Adjudicating Refugee and Asylum Status: The Role of Witness, Expertise, and Testimony - Softcover

Lawrance, Benjamin N.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1107688906 ISBN 13: 9781107688902

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2016

Synopsis

In this book, legal, biomedical, psychosocial, and social science scholars and practitioners offer the first comparative account of the increasing dependence on expertise in the asylum and refugee status determination process. This volume presents a comprehensive study of the relevance of experts, as mediators of culture, who are called upon to corroborate, substantiate credibility, and serve as translators in the face of confusing legal standards that require proof of new forms and reasons for persecution around the globe. The authors provide insights into the evidentiary burdens on asylum seekers and the expanding role of expertise in the forms of country-conditions reports, biomedical and psychiatric evaluations, and the emerging field of forensic linguistic analysis in response to emerging forms of persecution, such as gender-based or sexuality-based persecution.

About this title

About the Authors

Benjamin N. Lawrance is the Hon. Barber B. Conable, Jr Endowed Chair in International Studies of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has authored eight books, most recently Amistad's Orphans (2014) and Trafficking in Slavery's Wake (2012). Lawrance is a legal consultant and has served as an expert witness for more than two hundred and fifty West African asylum claims in fifteen countries. His research is situated at the dynamic interdisciplinary intersection of history, anthropology, and sociology and is focused on international mobilities, including migration, smuggling, trafficking, forced marriage, and refugee movements.

Galya Ruffer is Director of International Studies and the founding director of the Center for Forced Migration Studies housed at the Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern University, Illinois. Her work centers on refugee rights and protection, regional understandings of the root causes of conflict and refugee crises, and the rule of law and the process of international justice, with a particular focus on the Great Lakes region of Africa. She serves on the executive committee for the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration and is a vice chair of the American Bar Association International Refugee Law Committee. Aside from her academic work, she has worked as an immigration attorney representing political asylum claimants both as a solo practitioner and as a pro bono attorney.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1107688906
• ISBN 13: 9781107688902
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280