The “Inner Belief” of French Asylum Judges

Abstract

The judges of the French Court of Asylum, in charge of examining the cases of asylum seekers rejected by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons, affirm that there are very few technical legal aspects involved in asylum proceedings. They argue that the case law is not consistent and that the domestic law provides a vague definition of who is a refugee. Aside from these legal points, judges examine the “sincerity” of the applicant’s narrative as well as his or her attitude during the hearing. Judges agree to say that the rulings ultimately rely on their intime conviction (inner belief). Drawing on ethnographic data, the chapter explores the emotions and moral values involved in the construction of this inner belief.

“What Is Truth?” Negotiating Christian Convert Asylum Seekers’ Credibility

“…Many factors may influence judges' decision-making, such as culture, socialization, race, attitudes, cognition, emotion, or policy preferences (epstein and Knight 1998;Herlihy and Turner 2013;Maroney 2013). While much of the refugee studies literature consequently laments a certain level of arbitrariness regarding judges' decisions (e.g., Gill and Good 2019;Kobelinsky 2014Kobelinsky , 2015Kobelinsky , 2019, others have found that judges are also constrained by systemic and political pressures (Büchsel 2020). In what follows, it is important to take into account the tension between both judges' discretion in evaluating evidence and the systemic pressures under which they arrive at their decisions.…”

Constructions of ‘the ageless’ asylum seekers: An analysis of how age is understood among professionals working within the norwegian immigration authorities

“…The symbolic meaning of a small body can lead to protective measures as young people may be positioned differently in the moral order, where physical immaturity induces sentiments and protectionism (Ursin, 2016). This also reveals how professionals’ perceptions of the body can be more decisive in assessments than the applicants’ statements (Kobelinsky, 2019).…”

Bodies and persons: The politics of embodied encounters in asylum seeking

“…When evaluated, their first-hand accounts of vulnerability are by default considered subjective in the sense of being susceptible to selfseeking bias (e.g. Kobelinsky, 2019;Wettergren and Wikström, 2014). Even when given value as evidence, asylum seekers' accounts are firmly bound with the remembering and witnessing lived body that comes to disclose the reasons for their persecution as directly experienced, then and there.…”

“…For the representatives of asylum institutions, it is decisive to be able to define the nature of their own and refugees' knowledge to fit the expectations of the asylum assessment and decision making. To this end, institutional knowledge is deemed objective and thus disembodied from context, while the refugees' knowledge is seen as subjective, embodied and based on their firsthand experiences only (Jensen, 2018;Kobelinsky, 2019;Kynsilehto and Puumala, 2015;Puumala and Kynsilehto, 2016). In this sense refugees' own speech may end up being the least convincing form of knowledge, always potentially corrupted by the endeavor to be recognized as a refugee (Fassin and d'Halluin, 2005;McGhee, 2000;Häkli et al, 2017).…”