Although one might think that refugees’ struggles are over after managing to escape war or persecution, they still face immense challenges upon arrival in a country of refuge. One of the most immediate and crucial obstacles that asylum seekers must overcome is that of obtaining legal refugee status and the benefits associated with it. For host states, accepting asylum seekers as legalized residents is often seen as a burden and/or a threat. To avoid having to contend with these challenges, states limit the chances of obtaining refugee status through adopting policies that make it increasingly difficult for asylum seekers to be recognized as legitimate refugees. These policies include offshore detention in miserable conditions, scrutinizing refugee stories for particular narratives, and demanding evidence of trauma. State policies aimed at reducing the number of refugees in a country force asylum seekers to endure unreasonable circumstances and prove the legitimacy of their claims through using a system designed to keep them out.
When asylum seekers are granted refugee status, the government of their country of refuge is expected to assume responsibility for their rights. For many refugees, being able to realize their rights and live in a safe environment with opportunities for education and employment is the main priority. In order to reach this goal, political inclusion as a legalized resident is a necessity. According to Lucy Hovil’s “Local Integration”, becoming a recognized refugee “represents, at least in theory, the gateway to rights as citizens of that state.”(2) For asylum seekers, obtaining the legal status of refugee means being able to lead safe lives in a new country that protects their rights. However, governments prefer that asylum seekers to not obtain refugee status in order to avoid having to ensure these rights and go to great lengths to limit access to refugee status. In Katy Long’s “Rethinking ‘Durable’ Solutions”, she explains that governments tend to see refugees as foreigners in their territory that present a risk to political and social order because they compete with locals for resources. She explains that host states consider refugees a “physical problem” that can only be solved through preventing refugees from residing in the state. In addition to speaking of refugees as an economic burden, governments also frequently discuss them as a threat to national security to justify exclusionary policies. In order to avoid using limited economic resources or risking a perceived security threat to protect the rights of those considered outsiders, governments develop policies that prevent asylum seekers from accessing a legalized status in the country.
The state of Australia’s strategy to limit the number of refugees allowed in the country has been one of deterrence. The government’s priority is to discourage irregular entry from asylum seekers, who are often unable to enter with a visa. A 2013 Australian law forbids anyone from seeking asylum in Australia if they arrive on a boat. Instead, those arriving by boat are either forced to turn back to their point of origin by the Australian military or detained in an offshore center while their cases are being processed, which often take years. Publicly, the Australian government justifies this stance by arguing that this policy deters people-smuggling, therefore protecting those who might otherwise chose the dangerous boat journey to Australian shores. However, the validity of this claim has been questioned. In its “Island of Despair: Australia’s “Processing” of Refugees on Nauru” report, Amnesty International criticizes this policy, arguing that “Although no one should be forced to risk their lives in perilous boat journeys, it is impossible – and indeed unlawful – to block them from doing so. People have the right to leave any country, including their own, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines the right to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution.” Even if this policy is meant to protect asylum seekers from a dangerous journey as it claims to be, it has the effect of limiting the agency of those seeking refuge while simultaneously preventing asylum seekers from pursuing their right to asylum in Australia.
Furthermore, deterrence through detention means grossly mistreating asylum seekers as a message to potential asylum seekers not to come, therefore reducing applicants. Amnesty International argues that Australia’s attempt to justify the conditions in the offshore system in the name of reducing migration numbers or even saving lives is “untenable”, stating that “No state can justify subjecting some people to cruelty and abuse to prevent loss of life, never mind to reduce migration numbers.” Amnesty argues that Australia deliberately created an abusive system that has led to the death, mental anguish, and murder of thousands in order to deter future asylum seekers from arriving. This policy of intentionally fostering mental anguish to intimidate and coerce asylum seekers to act in the interest of the government was labeled torture by Amnesty International. In this case, Australia is so intent on limiting the number of refugees in its territory that it is deliberately torturing already vulnerable people to reach this end. As one service provider in a detention center put it, “Nauru is built to fail these people: how much can we break them so that they go back, and no boats will ever come again?”
In the United States, it is the scrutiny of asylum seekers’ stories rather than prevention of arrival that limits the number of people with refugee status in the country. Interviews are intense, with applicants being forced to provide extensive information about their case, such as graphic details about rape and the number of times they were beaten as asylum officers search for inconsistencies in the stories. However, viewing inconsistencies as evidence of dishonestly is problematic, especially in the case of asylum seekers. In a study on refugee minors in the Netherlands, Philip Spinhoven, Tammy Bean, and Liesbeth Eurelings-Bontekoe found that the stories of these refugee children generally changed throughout the year-long study. Spinhoven et al notes that discrepancies when reporting emotionally charged events are common and says that “Accuracy and consistency of memory refer to different concepts and should not be used interchangeably.” Because refugees flee emotionally traumatic events, discrepancies in their reports are to be expected. However, these changes do not necessarily mean that they are intentionally misleading interviewers.
Struggling to remember emotionally charged events in order to be deemed credible is just one of many challenges that asylum seekers face when telling their stories. In Suketu Mehta’s “The Asylum Seeker” article, he discusses the difficulty that asylum seekers face when attempting to tell their stories to officers granting asylum status. In particular, since the number of applicants granted refugee status are so few, those seeking asylum are forced to contend with how their stories compare to those of others. Mehta states that, “Inevitably, these atrocity stories are inflated, as new applicants for asylum get more inventive about what was done to them, competing with the lore that has already been established, with applicants whose stories, both real and fake, are so much more dramatic, whose plight is so much more perilous, than theirs.” Although others’ stories might be more dramatic and perilous, that does not mean that asylum seekers with less urgent stories are not facing real threats. Immigration experts claim that the majority of those seeking asylum in the United States would be at serious risk if they were forced to return to their countries of origin. Furthermore, even those who lie about their stories are not necessarily “fake” refugees. It is generally believed that being arrested in a country of origin is not a compelling enough story to be granted asylum, so applicants exaggerate their stories by adding stories of torture, rape, and beatings. An asylum seeker that Mehta speaks with, Caroline, tells him that her house has been ransacked and her siblings attacked by government soldiers and that she herself has been randomly stopped by soldiers. However, she felt compelled to tell a story of rape in her asylum interview since she thought that was what the asylum officer expected to hear. In an environment where asylum status is so sparingly granted, real stories of threats and persecution are often not enough to be deemed legitimate refugees.
