This book explores the legitimacy of political asylum applications in the US and UK through an examination of the varieties of evidence, narratives, and documentation with which they are assessed. Credibility is the central issue in determining the legitimacy of political asylum seekers, but the line between truth and lies is often elusive, partly because desperate people often have to use deception to escape persecution. The vetting process has become infused with a climate of suspicion that not only assesses the credibility of an applicant’s story and differentiates between the economic migrant and the person fleeing persecution, but also attempts to determine whether an applicant represents a future threat to the receiving country. This innovative text approaches the problem of deception from several angles, including increased demand for evidence, uses of new technologies to examine applicants’ narratives, assessments of forged documents, attempts to differentiate between victims and persecutors, and ways that cultural misunderstandings can compromise the process. Essential reading for researchers and students of Political Science, International Studies, Refugee and Migration Studies, Human Rights, Anthropology, Sociology, Law, Public Policy, and Narrative Studies.

Across the globe, migration has been met with intensifying modes of criminalization and securitization, and claims for political asylum are increasingly met with suspicion. Asylum seekers have become the focus of global debates surrounding humanitarian obligations, on the one hand, and concerns surrounding national security and border control, on the other. In Technologies of Suspicion and the Ethics of Obligation in Political Asylum, contributors provide fine-tuned analyses of political asylum systems and the adjudication of asylum claims across a range of sociocultural and geopolitical contexts. The contributors to this timely volume, drawing on a variety of theoretical perspectives, offer critical insights into the processes by which tensions between humanitarianism and security are negotiated at the local level, often with negative consequences for asylum seekers. By investigating how a politics of suspicion within asylum systems is enacted in everyday practices and interactions, the authors illustrate how asylum seekers are often produced as suspicious subjects by the very systems to which they appeal for protection. Contributors: Ilil Benjamin, Carol Bohmer, Nadia El-Shaarawi, Bridget M. Haas, John Beard Haviland, Marco Jacquemet, Benjamin N. Lawrance, Rachel Lewis, Sara McKinnon, Amy Shuman, Charles Watters

African Asylum at a Crossroads: Activism, Expert Testimony, and Refugee Rights examines the emerging trend of requests for expert opinions in asylum hearings or refugee status determinations. This is the first book to explore the role of court-based expertise in relation to African asylum cases and the first to establish a rigorous analytical framework for interpreting the effects of this new reliance on expert testimony. Over the past two decades, courts in Western countries and beyond have begun demanding expert reports tailored to the experience of the individual claimant. As courts increasingly draw upon such testimony in their deliberations, expertise in matters of asylum and refugee status is emerging as an academic area with its own standards, protocols, and guidelines. This deeply thoughtful book explores these developments and their effects on both asylum seekers and the experts whose influence may determine their fate. Contributors: Iris Berger, Carol Bohmer, John Campbell, Katherine Luongo, E. Ann McDougall, Karen Musalo, Tricia Redeker Hepner, Amy Shuman, Joanna T. Tague, Meredith Terretta, and Charlotte Walker-Said.

A Finalist for the 2019 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction "Nayeri combines her own experience with those of refugees she meets as an adult, telling their stories with tenderness and reverence.” —The New York Times Book Review "Nayeri weaves her empowering personal story with those of the ‘feared swarms’ . . . Her family’s escape from Isfahan to Oklahoma, which involved waiting in Dubai and Italy, is wildly fascinating . . . Using energetic prose, Nayeri is an excellent conduit for these heart–rending stories, eschewing judgment and employing care in threading the stories in with her own . . . This is a memoir laced with stimulus and plenty of heart at a time when the latter has grown elusive.” —Star–Tribune (Minneapolis) Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel–turned–refugee camp. Eventually she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement. In these pages, a couple fall in love over the phone, and women gather to prepare the noodles that remind them of home. A closeted queer man tries to make his case truthfully as he seeks asylum, and a translator attempts to help new arrivals present their stories to officials. Nayeri confronts notions like “the swarm,” and, on the other hand, “good” immigrants. She calls attention to the harmful way in which Western governments privilege certain dangers over others. With surprising and provocative questions, The Ungrateful Refugee challenges us to rethink how we talk about the refugee crisis. “A writer who confronts issues that are key to the refugee experience.” —Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer and The Refugees

