Adjudicating Refugee and Asylum Status: The Role of Witness, Expertise, and Testimony

In this book, legal, biomedical, psychosocial, and social science scholars and practitioners offer the first comparative account of the increasing dependence on expertise in the asylum and refugee status determination process. This volume presents a comprehensive study of the relevance of experts, as mediators of culture, who are called upon to corroborate, substantiate credibility, and serve as translators in the face of confusing legal standards that require proof of new forms and reasons for persecution around the globe. The authors provide insights into the evidentiary burdens on asylum seekers and the expanding role of expertise in the forms of country-conditions reports, biomedical and psychiatric evaluations, and the emerging field of forensic linguistic analysis in response to emerging forms of persecution, such as gender-based or sexuality-based persecution.

Part I. Sociocultural Inconsistency and the Contours of Expertise: 1. Reconstructing Babel: bridging cultural dissonance between asylum seekers and asylum adjudicators Bruce J. Einhorn and S. Megan Berthold; 2. Recovering the sociological identity of asylum seekers: language analysis for determining national origin in the EU Noe Mahop Kam; 3. Research and testimony in the 'rape capital of the world': experts and evidence in DRC asylum claims Galya B. Ruffer; 4. Beyond expert witnessing: interdisciplinary practice in representing rape survivors in asylum cases Miriam Marton; 5. Anthropological evidence and 'country-of-origin information' in British asylum courts Anthony Good; Part II. Practices and Technologies for Medico-Psycho Expertise: 6. Expert as aid and impediment: navigating barriers to effective asylum representation Sabrineh Ardalan; 7. Documenting torture sequelae: the Weill Cornell model for forensic evaluation, capacity building, and medical education Khatiya Chelidze, Nicole Sirotin, Margaret Fabiszak, Terri Edersheim, Alexandra Tatum, Taryn Clark, Luis Villegas, Patriss Wais Moradi and Joanne Ahola; 8. Incredible until proven credible: mental-health-expert testimony and systemic and cultural challenges for asylum applicants Hawthorne Smith, Stuart L. Lustig and David Gangsei; 9. Importing forensic biomedicine into asylum adjudication: genetic ancestry and isotope testing in the UK Richard Tutton, Christine Hauskeller and Steven Sturdy; 10. 'Health tourism' or 'atrocious barbarism'?: Contextualizing migrant agency, expertise, and humanitarian medical practice Benjamin N. Lawrance.