Representing Trauma: Political Asylum Narrative

Shuman, Amy; Bohmer, Carol

doi:10.1353/jaf.2004.0100

Cited by 113 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…The sample offers the ability to seek detailed information from diverse individuals. There is limited research that qualitatively explores asylum seekers' experiences (Einolf, 2001;Shuman & Bohmer, 2004;Ranger, 2005;Mountz et al, 2002;Harris, 2003). In this study, asylum seekers are defined as individuals currently involved in the asylum process, specifically having filed their application and participated in the interview.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The overwhelming issue is that international policy and its enforcers neglect to acknowledge the coerced conditions that refugees and asylum seekers' experience, and the difficulties they encounter as they exercise agency from a coerced, traumatized, and liminal space (Kissoon, 2010;Shuman & Bohmer, 2004;Einolf, 2001;Rider, 2013).…”

Section: The Asylum Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The migration-asylum process involves continuous risk: trauma is associated with persecution; the migration process involves unfamiliarity and insecurity; adapting to the host society is challenging; and for the focus of this article, the asylum process and the outcome is uncertain (De Jongh, 1994;Ahearn & Noble, 2004;Kanter, 2008;Boersma, 2003;Einolf, 2001;Schuster, 2011;Rider, 2013;Bohmer & Shuman, 2004). The juxtaposition of persecution in the country of origin as traumatic and the asylum system in the host society to serve a resolution as a safe haven depicts the asylum system in a positive way that may not be reflected by asylum seekers themselves.…”

Section: Structure and Agency In The Process Of Establishing Traumamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The basis of denied claims may not result from a weak or fraudulent case, but from the inability of an asylum seeker to have the agency and means to develop a sound case (Rider, 2013;Shuman & Bohmer, 2004). Since agents and the public are not involved in the practical steps of the asylum process, they may be limited in their ability to empathize with the struggles of asylum seekers.…”

Section: Structure and Agency In The Process Of Establishing Traumamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even in cases in which evidence exists and resources are accessible, individuals are likely to deal with various barriers that contribute to distress and vulnerability (Rider, 2013). The individual responsibility ideology serves as a basis for the asylum process with regard to the expectation that individuals will be motivated and able to take part in the process by demonstrating their qualifications for asylee status (Shuman & Bohmer, 2004).…”

Section: Insecurity and Trauma: The Asylum Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Asylum Seekers’ Credibility Burden: Managing Trauma in the Asylum Process without Collective Support

Rider

2014

JSSW

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In cases of asylum, individual asylum seekers experience victimization and discrimination on the basis of a social identity, however, the process of seeking government protection from a host society is an individualized course of action. The U.S. asylum system provides the legal means for asylum seekers to apply for permanent residency status based on their ability to document valid claims of persecution. Qualitative interviews with individuals applying for asylum (n=14) reveal an underlying uncertainty based on themes of fear in sharing their story, fear of denial, and consideration of alternative plans while awaiting the asylum decision. This paper focuses on referencing the first hand accounts of asylum seekers in order to critically examine the trauma associated with the U.S. asylum system. The research asserts that the individualized process of asylum and the public perception that valid claims would be endorsed fails to acknowledge the asylum system as a source of detrimental barriers and trauma itself. And since asylum seekers participate in this process individually, the inability of adopting a cultural trauma frame serves to maintain the asylum system's status quo and direct burden on the asylum seeker for the outcome of his or her case.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Asylum Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Structure and Agency In The Process Of Establishing Traumamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Structure and Agency In The Process Of Establishing Traumamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Insecurity and Trauma: The Asylum Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

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Asylum Seekers’ Credibility Burden: Managing Trauma in the Asylum Process without Collective Support

Rider

2014

JSSW

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Getting in Line with the Office

Affolter

2020

Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies

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This chapter explores how asylum caseworkers are socialised on the job and thereby acquire an institutional habitus. Decision-makers are disciplined, incentivised, compelled, but also “ideationally conditioned” (Gill in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34 (2): 215–233, 2009) to think, act and feel in certain ways. The chapter argues that how organisational socialisation works can only be understood by taking three factors into account: what belonging to the office and to different “communities of interpretation” (Affolter, Miaz, and Poertner in Asylum Determination in Europe: Ethnographic Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, pp. 263–284, 2019; Wenger in Knowing in Organizations: A Practice-Based Approach. M.E. Sharp, Armonk, pp. 76–99, 2003) within the office means; how decision-makers acquire, and are taught, the necessary Dienstwissen (Weber in Economy and Society. University of California Press, Berkeley, 2013 [1978]) for carrying out their tasks; and the accountability decision-makers feel towards other actors: peers and superiors, but also politicians, the media and “the public”. Together these aspects of organisational socialisation shape what decision-makers come to perceive as “normal” and “appropriate” practices. Through becoming members of the office, they develop a “socialised subjectivity” (Bourdieu and Wacquant in An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Polity Press, Cambridge, pp. 61–215, 1992) which, in turn, shapes their everyday decision-making practices.

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Gendered Asylum in the Black Mediterranean: Two Nigerian Women’s Experiences of Reception in Italy

Paynter

2023

IMISCOE Research Series

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Women comprise less than 15% of people crossing the Central Mediterranean, yet their representation in or erasure from accounts of precarious migration influences public notions of migrant deservingness in critical ways. This chapter recognizes European border spectacle as both racialized and gendered and posits the post-arrival reception period as a key site of negotiation of notions of deservingness. Drawing on ethnographic research I conducted in Italian reception centers, I discuss how these dynamics are especially salient in the case of Nigerian women who confront widespread associations of their presence in Italy with sex trafficking. In oral history interviews with two Nigerian women, interviewees described how they navigate “invisible obstacles” during reception: their awareness of others’ assumptions about them affected how they positioned themselves in relation to others, and where they spent time. Situating this discussion within the Black Mediterranean framework, I show how these circumstances are not new aspects of migration “crises” but in fact recall colonial notions of foreignness and blackness. My discussion advocates for an intersectional approach to the study of Mediterranean migration that engages migrant reception as a racialized, gendered set of processes, as well as, for migrants, a period of active, rather than passive, waiting.

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Representing Trauma: Political Asylum Narrative

Cited by 113 publications

References 30 publications

Asylum Seekers’ Credibility Burden: Managing Trauma in the Asylum Process without Collective Support

Asylum Seekers’ Credibility Burden: Managing Trauma in the Asylum Process without Collective Support

Getting in Line with the Office

Gendered Asylum in the Black Mediterranean: Two Nigerian Women’s Experiences of Reception in Italy

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