Anthropology and Expertise in the Asylum Courts [Paperback]

Although asylum has generated unparalleled levels of public and political concern over the past decade, there has been astonishingly little field research on the topic. This is a study of the legal process of claiming asylum from an anthropological perspective, focusing on the role of expert evidence from 'country experts' such as anthropologists. It describes how such evidence is used in assessments of asylum claims by the Home Office and by adjudicators and tribunals hearing asylum appeals. It compares uses of social scientific and medical evidence in legal decision-making and analyzes, anthropologically, the legal uses of key concepts from the 1951 Refugee Convention, such as 'race', 'religion', and 'social group'. The evidence is drawn from field observation of more than 300 appeal hearings in London and Glasgow; from reported case law and from interviews with immigration adjudicators, tribunal chairs, barristers and solicitors, as well as expert witnesses.

Prologue.  Tales of Persecution.  Asylum as a Social and Political Problem.  Anthropologists and Lawyers.  Studying Asylum.  Convention Refugees: An Anthropological Approach.  Claiming Asylum.  Expert Evidence.  Assessing Credibility.  Weighing the Evidence.  Reaching Decisions.  Risk, Authority and Expertise.  

Offering an analysis of asylum processes in UK courts, this study of asylum as an aspect of globalization focuses on the role of anthropologists as expert witnesses and compares the use of social, scientific and medical evidence in decision-making.

An empirically rich and thoroughly argued call for anthropological modesty in its engagement with law, but at the same time also shows the value of a distinctly ethnographic contribution to the study of legal processes.
Dr Tobias Kelly ,Senior Lecturer,Organisation Social Anthropology, Sl[