The inhabitants of the border

In the midst of the so-called “crisis” of refugees in Europe, it is imperative to identify the particular challenges faced by refugee women and girls, in order to assess the effectiveness of public policies implemented for this social group. Assuming that there is specific violence suffered by refugee women, this article consists in a case study of refugee reception policies by European Union States between 2015 and 2021. Mobilizing Feminist and Decolonial theoretical approaches to International Relations and Subaltern Studies, it is concluded that direct and indirect violence is being perpetrated against refugees in EU countries. Thus, this work argues that public policies for refugees in the EU do not sufficiently reduce this situation of violence. The regional norms for the reception of refugees from the European Union, however, grant wide discretion to the Member States to implement public policies of this nature, which results in dissonances between the reception standards in each State. The reality of insufficiency and inefficiency of reception policies carried out by EU Member States on issues of gender-based violence, consists of a type of institutional silencing and the reproduction of subalternity.