Routledge Handbook of Counter-Narratives is a landmark volume providing students, university lecturers, and practitioners with a comprehensive and structured guide to the major topics and trends of research on counter-narratives. The concept of counter-narratives covers resistance and opposition as told and framed by individuals and social groups. Counter-narratives are stories impacting on social settings that stand opposed to (perceived) dominant and powerful master-narratives. In sum, the contributions in this handbook survey how counter-narratives unfold power to shape and change various fields. Fields investigated in this handbook are organizations and professional settings, issues of education, struggles and concepts of identity and belonging, the political field, as well as literature and ideology. The handbook is framed by a comprehensive introduction as well as a summarizing chapter providing an outlook on future research avenues. Its direct and clear appeal will support university learning and prompt both students and researchers to further investigate the arena of narrative research.

Perception and representation of newcomers and immigrants The topic of migration has become particularly contentious in national and international debates. Media have a discernable impact on overall societal attitudes towards this phenomenon. Polls show time and again that immigration is one of the most important issues occupying people’s minds. This book examines the dynamic interplay between media representations of migrants and refugees on the one hand and the governmental and societal (re)actions to these on the other. Largely focusing on Belgium and Sweden, this collection of interdisciplinary research essays attempts to unravel the determinants of people’s preferences regarding migration policy, expectations towards newcomers, and economic, humanitarian and cultural concerns about immigration’s effect on the majority population’s life. Whilst migrants and refugees remain voiceless and highly underrepresented in the legacy media, this volume allows their voices to be heard. Contributors: Leen d’Haenens (KU Leuven), Willem Joris (KU Leuven), Paul Puschmann (KU Leuven/Radboud University Nijmegen), Ebba Sundin (Halmstad University), David De Coninck (KU Leuven), Rozane De Cock (KU Leuven), Valériane Mistiaen (Université libre de Bruxelles), Lutgard Lams (KU Leuven), Stefan Mertens (KU Leuven), Olivier Standaert (UC Louvain), Hanne Vandenberghe (KU Leuven), Koen Matthijs (KU Leuven), Kevin Smets (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Jacinthe Mazzocchetti (UC Louvain), Lorraine Gerstmans (UC Louvain), Lien Mostmans (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), and François Heinderyckx (Université libre de Bruxelles) Ebook available in Open Access. This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content). With thanks to the funding provided by Belspo (Belgian Science Policy Office), as part of the framework programme BRAIN-be (Belgian Research Action Through Interdisciplinary Networks), contract nr BR/165/A4/IM2MEDIATE.

The status of the refugee in international law, and of everyone entitled to protection, has ever been precarious, not least in times of heightened and heated debate: people have always moved in search of safety, and they always will. In this completely revised and updated edition, the authors cast new light on the refugee definition, the meaning of persecution, including with regard to gender and sexual orientation, and the protection due to refugees and those affected by statelessness or disasters. They review the fundamental principle of non-refoulement as a restraint on the conduct of States, even as States themselves seek new ways to prevent the arrival of those in search of refuge. Related principles of protection—non-discrimination, due process, rescue at sea, and solutions— are analysed in light of the actual practice of States, UNHCR, and treaty-monitoring bodies. The authors closely examine relevant international standards, and the role of UNHCR, States, and civil society, in providing protection, contributing to the development of international refugee law, and promoting solutions. New chapters focus on the evolving rules on nationality, statelessness, and displacement due to disasters and climate change. This expanded edition factors in the challenges posed by the movement of people across land and sea in search of refuge, and their interception, reception, and later treatment. The overall aim remains the same as in previous editions: to provide a sound basis for protection in international law, taking full account of State and community interests and recognizing the need to bridge gaps in the regime which now has 100 years of law and practice behind it.