;Lewicki and O'Toole, 2017;FORWARD, 2017) were mothers who had undergone FGC/M.Moreover, this claim runs contrary to empirical evidence from across Europe and Scandinavia which has consistently found attitudes towards and prevalence of FGC/M change significantly following migration (see Farina and Ortensi, 2014;Johnsdotter and Essén, 2016;Koukoui et al., 2017;Vogt et al., 2017;Wahlberg et al., 2017).
As has been demonstrated the legacies of colonial epistemologies remain deeply embedded in present-day political discourse, policies and legislation which seek to prevent 'FGM' through criminalisation.At the heart of this prevention package is a binary which positions adult women as never-assimilable non-citizen or 'migrant' Others and their female children as current/future/potential citizens.'Mutilation' is significant in this construction because it forecloses the possibility of full participatory citizenship: the subject position 'mutilated woman' is restricted to being only a bearer of culture rather than also perceived as a bearer of law or rights.As such, she is never rescuable and cannot be fully included in the body politic.Furthermore, this binary positions her as the primary risk in the well-being and safeguarding of her child.This construction of risk, when coupled with the racist construction of FC/FGM in the 2003 Act produces a 'suspect community' (Pantazis and Pemberton, 2009) and produces it as determined by reified, rigid and unchanging norms or, as the 2003 Act words it, customs and rituals.The duty to protect British children was thus placed squarely on state representatives with no corresponding duty to protect or even give attention to the rights and well-being of their mothers.The implementation of these policies furthered this division.
Below we analyse how this binary played out in safeguarding encounters as recounted by those subject to safeguarding.The data primarily comes from female focus groups not least because the female participants experienced safeguarding directly far more frequently than the male participants.

The View from Below: Experiences of Safeguarding Encounters
Across the focus groups, participants reported that since the implementation of the 2015 legislation and policy measures, they had experienced a change in the way they were treated by state professionals.The gendered and generational binary constructed in political discourse, legislation and policy described above was experienced in three main ways: first, female participants felt that they were dehumanised and as a consequence, their own humanity and needs were overlooked particularly in health settings; second, women described being denied the subject position as 'knower'the safeguarding official held the truth about 'FGM', and, regardless of any personal or professional experience of relevance, their role was to listen and learn that truth; and third, participants from all groups (fathers, mothers and young people) stated that parents were treated as suspect, their ability as parents was doubted and maligned, and as a consequence of safeguarding encounters, they felt forced to change parenting practices.

The Dehumanisation of Mothers
In the drive to safeguard the next generation, the needs of those living with FC/FGM were easily overlooked.Instead of being treated as victims, survivors or patients, they were treated solely as potential perpetrators (Karlsen et al., 2019).Within healthcare settings, the women told us that they were subject to FGM-safeguarding in each and every encounter as part of the data gathering for the NHS FGM Enhanced Dataset so much so that they got to know FGM-safeguarding as a 'script' (Mothers, FG1).This safeguarding took the form of data collection on intimate physical details, including whether they had been cut, what age they were cut and what type of cut they had had.The purported aims of this exercise are 'to improve the way in which the NHS responds to the health needs of girls and women who have had FGM, and to actively support prevention' (HMG Department of Health, 2015:3).For our participants, there was no evidence of the first aim in these encounters.Indeed, rather than improving healthcare responses, participants reported that the safeguarding resulted in their health needs being side-lined and ignored: [The Health Visitor] is asking all the time.Before they cared about your health and how the child was feeling.Now it's just FGM.(Mother, FG1) Last year, when I was in early pregnancy and not feeling well, I had my first meeting with the midwife.I was hoping that she would ask me, 'How are you feeling?What can I do for you?'But she had a form, and she just followed the form: 'First I would like to talk to you, do you know anything about FGM?' 'Yeah, I know it', I said.'Did you have the FGM?' she asked.It was like an interview.I was quite shocked.[…]  The majority of the mothers in the focus groups felt that safeguarding in the form of form-filling was prioritised in healthcare settings over and above their own health needs.Some recounted experiences indicating that they felt their physical well-being had suffered as a consequence and several reported subsequent disengagement from health services (Karlsen et al., 2019(Karlsen et al., , 2020)).The legacy of the colonial binaryunsavable mother/ saveable childand its post-colonial political rearticulationmigrant mother/British childresulted in a duty of care oriented overwhelmingly towards the child (including the unborn) and delegitimised the needs of the mother.
In addition, there was also a strong feeling that this was not only unwarranted safeguarding which negatively impacted on healthcare but far from helping to improve services for those living with FC/FGM actually made existing services considerably worse.Across the focus groups, mothers spoke of being re-traumatised and described this safeguarding as 'putting salt on the wound' (Karlsen et al., 2020).They had noted political discourse and campaign literature that claimed 'FGM' was a form of child abuse, and they asked, why, if this was the belief, they were not being treated as survivors of child abuse.State professionals felt able to ask intimate questions of people which would be totally unacceptable in other contexts.For example, if this was a White mother who was suspected to have been a victim of historic child abuse, it is unthinkable that a headteacher would ask her directly about it.We suggest that the use of the acronym 'FGM' facilitates this dehumanising approach, as professionals can easily overlook the fact that they as asking about genitals and trauma.However, it is also clear that this is facilitated by the colonial binary in which mothers, as mutilated subjects, are regarded first and foremost as potential perpetrators rather than survivors.Although some young female participants (who were not mothers and had not undergone FC/FGM) gave examples of safeguarding in healthcare contexts that they felt was appropriate and undertaken in a sensitive way (FG6), the mother participants did not provide any such examples.Far from being treated with the sympathy and sensitivity that might be expected, the discourse of child abuse was used instead to justify the safeguarding.For example, one woman reported that the midwife had told her that 'because you were abused, we need to make sure that you don't abuse your child'.Like others, she challenged this discourse: They think if someone was abused they are more likely to abuse their child.Mother participants understood that they were being Othered as 'native' or 'migrant' women.As such they were held to be determined by culture rather than agents of culture, and their 'culture' was held to be fixed and timeless.The racialised and colonialist framework embedded in law and discourse also permeated delivery of policy.Not only were mothers' status as 'patient' or 'service-user' side-lined in these encounters, their status as victims or survivors was ignored.This was especially shocking to participants in healthcare settings where they expected professional care but instead were overlooked and dehumanised.This dehumanisation also meant that they were not perceived as bearers of knowledge.

Mothers Denied as Knowledge-Bearers
As has been argued above, those positioned as subalterns were encouraged to speak only as 'mutilated woman' in national campaigns where their stories were given prominence and their narratives used to provide legitimacy to policies of criminalisation.This co-opting can be described as epistemological injustice and the ongoing operation of coloniality of power.In safeguarding encounters, the starting point was to offer women this subject position (as in the encounters above where the first question is 'Have you had FGM?').Some participants reported actively refusing or challenging this offer.This was not because any of them supported the continuance of cutting: all participants stated that they were against the practice and many worked actively in the UK and around the world to prevent it.What they rejected was the subject position 'mutilated woman' and they did so by refusing to answer demeaning and invasive questions: I told her, 'If you just want me to answer this question, I'm not going to see you again.I don't need a midwife [like this], I'm not going to see you again'.(Mother FG1) or by trying to assert their own credentials as 'knowers': And I did say, 'I've done a lot of work on FGM, I have worked with members of parliament in Africa', They [police and social services] said, 'oh that's great, but we need you to sign'.I've campaigned against it, in countries where they do practice it.But nobody really listened to that.(Mother,FG2) Ultimately, this form of resistance was futile even for articulate FGM campaigners.The majority, however, reported feeling so overcome by the imbalance of power in these encountersparticularly when social services and police were presentthat they felt unable to do anything other than cower in the face of the demands being made of them.The focus groups thus provided a safe place where they could recount what they had thought in their heads but were not able to articulate in the encounters, and they did this with fury, bitterness and shock at being treated in this way.
It adds injury to insult because if somebody tries to educate you about something you've been through... [I wanted to say] 'Look, it didn't happen to you, it happened to me! There's no way I'm going to do it to my child!Who are you to tell me something you don't know about?' (Mother, FG2) They've been given a script and they've got to follow that script.It was nothing that he understood himself.[…] I don't know how he thinks he can educate me about FGM! (Mother, FG2) The way I was spoken to by the professionals, as if they know something about my culture better than me! […] They didn't understand and they were very ignorant and I felt their purpose really was to humiliate and embarrass me.(Mother,FG4) Ongoing coloniality designated these women as subalterns whose knowledge stood for nothing.As mutilated women they were positioned as in need of educating and managing in an augmentation of the political rhetoric documented above.This status positioned them as legally, politically and socially mutilated, as lacking in capacity and thus unable to represent themselves, their experience or their culture. 17Instead, the state officials, armed with their 'script' and the inherent power of the law, assumed the role of 'knower' of and over the Other.Participants indicated that the attitudes of state officials towards them would change in these encounters if they revealed status indicators that allowed the officials to think of them as something other than 'mutilated migrant woman' (Carver et al., 2022).But participants also discovered that if they refused to occupy the only space allowed themthe foreclosed subject position of 'mutilated woman'this was interpreted by state officials negatively, and thus meant they were subject to more suspicion and hostility (Karlsen et al., 2019).The only subject position left for them to occupy was that of actual perpetrator or future perpetrator: law, policy and its application combined to construct them not just as a risk factor in their child's life, but as the major risk factor.

Parents and Parenting Constructed as Suspect
Avon and Somerset Constabulary informed the Home Affairs Committee (2014:32) that visits following a referral (itself made simply because a family was going on holiday) could be undertaken 'irrespective of whether there is evidence of a crime' in order to 'collect better intelligence' and 'reinforce the message'; an echo of the political discourse which positioned affected communities as 'stagnant object[s] who must be toldand clearlyhow to think about the practice of "genital mutilation".'(Rogers 2007:141).Whatever the intentions of A&S Constabulary, participantsparents and those who were children at the timeexperienced these visits as 'interrogations' and understood themselves to be under investigation for child abuse (Karlsen et al., 2019).
They sat down, very formal.Very official, paper and pen.When you go into someone's home, you need to remember they are human beings.(Mother, FG1) Everyone's been separated to different rooms, that's an interrogation, that's literally being interrogated.(Young Woman, FG6) Some reported that parents and children were questioned separately; others reported being spoken to in front of their children in an inappropriate way.In both cases, parents stated that the approach of the police and social services served to criminalise them in the eyes of their children.This understandably led our participants to feel that the parent-child relationship was damaged in and through these encounters.For male children, their parents were portrayed as suspects and criminals: 'The boys, they were sitting watching, and they were saying "Oh my god, what did you do?"' (Mother, FG1).For female children, their parents were portrayed as potential monsters, a threat to them, as someone to fear: My daughter she was so scared, she said, 'what is happening, Mummy?' The social worker said she was going to tell my daughter [about FC/FGM].My daughter, she was standing up, sitting down [describing her as anxious, noises of sympathy from others].She said, 'are you going to do that, Mummy?'Even she said to me, 'I don't have a thing like boys, so how can you do that?How can you cut if there's nothing to cut?'She was 10 years old.And I was so upset, and scared.(Mother, FG1) As a parent we [are the ones who should] tell our children about FGM.I didn't want to tell my daughter, but I had to because of social services, I had to.My daughter was frightened.
[The social services and police told her] 'she's going to take you to Somalia, and they are going to do these things'.She was [made] scared of me.(Mother,FG1) Parenting decisions about if and when to tell children about FC/FGM were taken out of their hands which resulted in parents looking as if they had been deceiving their children.Some participants told us that they did not wish to tell their children about FC/FGM on the basis that it would not be something they would experience and would, therefore, traumatise them unnecessarily.Others were waiting for their children to reach an age where they felt they would be able to understand and process the information ('Even PSHE [Personal, Social, Health and Economic education] isn't taught at that age [in school] so, it's quite scary for a child to go through horrific details of FGM and hear about it'.Mother, FG4).Many worried that such knowledge would damage their children's understanding of their Somali heritagea cultural heritage they saw as already distorted by prejudiced media (Carver et al., 2022).Safeguarding encounters took these decisions out of their hand, presenting them to their children as either duplicitous and sinister or naive and incompetent.
They were further disciplined in the Foucauldian sense by the fear of medical examination which was, they recounted, used as a threat and means of coercion in safeguarding encounters with social services.
They say they going to check the children.They didn't do it, but they say they might do it.So emotionally it can [have an impact].So we as parents have to prepare them.We have to say, 'When we come back from holiday, the GP might need to check your private parts'.The girls they don't understand.They say, 'but Mum you always told us that no one's allowed to see your private parts, so why do I have to show it?'For us as a parent, to explain, it's so hard.And the girls, they keep worrying about it, when they go to school -'is it going to happen today?Tomorrow?' (Mother,FG1) In addition to these personal experiences where medical examination was threatened, participants were familiar with the local authority guidance on FGM-safeguarding which re-iterated national guidance asking teachers to time toilet visits.As a consequence, they reported instructing their daughters not to spend too long in the school toilet on the understanding that this could be misinterpreted as evidence of experience of FC/ FGM.Over and above this, some parents also felt the need to insist that their daughters did not draw attention to themselves, by always 'being good' in school.Whether or not this level of paranoia was well-founded, some parents clearly believed that the threats issued by social services that their daughters might be medically examined would be realised if they gave them any opportunity to do so.Ironically, then, given the feminist and equalities discourse that is claimed for anti-FGM prevention measures, FGM-safeguarding pushed parents to enforce girlchildren to behave according to (UK) old-fashioned gender norms, by being 'good', quiet and impeccably well-behaved.Furthermore, mundane aspects of everyday family life including going on holiday could take on sinister dimensions.This concern also affected planned treats and surprises, because parents felt they could not tell their children 'to keep a secret because it turns into something else' (Mother, FG2).Experiences described in the focus groups provided evidence of the ways in which such secretsof surprise parties or special trips or eventscould be misinterpreted as evidence of a risk of FC/FGM, particularly by teachers and safeguarding officers in schools.Some participants felt that the primary fault in their construction as suspect parents arose from issues with training and poor practice by prejudiced safeguarders, be they teachers, health workers or social services.But the majority felt that the legal and policy requirements were themselves stigmatising and operated with an in-built prejudice that constructed them a priori as bad parents on account of their 'mutilated' status and ethnicity.They felt that it was this coupled with negative political and media rhetoric about Somali culture (Carver et al., 2022) that led to their abysmal experiences.In the following discussion taken from FG1, a woman (Mother 1) has just finished recounting her experience of the midwife relentlessly questioning her about FGM, which generated the following responses: Mother 2: 'If the baby had been a girl, the midwife would have asked you again'.The suggestion from the participants was that Somali parents automatically get assigned a social worker if they have a baby girl.Social workers get assigned to mothers and/or families where there is uncertainty about the ability of people to be a 'good enough' parent.Being assigned a social worker is, therefore, not just a stigma, but understood as a sign that the state judges you to be such a bad parent that there is a real possibility that your children might be taken away from you and raised by others.The conversation above documents the belief of these women that as Somalis they are presumed by the state to be mutilated women, and as mutilated women they are understood to be culture-bound, dangerous parents, liable to harm their children.As documented above, the abuse they were perceived to have suffered themselves as children did not generate empathy or sympathy, but rather was the primary marker of their status as threat and danger.For the younger participants who were children when they experienced safeguarding, this was also traumatic and traumatising: When I look back on it now, I feel angry.I was 16 and I didn't have a clue about the whole [FGM] campaigning.I got angry because my mum got taken for like an idiot or that she was unworthy of being trusted as a parent.[They were] just fixated on making my mum look guilty.(Young Woman, FG6) They felt their parents were 'mocked' and threatened, that their ability and method of parenting was doubted, which in turn made them 'stressed out' and angry.Another explained that the routine question of 'Are you going to have FGM done on your child?' felt to her as the equivalent of asking a parent, 'Are you going to starve your child?'For at least one young person, there was fear and recognition that once she became a parent she would no longer be automatically assumed as 'British' and her adult/parent status would entail loss of this claim to belonging: The thought process is there.I feel like it's hanging over my shoulder.When I have children, am I going to be put in that predicament?Because I wouldn't be comfortable being questioned about something I'm clearly against.Am I going to feel as violated as every other person feels?Do I feel they have the right to question me? (Young Woman, FG6)

Conclusion
In this paper, we have shown the legacy of colonial epistemologies in present-day law and policy relating to 'FGM' and FGM-safeguarding.We have argued that this legislation and policy operates through gendered and generational binary which polarises parents from children and women/girls from men/boys.Non-White mothers with heritage from 'FGM'-practising countries were and are positioned in political discourse as mutilated subjects for whom 'culture' is determinative; parents (mothers and fathers) with heritage from 'FGM'-practising countries are positioned first and foremost as migrants and perpetrators; and children (girls and boys) are claimed as 'British'.While belonging is foreclosed for mothers in this discourse, fathers, boys and uncircumcised girls are positioned as potentially assimilable, or in Bhabha's terminology 'not quite / not white'.This legal and political construction had devastating consequences for participants in safeguarding encounters.Mothers, in particular, felt that they were dehumanised which resulted in them being treated as parenting risks and perpetrators rather than victims or survivors (with associated needs) as well as being denied the possibility of being 'knowers'.They experienced safeguarding encounters as 'interrogations' where, regardless of their personal and professional experiences of FC/FGM, they 'must be toldand clearlyhow to think about the practice of "genital mutilation"' (Rogers, 2007:141).
Through this paper, we have demonstrated the operation of legislative epistemic violence and epistemological injustice as a current, ongoing and tangible reality.
An area for further research is that of the 'view from the middle', which is to say the perspective of policy-implementers such as midwives, schoolteachers, police and social services.We acknowledge this absence as a potential limitation, nonetheless, to discount this research on this basis would be an example of what Fricker (2007) terms epistemic or testimonial injustice.Silencing can be realised by devaluing non-Western individuals and societies as credible 'knowers' (Spivak, 1988), and/or through positioning particular groups as subalterns; as objects rather than subjects of knowledge, even of themselves and their own cultures and practices.But it can also be enacted through insisting on 'fairness' or equality of representation when the privileged group is not present.Positive law, as understood by Walter Benjamin, is inherently violent, and migration (colonial and post-colonial) is often 'law-creating' (Tuitt, 2013).Moments of shared global lawcreation such as are currently occurring with 'FGM' should, therefore, be accompanied by reflexive soul-searching.The risk otherwise is epistemological rather than simply epistemic injustice (Bhambra, 2021:82), which, as Tuhiwai Smith (2021:3) has observed, results in the 'greater danger' of the 'creeping policies' that intrude 'into every aspect of our lives'.Here, therefore, we have sought to address the epistemological injustice embedded in FGM-safeguarding legislation and policies which, according to our participants, intrude deep into their family lives.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/ or publication of this article.