As in the United States, numbers of those obtaining asylum in Greece are kept low by an intensive regime of demanding specific stories. In his book On the Doorstep of Europe: Asylum and Citizenship in Greece, Heath Cabot notes that those determining refugee status assume that applicants might not have documentation, so the most important factor in their cases is their story. The scrutiny of these stories is considered justifiable because it is thought to find the “real refugees”. Cabot notes that applicants deemed credible are those are “able or willing to meet decision makers’ expectations regarding how they should behave and the story they should tell.” There are many factors in storytelling that have the potential to render applicants ineligible. Performance is important and stories can suffer from being overly dramatic, under-dramatic or seemingly poorly rehearsed. One successful applicant said that perhaps being a “good actor” helped his case. Through his self-presentation as a “simple old man wanting to live in peace”, this applicant was able to secure himself refugee status by appealing to the sympathy of the person judging his case. In addition to performance, story content places a critical role in being deemed (il)legitimate. If a story is too similar to other stories, it is considered suspect. However, if it has no common link to any other stories presented, it is also considered unbelievable. Cabot highlights the catch-22 of situation, noting that “The non-real lies in part in the appearance of reproducible, hollow, fake similitude, on the one hand, and extraordinary, but fantastical, individuality, on the other.” The tendency to judge stories untrue for a variety of minute details in their presentation and content creates a policy that deems a great number of applicants ineligible for refugee status.
In addition to storytelling, demanding proof of trauma as evidence in asylum cases has grown prominent in France. This stems from the idea that refugees’ words themselves are not trustworthy enough to merit asylum status. Instead, they must provide the testimony of a professional in order to verify claims of trauma by discussing scars on the body as well as lingering effects on the conscience. Anthropologist Didier Fassin links the increasing demand for various forms of evidence to a decline in the perceived legitimacy of asylum and general suspicion towards those seeking asylum. He discusses the drop in the percentage of cases approved for asylum in recent years which is associated with a rise in asylum applications. In 1974, 90% of the 2,000 applicants who petitioned for asylum in France were approved. These numbers dropped to 28% of the 61,000 applicants in 1989 and to a mere 17% of applicants in 2004. As demand for asylum increased, cases were greeted with more suspicion and asylum seekers were expected to provide more and more evidence to support their claims, therefore maintaining a low number of individuals with refugee status in the country. Rather than believing the stories of the increasingly numerous asylum seekers, which would likely lead to the acceptance of many applicants whose rights France would then be obligated to protect, a demand for evidence of trauma to legitimize each case emerged to limit the number of accepted applicants.
However, the practice of using trauma as evidence in an asylum case is highly problematic. Physical signs of torture fade away over time and there are methods of torture that do not leave any physical traces on the body, making them difficult to prove physically. For this reason, evidence of the psychological rather than physical evidence of trauma is increasingly sought out by those making decisions about asylum status. That being said, this type of proof also presents challenges. Trauma is not a consistent means of evidence since psychological consequences of traumatic events affect different people in different ways. In addition to navigating inconsistencies in experiencing trauma, asylum seekers are pressured into going to great lengths to obtain proof of this trauma. Fassin laments that people who have been through “unspeakable ordeals” are forced to seek certificates that substitute their own words with those of professionals who did not witness or experience the traumatic event of the applicant. Although these certificates are specifically requested by decision makers in many cases, there is little evidence that these certificates actually improve an applicant’s chance of approval. In fact, a study conducted on the outcomes of cases that provided an expert’s report as evidence found no statistical correlation between providing said report and being granted asylum, even in cases of applicants with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Moreover, this evidence should not even be necessary in presenting a case since the definition of a refugee is based on a justified fear of persecution, not evidence of past trauma. The pressure to go to great lengths to provide such a certificate despite its dubious influence on a case is yet another method through which a government can reduce the number of refugees in its country.
The process of seeking asylum is highly nuanced in an environment in which the presence of refugees in a host country is seen as undesirable. While refugees themselves tend to seek the political inclusion that asylum status provides in order to build safe and dignified lives, governments often view refugees as new residents competing with local citizens for limited resources or even as security threats. For this reason, obtaining asylum status is limited in various ways. While the Australian government prevents asylum seekers from even reaching Australian territory in which they could petition asylum and intentionally creates inhumane conditions in order to deter asylum seekers from undertaking the process, American and European governments allow applicants to make their case, but are likely to reject applicants on various grounds. Inconsistencies, overdramatic stories, unemotional storytelling, narratives that are too common, and narratives that are too unusual all have the potential to prompt rejection. Additionally, applicants in some countries are expected to go to great lengths to prove their trauma despite the fact that this evidence does not seem to improve their chances at obtaining asylum and despite the fact that fear of persecution in addition to evidence of persecution should be taken into account in making decisions. Whether deliberately framed as methods to prevent asylum seekers from obtaining refugee status or not, these policies have the effect of blocking many applicants from being accepted as legitimate refugees. The resulting denial of refugee status prevents many persecuted individuals from accessing opportunities to build secure and dignified lives.
Bibliography:
