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- Convenor:
-
John R. Campbell
(School of Oriental & African Studies)
- Location:
- Khalili Lecture Theatre
- Start time:
- 16 April, 2009 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
Long Abstract:
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
not used
Paper long abstract:
In their assessment of evidence, the Home Office and the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal increasingly demand a level of certainty that goes way beyond 'reasonable likelihood'. Based on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork, this paper explores the problems and dilemmas involved in the production of medical evidence used to corroborate claims for asylum, with a particular focus on victims of torture. Despite the immense pain and suffering often experienced by claimants, the medical documentation of torture faces numerous difficulties. The physical symptoms left by torture are often highly ambiguous. Scars do not speak, and many physical marks can not be definitely attributed to the infliction of torture. The psychological symptoms of torture are equally contested. For example, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) includes a group of people much wider than those who have been subjected to torture. This paper examines the relationship between clinical and legal knowledge, as doctors grapple with the limits of medical expertise, their personal political commitments and the increasingly absolute demands of the asylum system.
Caught in the middle: an ethnography of immigration case workers in London Law Centres
Evan Killick
(University of Sussex)
Paper short abstract:
Based on participant observation and interviews with immigration case workers in a number of Law Centres in South London, this paper considers how changes to UK immigration laws and legal aid funding are affecting the process of asylum and immigration applications in the UK.
Paper long abstract:
The UK Government has recently introduced 'targeting legislation', aimed at more narrowly defining 'legitimate claims' to asylum. Concurrently, state funding for welfare provisions such as legal aid is being eroded, creating a two-tier legal culture, with those on the bottom tier being effectively denied access to justice. Based on participant observation and interviews with immigration case workers in a number of Law Centres in South London, this paper considers how these changes are affecting the process of asylum and immigration applications in the UK. In particular it examines the current position of case workers, the personal and professional pressures they are subject to and their changing roles in the current environment.
Paper short abstract:
not used
Paper long abstract:
Somalia has remained the place of origin of one of the largest national groups of asylum seekers in the UK throughout the last 20 years. During that period, responses to their claims by the Home Office, the courts and tribunals have changed dramatically from a readiness to grant asylum or subsidiary protection to virtually all Somalis (from the late 1980s until 2002) to the present treatment of their claims with intense skepticism both as to the autobiographical accounts on which they rely and what is said about the nature of risk in Somalia. This paper will describe those changing responses including how asylum seekers’ testimony is obtained and assessed; the reception of expert evidence (particularly, country and medical expert evidence); the assessment of country conditions and how refusal of asylum has been rationalized and justified. It will also describe how the presentation of asylum claims by Somali asylum seekers themselves and by their lawyers has changed during the same period partly in response to these changes and also in consequence of the changing situation in Somalia; the ‘information revolution’ and changing arrangements for the provision of legal services. Whilst most of these issues are common to asylum claims and claimants generally, they have features that are specific to Somalis’ and which the paper will identify.