2. Including, for example, the English Defence League who list FGM in their mission statement as an example of 'Islam-inspired intolerance' at http://www.englishdefenceleague.org.uk/mission-statement/ (accessed June 2019).3.Although we acknowledge differences exist between decoloniality and postcolonial theory (Adébísí, 2023), like Bhambra (2014) and Castro-Gomez et al. (2021), we see both as major contributions to scholarship and suggest that these differences are not so fundamental as to necessitate declaring allegiance to one or other camp.4.This process is still ongoing seen for example in refugee determination (Carver, 2019). 5.The papers of this Committee are held in the Archive of Eleanor Rathbone (AER).6. See for example the report by Agnes Brown of the Church of Scotland Mission, Tumutumu, Kenya, and that of Dr Sybil Batley of the Church Mission Society, AER. 7.These differing viewpointsmost prominently between men and women whether government officials or missionariesare also prevalent in Missionary archives, as discussed by Anderson (2018) and Pedersen (1991).8.As parliamentarian Sir Basil Nevin-Spence explained to the House in 1949: 'henceforth she is not merely handicapped, and often disastrously so, as a wife and as a mother, but her entire being undergoes a most profound alteration which lasts for the rest of her days'.(Hansard HC Deb. Vo.461, col.1560, 18 Feb 1949).This binary also operated outside of the debates on female circumcision and was arguably widespread across European colonialism evidenced by policies of physical separation of children from their parents.9.For further discussion of this legal contradiction in the UK see Dustin (2010), La Barbera (2017) and Shahvisi (2023).10.A similar argument was made by Dr Kamau in her legal petition to overturn Kenya's Prohibition of FGM Act 2011(Van Bavel, 2022).In Scotland, the Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation (Scotland) Act 2005 circumvents this by referring to the potential victim as an unsexed 'person' (with specified female genitals).However, the Scottish law relies on the same binary construction of 'mental health' v 'custom and ritual'.During the passing of the Female Genital Mutilation (Protection And Guidance) (Scotland) Act 2020 which introduced FGMPOs to Scotland via amendment of the 2005 Act, the Convenor of the Equalities and Human Rights Committee of the Scottish Executive explicitly recognised the hypocrisy within the law, stating there was a 'need to be careful not to say, "that stuff that's done in a cosmetic surgeon's studio is fineit's a free choicethat that other thing is bad", because all those things are related to the same structures in which women are not valued' (Scottish Parliament, 2019a).However, the final report of the Committee silenced this discussion, and the language was left untouched (Scottish Parliament, 2019b).11.With thanks to Hannelore Van Bavel for drawing our attention to this.12. Instead, the focus of the report was, in the following order, on: 'Prosecuting FGM' (7 pages), 'Safeguarding at-risk girls' with a priority on the relevant agencies (17 pages), 'Changing the law' (5 pages) and 'Working with communities' (4 pages).This final brief chapter included mention of the limited availability of medical and counselling provision for survivors.13.In the Swedish context, Johnsdotter (2007:119) has observed similarly that an application for funds to support or work with women living with FGM is less likely to be successful than one which reiterates and sustains the belief that tens of thousands of Swedish girls are at risk.14.This was specifically raised in the House between 1998 and 2014 on at least 20 separate occasions.15.Official statistics on prevalence of FC/FGM in the UK are based on the premise that the culture of Others is determinative: the number of the girls counted as at risk is all those born to mothers from countries where FC/FGM is practiced (Karlsen et al., 2020).This obviates the possibility and empirical researchthat FC/FGM is typically abandoned on migration to a society where it is not the norm and where it serves no obvious benefit.16.The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (https://www.iicsa.org.uk/)included a recommendation for mandatory reporting for child sexual abuse more broadly and this is currently subject to a government consultation.17.See Ahmadu (2007) on this topic more generally.
[…] Abuse?That was due to ignorance, that was 33 years ago, nothing that happens now.(Mother, FG2) [I told the midwife] 'I had it.It was a really bad experience.I love my Mum, but it was culture', A hundred years ago, this country had a [different] culture.Are they still [living in the same way]?They modernise it.So we [too] modernise it.(Mother, FG1)

Mother 1 :
'Exactly!' Mother 3: 'She would give you a social worker'.Women: Haah! [Yes] This is a very private matter.You can't just ask me what it's like inside my legs.[…] She was desperate to fill in this form.I was uncomfortable.She kept coming back to it.[…] It frightened me really.If I tell her anything, she would start again.If you go to GP it's the same question.(Mother, FG1) The Headteacher called us and she read an agreement and she asked me, 'did they make you do this thing?' [did you have FGM?] and I hate that question [agreement from others].It's personal.It hurts me a lot.Why do you need to know what's happening on the inside of my legs?[getting very emotional] (Mother, FG1) You feel as if you are not in a safe place.My daughters go to school.It worries us [that] if a child misbehaves in class, then… but what has this got to do with the FGM? (Father, FG3)