Paper short abstract:

On the grounds of an ethnographic research at the French Court of Asylum, my aim here is to examine the “intimate conviction” of judges through an exploration of the emotions at stake in the courtroom. How does it come that sometimes emotions provoked during the hearing end up dispelling doubt?

Paper long abstract:

Courts and tribunals are highly ritualized places where everyone has role, pursues an objective, and where body language and discourse are crucial. The judges from the French Court of Asylum - which reviews on appeals from decisions of the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons - expect a lot from the public hearings. It is sometimes a look, a gesture, or some words that cause an emotional reaction and eventually convince them of the well-foundness of the claim, or its opposite. Despite the routine work of judges and rapporteurs at the Court, leading to the erosion of affect in listening to stories of persecution, or perhaps because of this routinization and indifference, the face-to-face with applicants occasionally arouses emotions that are somehow considered as evidences and end up dispelling doubt and suspicion. This is crucial if we consider that suspicion is probably nowadays the most striking feature of representations and practices on asylum. On the grounds of an ethnographic research at the French Court of Asylum, my aim here is to examine the "intimate conviction" of judges through an exploration of the emotions at stake in the courtroom.