In recent years, the world has witnessed the horrors of bodies washing ashore along Mediterranean coasts and human traffickers’ attempts to sell slaves in Libya and Mauritania, recoiling at images of capsized boats once overloaded with migrants from Africa and the Middle East who were desperate to reach safety. As countries in the Global North/“West” grapple with how best to deal with refugees seeking succor at their borders, the influx of African political and environmental refugees continues to grow. The desperation and exploitation of African and Middle Eastern refugees fleeing civil war, environmental calamity, and abject poverty is undoubtedly the most profound international humanitarian crisis of the early twenty-first century. The journey to safety, however, is also fraught with legal and institutional challenges for refugees who seek asylum in new countries.
African Asylum at a Crossroads examines the complex legal, ethical, and situational realities that scholars face when they are called upon to serve as “experts” in African asylum cases. The burgeoning pressure (read: responsibility) upon scholars to serve as “experts” in legal proceedings is fraught with ethical, legal, and reputational dilemmas. In addition to the testimonies of human rights advocates, medical volunteers, and empathic members of aid groups, academic “experts” are increasingly viewed as vital contributors to the legal proceedings that adjudicate and determine the veracity of asylum seekers’ testimonies.
Each of the ten chapters in this book is richly detailed and offers historical, anecdotal, and experiential observations that, in sum, collectively demonstrate how the legal maneuvers and procedures for adjudicating Africans’ asylum claims vary considerably from case to case and from country to country. Given the myriad challenges of determining the authenticity of an asylum seeker’s story, the diverse chapters proffer examples strongly suggesting that immigration lawyers, judges, witnesses, asylum seekers, human rights activists, and scholars (who have yet to be called upon as “experts”) have much to learn about the vagaries of the asylum process. As the number of asylum petitions and cases grows around the world, especially in countries of the Global North/“West,” the book contends that Africanists will likely face a growing demand to provide “expert” testimony on behalf of individuals or groups whose lives have been torn apart by dire circumstances in their countries of origin.
Structurally, it was a prudent editorial decision to allow the ten chapters to stand on their own as distinct contributions to this multidisciplinary compendium. However, the book does lack a chronological coherence, with the exception of Chapter One, by Joanna T. Tague, who examines the impact of Mozambican refugees in Tanzania during the early 1960s, before asylum and refugee protocols were firmly established in that country. The nine remaining chapters, four of which are individual contributions from the other editors, highlight the particular research interests and expertise of the authors. In Chapter Two, Meredith Terretta emphasizes how “fraudulent” asylum claims still have an inherent value, because economic bases for asylum claims are, in fact, overtly political claims and should be interpreted as such. Chapter Three, by Karen Musalo, stresses how the shifting political contexts and legal definitions for “refugees” are evolving in the United States and how this complicates asylum protocols and the use of “experts.” Moving from the United States to the United Kingdom, Chapter Four by John Campbell raises the issue of how disparate asylum verdicts, based on similar evidence and circumstances for asylum seekers, problematizes efforts toward objective impartial consistency in U.K. courts. In Chapter Five, E. Ann McDougall addresses problems with metanarratives in shaping court decisions. McDougall’s case study focuses on Mauritania, a country that has frequently received international condemnation for doing little to stamp out slavery. Such metanarratives have a tendency to obfuscate other circumstances and justifications for seeking asylum and may impact an “expert’s” objective influence on verdicts. The sixth chapter, by Carol Bohmer and Amy Shuman, emphasizes how a priori knowledge informs the assumptions of immigration officers about certain African countries. This fact, coupled with missing/incomplete documentary evidence (such as travel documents or identification), often complicates the veracity of asylum claims.
The last few chapters pivot toward analyses of how African cultures and identities potentially impact asylum cases. In Chapter Seven, Iris Berger stresses how difficulties can arise from certain African cultural practices, such as FGM, which can lead to debates between “legal scholars and anthropologists” (177). This tension, in turn, potentially recasts the scholar/“expert” into the role of an activist who has “instinctive sympathy” for the asylum seeker (178). Continuing on the theme of African cultural practices, Chapter Eight, by Katherine Luongo, stresses that some asylum seekers seek to evade accusations or punishments associated with witchcraft. Luongo emphasizes how legal traditions and cultural values in non-Western countries are often incapable of comprehending the significance of such accusations and, therefore, find it difficult to determine the veracity of the testimonies. In Chapter Nine, Charlotte Walker-Said highlights the challenges faced by African LGBTQ and other sexual minorities’ asylum claims in the United States, where heteronormative attitudes and discriminatory practices against sexual minorities are ubiquitous. Therefore, the sexual and gender identities of African asylum seekers in the United States are yet another potential obstacle to the fair adjudication of an asylum claim. In Chapter Ten, Tricia Redeker Hepner offers an important caveat about how the role of the scholar/“expert”/activist in legal proceedings can also increase the likelihood of negative consequences and unsuccessful outcomes for African asylum seekers. By virtue of their education and expertise, scholars must be prepared to consider how their knowledge and subjectivities may also contribute to unintended consequences for the asylum seeker(s) and the legal systems that seek impartial validation of a refugee’s claims. The Afterword, by Fallou Ngom, also serves to remind scholars/“experts” about how language, cultural, and translational challenges (including body language) in immigration courts can skew verdicts one way or the other.
Since the book stands out as a richly-detailed and diverse collection of “expert” experiences and analysis, it is also important to note that an “archive” of testimonials and verdicts now exists for scholarly research and legal consultation on this burgeoning topic. Students and scholars interested in international law, human rights, migration, anthropology, and African history will find this book a particularly important resource. Additionally, this book offers a template of consultation for scholars who, by virtue of their education, occupy a distinct authoritative voice and elevated influence over the outcomes of asylum cases. At times, however, the unique perspective of each chapter makes the book feel a bit disjointed, leaving it up the reader to determine the unifying threads between them. This is not a negative criticism per se, since each chapter is well-written and informative but, rather, an understandable consequence of assembling a diverse range of scholars who, as experts in their respective fields, focus on topics that are of particular scholarly interest to them. The Africanist scholars who contributed to this book hail from different academic disciplines but together illustrate how cultures, history, and gender dynamics inform asylum seekers’ claims.
