Our research team is busy with interviews this month. We really appreciate the time, energy, and commitment of people in the asylum sector and want to extend our thanks to those who have participated in interviews with us so far, for sharing your knowledge, experiences, and ways of navigating advocacy and support in the asylum sector. Groups are operating in an austere environment for immigrants in strikingly innovative and committed ways, it’s a privilege for us to learn about this work and we look forward to passing on our findings at our asylum-network workshop, which is scheduled to take place Friday, September 23rd. Mark your calendar and stay tuned for more news on this event. If you’d like to set up a meeting to talk with us about your organization’s work, challenges, strategies, and needs, you can contact us here.
Ceri and I (Deirdre) have also been busy presenting some of our findings and insights from the project at international conferences. This week, Ceri is at a conference organized by the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM), in Kampala Uganda; she’ll blog about that experience next week. I am heading to the International Society for Political Psychology’s Annual Meeting (ISPP), in Istanbul Turkey later this week where I’ll be giving a presentation, drawing from our project, on ‘fear and freedom in liberal society’.
Among the questions the paper addresses is: what does it take for an asylum seeker to become ‘credible’?
In light of this question I cannot help but be struck by news over the past week in the sexual assault case against former IMF managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The case, brought by an immigrant hotel housekeeper, over Strauss-Kahn’s “gross abuse of power” (McGovern, New York Times, July 7th 2011, A-21) during his visit to New York in May is now on the verge of disintegrating because the character and credibility of the woman who has accused Strauss-Kahn of assaulting her has been called into question. I will leave the details of the case to mainstream media where there has been plenty of coverage, much of it problematic because of the manner in which it hastily brushes over issues of power relations between immigrant and non-immigrant, men and women, entitled and less-so, and between representatives of institutions in the global North and those in the global South.
Today, however, an op-ed piece ‘Before You Judge, Stand in Her Shoes’, in the New York Times does acknowledge these matters, and with it provides some much-needed balance in media coverage of this case. The contributor, Mike McGovern, an anthropologist at Yale University, offers a little more understanding of the despicable economic inequities—which the global North bears considerable responsibility for—as well as the political and social turmoil that many asylum seekers endure. Beyond this, McGovern highlights how “asylum claimants are often asked to perform an impossible task. They must prove they have been subject to the most crushing forms of oppression and violence — for this, bodies bearing the scars of past torture are a boon — while demonstrating their potential to become hard-working and well-adjusted citizens” (McGovern, New York Times, July 7th 2011, A-21). The circumstances that asylum seekers must navigate—demonstrating fear in their quest for freedom—highlight the problematic that ‘credibility’ presents when inequities abound.
Asylum-Network 