Legal Power, Federal Courts, and Punjabi Sikh Asylum Seekers in the United States

• In Event: South Asia and the Diaspora

Abstract

Using qualitative content analysis of federal court legal opinions and focusing on the overlooked case of Punjabi Sikh asylum seekers, this article describes two mechanisms through which federal courts mobilize legal power and expand social control capacities. The first mechanism is reifying immigration court’s interpretive control, which I capture through the federal court’s reliance on the highly deferential “substantial evidence” standard of review to emphasize immigration judges’ legal authority in making discretionary asylum determinations. I conceptualize interpretive control as courts rewriting narratives to discredit asylum seekers’ testimonies as “inconsistent” and corroborative evidence as “insufficient” to deny them asylum. The second mechanism is obscuring state violence experienced by Punjabi Sikhs, which I reveal through the federal court’s almost exclusive reliance on outdated US government-sponsored evidence to establish “internal relocation” and deny asylum. Together, these discursive strategies are mobilized by the federal courts to construct imagined realities that legitimize the otherwise illegitimate functions of immigration courts. By “studying up” the immigration regime and examining the apparatus/mechanisms that mobilize legal violence, my findings extend scholarship on legal violence, legal mobilization, and legal power, as well as uncover the growing confluence of legal and immigration regimes to perpetuate racialized social control.

Author

• Prashasti Sanjay Bhatnagar, University of California-Los Angeles