Political Asylum Deceptions

Carol Bohmer is a Visiting Scholar in the Government Department at Dartmouth College, and a Teaching Fellow at King’s College, London.  She has worked in the area of law and society, examining the way legal and social institutions interact. Her most recent book is Rejecting Refugees: Political Asylum in the 21st Century, (2007) with Amy Shuman.Amy Shuman is Professor at the Ohio State University where she is the recipient of the Distinguished Scholar and Distinguished Teaching awards. She is a Guggenheim Fellow. Her publications include Storytelling Rights: The Uses of Oral and Written Texts Among Urban Adolescents, Other People’s Stories: Entitlement Claims and the Critique of Empathy, and, with Carol Bohmer, Rejecting Refugees: Political Asylum in the 21st Century.

• Introduction.- SECTION ONE: Asylum Fraud.- Chapter 1: Asylum Fraud.- SECTION TWO: Evidence: What Counts as Evidence?.- Chapter 2: Narratives.- Chapter 3: Documentary Evidence.- Chapter 4: Science and Technology as Determinants of Credibility.- SECTION THREE: Misunderstandings and Suspicion.- Chapter 5: Your Bribery is My Networking:  Understanding the Meaning of Exchange in Asylum Claims.- Chapter 6: New forms of Evidence: Membership in a Particular Social Group.- SECTION FOUR: Victim or Perpetrator.- Chapter 7: A Case Study: from Perpetrator to Victim to Perpetrator.- Chapter 8: Victim or Perpetrator?.- Conclusion.