Paper 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.