Political Asylum and the Politics of Suspicion

Political Asylum and the Politics of Suspicion
March 23, 2015
All Day
Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Avenue

Political Asylum and the Politics of Suspicion

Co-sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropologial Research, Disability Studies, The Mershon Center for International Security Studies, Center for Folklore Studies, and Project Narrative

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Papers will be summarized and discussed, not read. For access to the website to read the papers, contact Bridget M. Haas at bmh7@case.edu
 

Workshop Schedule

8:30am:  Welcome and breakfast
9:00am – 10:15am:  Panel 1
  • John Haviland (Title TBA: Politics of dependency)
  • Ilil Benjamin (Mixed Migration and the Humanitarian Encounter: Legal Aid for Sudanese and Eritrean Asylum Seekers in Israel)
  • Discussants: Max Spotti (Haviland’s paper), Sara McKinnon (Benjamin’s paper) 
10:30am – 11:45am:  Panel 2
  • Bridget Haas (Adjudicators, Suspicion and the Ambivalent Production of Authoritative Knowledge) 
  • Nadia El-Shaarawi (Troubling the Ethics of Asylum in the Age of Suspicion: The Iraq War and the Politics of Obligation)
  • Discussants: Rachel Lewis (Haas’ paper), Benjamin Lawrance (El-Shaarawi’s paper)
12:00pm – 1:15pm:  Panel 3
  • Rachel Lewis (“They Wanted Me to Prove That I'm a Lesbian, but They Wouldn't Tell Me How I Could": Lesbian Invisibility and Erasure in the Political Asylum Process)
  • Sara McKinnon (Suspect Will: The Necropolitics of Voice and Nation in Iranian Women's US Asylum Cases)
  • Discussants: Ilil Benjamin (Lewis’ paper), Nadia El-Shaarawi (McKinnon’s paper)
1:15pm – 2:00pm:  Lunch 
2:15pm – 3:45pm:  Panel 4
  • Amy Shuman and Carol Bohmer ("Political Asylum Narratives: Learning to Reconstruct Narratives for Contexts of Interrogation")
  • Benjamin Lawrance (“Between Vodou and Forced Marriage: African Asylum Claims, the Hermeneutics of Suspicion, and the Reception of Witchcraft in Refugee Status Determination”)
  • Discussants: Charles Watters (Shuman and Bohmer’s paper), Marco Jacquemet (Lawrance’s paper)
4:00pm – 5:45pm:  Panel 5
  • Marco Jacquemet (Asylum and the Digitization of Evidence) 
  • Max Spotti 
  • Discussants: Amy Shuman (Jacquemet’s paper), John Haviland (Spotti’s paper)
6:00pm: Dinner and discussion 
Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Disability Studies, The Mershon Center for International Security Studies, the Center for Folklore Studies, and Project Narrative.
Cartoon by Ken Pyne for The Spectator