Contribution short abstract:

This paper explores the idea of a common humanity through analysis of asylum processes based on conversion to Christianity and fear of religious persecution. It explores the processes of inclusion and exclusion resulting from German legal authorities' own historically Christian identity.

Contribution long abstract:

In his “Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present”, Fassin (2012, 109ff) explores the contradictions of humanitarian governance in the context of refugee protection. While Western states on the one hand assert the possibility of protection from persecution according to the principles of the 1951 Geneva Convention, on the other hand they significantly curtail such rights by often narrow interpretations of what the categories of protection might entail.

In this paper, I draw on the analysis of my ethnographic research in Germany on asylum processes based on conversion to Christianity and fear of religious persecution to explore what remains of the idea of a common humanity in the context of asylum politics. In these asylum claims, decision makers must assess 1) the credibility of the applicant’s conversion and 2) its potential consequences in case of the applicant’s return to their country of origin. Yet, how can one correctly assess the genuineness of a conversion to Christianity? Can, or should, this be the role of the secular state and its legal decision-makers? If so, how does the state decide which forms and practices of Christianity are ‘acceptable’? What expertise is drawn on in reaching this decision? I will show how asylum claims based on conversion to Christianity reveal with exceptional clarity how legal authorities of Western states conceive of their own historically Christian identity, and the processes of inclusion and exclusion that result from it.