Keynotes
Falling outside: lawyering, central Americans, and the boundaries of political asylum
by Professor Susan Bibler Coutin, Department of Criminology, Law, and Society and the Department of Anthropology, School of Social Ecology, University of California
Legal advocacy on behalf of Central American asylum seekers in the United States has played a key role in developing U.S. asylum and refugee law and in creating an infrastructure of legal expertise to address the needs of legal and unauthorized immigrants more generally. This talk takes a retrospective look at this advocacy work, considering how attorneys, Central American organizations, and asylum seekers themselves have negotiated the boundaries of political asylum as they have sought to establish Central Americans’ eligibility for this remedy. I will consider three instances when Central Americans have been deemed to fall outside of the category of refugee: (1) the 1980s, when the U.S. government supported repressive regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala, U.S. immigration officials argued that Central Americans were economic immigrants or victims of generalized violence; (2) the 1990s, when civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala came to an end, thus making it difficult for Salvadorans and Guatemalans to avail themselves of the protections that asylum could provide; and (3) the 2000s, when some Salvadoran youth who are not U.S. citizens and who are in removal proceedings after having been convicted of crimes have sought to argue that they face persecution due to membership in the social group of perceived or actual gang members. Analyzing the nature and outcomes of legal advocacy in each of these instances suggests strengths and limitations of asylum as a remedy for victims of violence. This paper is based on anthropological fieldwork between 1987-2008 with Central American asylum seekers, legal advocates, and deportees.
Selected publications
2007. Nations of Emigrants: Shifting Boundaries of Citizenship in El Salvador and the United States. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
2000. Legalizing Moves: Salvadoran Immigrants' Struggle for U.S. Residency. University of Michigan Press.
1993. The Culture of Protest: Religious Activism and the U.S. Sanctuary Movement. Boulder: Westview Press.
Forthcoming. “Exiled by Law: Deportation and the Inviability of Life.” In The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement, Nathalie Peutz and Nicholas de Genova, eds., Duke University Press.
2008. “Subverting Discourses of Risk in the War on Terror.” In Risk and the War on Terror, Louise Amoore and Marieke de Goede, eds., pp. 218-232. New York: Routledge.
2006. “Cause Lawyering and Political Advocacy: Moving Law on Behalf of Central American Refugees." In Cause Lawyering and Social Movements, Austin Sarat and Stu Scheingold, eds., pp. 101-119. Stanford University Press.
2006. “Law on the Ground: Jurisdiction, Affiliation, and Transnational Law-making within Unauthorized Migration from El Salvador to the United States," Special issue on “Law Beyond Borders: Jurisdiction in an Era of Globalization," Wayne State Review 51(3):1147-1159.
w/ B. Yngvesson. 2006. "Backed by Papers: Undoing Persons, Histories, and Return." American Ethnologist 33(2):177-190.
2005. “Being en Route.” American Anthropologist 107(2):195-206.
2005. “Contesting Criminality: Illegal Immigration and the Spatialization of Legality. Theoretical Criminology 9(1):5-33.
2003. "Cultural Logics of Belonging and Movement: Transnationalism, Naturalization, and U.S. Immigration Politics." American Ethnologist 30(4):508-526.
2003. "Borderlands, Illegality and the Spaces of Non-existence." In Globalization and Governmentalities, Richard Perry and Bill Maurer, eds. University of Minnesota Press, pp. 171-202.
2003. "Suspension of Deportation Hearings: Racialization, Immigration, and 'Americanness.'" Journal of Latin American Anthropology 8(2):58-95.
2002. "Reconceptualizing Research: Ethnographic Fieldwork and Immigration Politics in Southern California." In Practicing Ethnography in Law: New Dialogues, Enduring Methods, June Starr and Mark Goodale, eds., pp. 108-127. New York: Palgrave.
2001. "Questionable Transactions as Grounds for Legalization: Immigration, Illegality and Law." Crime, Law and Social Change 37:19-36.
2001. "Cause Lawyering in the Shadow of the State: A U.S. Immigration Example." In Cause Lawyering and the State in a Global Era, Austin Sarat and Stu Scheingold, eds., pp. 117-140. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1998. "From Refugees to Immigrants: The Legalization Strategies of Salvadoran Immigrants and Activists." International Migration Review 32(4):901-925.
The taking and making of asylum claims: credibility assessments in the British asylum courts
by Professor Anthony Good, Department of Social Anthropology, School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh
When presenting their claims to officials or judges, most asylum applicants cannot produce documentary evidence of their ill-treatment, and certainly cannot call as witnesses those who have persecuted them. Asylum decisions are therefore heavily dependent upon assessments of credibility of their stories, presented to the court primarily in the form of their witnesses statements. The danger is, however, that such decisions may display prejudice or lack of understanding when the persons whose credibility is being assessed come from cultural backgrounds very different from that of the assessor, and may also be suffering from various degrees of trauma. This paper focuses on administrative and legal processes in the United Kingdom, but with the aim of raising more general questions about the assessment of credibility by officials and judges.
Selected publications
“Undoubtedly an expert”? Country experts in the UK asylum courts.’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 10: 113-33 (2004).
Worship and the Ceremonial Economy of a Royal South Indian Temple. Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press (2004).
‘Expert evidence in asylum and human rights appeals: an expert’s view.’ International Journal of Refugee Law 16: 358-80 (2004).
‘Gender-based persecution: the case of South Asian asylum applicants in the UK.’ In Navnita Chandra Behera (ed), Gender, Conflict and Migration. Delhi: Sage (2006).
‘Writing as a kind of anthropology: alternative professional genres.’ In Geert De Neve & Maya Unnithan (eds), Critical Journeys: the Making of Anthropologists. Aldershot: Ashgate Press (2006).
Anthropology and Expertise in the Asylum Courts. London: Routledge-Cavendish (November 2006).
Anthony Good & Robert Gibb (the University of Glasgow) are involved in research funded under the AHRC Migration and Diasporas program on “The Conversion of Asylum Applicants’ Narratives into Legal Discourses in the UK and France: A Comparative Study of Problems of Cultural Translation.”
