Walker-Said, ‘Sexual Minorities among African Asylum Claimants’, 2015

Charlotte Walker-Said, ‘Sexual Minorities among African Asylum Claimants: Human Rights Regimes, Bureaucratic Knowledge, and the Era of Sexual Rights Diplomacy’, in Iris Berger, Tricia Redeker Hepner, Benjamin N. Lawrance, Joanna T. Tague, and Meredith Terretta (eds.), African Asylum at a Crossroads: Activism, Expert Testimony, and Refugee Rights, Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2015

Abstract

CURRENT AMERICAN ASYLUM law has antecedents in the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (the Geneva convention), which contains the principle of nonrefoulement that obligates signatories not to forcibly return refugees and asylum seekers to countries of origin if doing so would pose a clear danger to their lives and freedom. Working with attorneys and immigration experts, I have utilized the US immigration laws of asylum and the protection process of “withholding of removal,” as well as the UN Convention against Torture, to secure asylum for what I will call sexual minorities. In this chapter, the term…

Abstract of book

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.

Table of Contents of Book (https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1rfsp0z)
Foreword.
Penelope Andrews
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction. Law, Expertise, and Protean Ideas about African Migrants
Benjamin N. Lawrance, Iris Berger, Tricia Redeker Hepner, Joanna T. Tague, and Meredith Terretta
1. Before Asylum and the Expert Witness
Mozambican Refugee Settlement and Rural Development in Southern Tanzania, 1964–75
Joanna T. Tague
2. Fraudulent Asylum Seeking as Transnational Mobilization
The Case of Cameroon
Meredith Terretta
3. The Evolving Refugee Definition
How Shifting Elements of Eligibility Affect the Nature and Focus of Expert Testimony in Asylum Proceedings
Karen Musalo
4. Expert Evidence in British Asylum Courts
The Judicial Assessment of Evidence on Ethnic Discrimination and Statelessness in Ethiopia
John Campbell
5. “The Immigration People Know the Stories. There’s One for Each Country”
The Case of Mauritania
E . Ann McDougall
6. Cultural Silences as an Excuse for Injustice
The Problems of Documentary Proof
Carol Bohmer and Amy Shuman
7. Between Advocacy and Deception
Crafting an African Asylum Narrative
Iris Berger
8. Allegations, Evidence, and Evaluation
Asylum Seeking in a World of Witchcraft
Katherine Luongo
9. Sexual Minorities among African Asylum Claimants
Human Rights Regimes, Bureaucratic Knowledge, and the Era of Sexual Rights Diplomacy
Charlotte Walker-Said
10. The “Asylum-Advocacy Nexus” in Anthropological Perspective
Agency, Activism, and the Construction of Eritrean Political Identities
Tricia Redeker Hepner
Afterword
Fallou Ngom
About the Authors
Index