Prisoners of identity: The experiences of ethnic minority Vietnamese women categorised as foreign in Cambodian prisons

Abstract

Criminological scholarship within Southeast Asia is limited and studies of foreign national and/or ethnic minority women's experiences of imprisonment in the region are non-existent. Drawing on in-depth interviews with ethnic Vietnamese women categorised as foreign nationals by the Cambodian Directorate General of Prisons, this article uses an intersectional approach, common within feminist criminology, to explore participants' narrative constructions of their lives prior to and during imprisonment. Our findings demonstrate that intersectional vulnerabilities stemming from their marginalised social position outside prison walls influenced these women's lived experiences of incarceration.