Paper short abstract:

This paper offers an analysis of the interplay between health, violence and the sense of justice at the Medical Committee for the Exiled (COMEDE) in Paris, which provides treatment to asylum seekers, along with medical certificates attesting to the fact that the patient is a torture victim.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the interplay between health, violence and the sense of justice at the Medical Committee for the Exiled (COMEDE) in Paris, which provides treatment to asylum seekers, along with medical certificates - to be attached to the asylum request - attesting to the fact that the patient is a torture victim.

The patient population examined consists of Sri Lankan Tamils. The data come from ethnographic fieldwork that was carried out on the Tamil community in Paris between 2008 and 2014, and at the COMEDE between March and July 2009.

First, by explaining how war traumas are treated and medical certificates for asylum requests drafted, I will illustrate how the patients are cast in the role of victims. It is a matter of understanding in what way and for what reasons treatment is inseparable from a well-defined sense of justice, and the will to uphold the rights of those exiled. What social features mark the victims "produced" in the medical certificates? What are the social consequences of treating a torture victim by applying the nosological label of PTSD?

Secondly, I will focus in greater detail on the social role played by the COMEDE. Asylum seekers are a liminal population: they are neither members of their host society nor complete outsiders. My hypothesis is that by treating patients as victims, a category which elicits empathy, the COMEDE is seeking to reverse the feeling of distrust which surrounds asylum seekers when it comes to their reasons for wishing to remain in France.