Paper short abstract:

Temporal markers of fear can determine if an asylum seeker's testimony is believable and if a case is considered reasonable in the eyes of the law. They also set the difference between "normal" and "pathological" fear, which is crucial to an asylum seekers' case.

Paper long abstract:

Recognizing fear, evaluating its plausibility and verifying its rationality has been at the core of asylum law ever since the United Nations established that refugee is a person with a "well-founded fear" of past and future persecution.

Drawing from ethnographic research in immigration courts in New York, I discuss how legal rationality prescribes temporal norms that are at odds with experiences of migration. I do so by looking at three elements of asylum law. First, I address the temporal markers that determine how fear is assessed in asylum seekers' testimonies. Then, I describe how time and rationality relate in gender-based immigration case law. Finally, I show how time plays an important role in drawing the limits between diagnoses of psychosis and "well-founded fear" in expert reports. I illustrate my arguments with the case of an asylum seeker from the Dominican Republic whose experience of fear escaped legal knowledge. By doing so, I hope to shed light on the relationship between emotions, ideas of time, and the making of law.