Latin American Asylum Seekers in the US: Expert Witnessing in the Age of Trump, Part I

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Many people associate Latin American asylum seekers with state sponsored political repression from the 1960s to 1980s. Since then the types of asylum seekers have expanded from political refugees fleeing persecution by the state to those fleeing “private” persecution by “non-state” actors such as abusive husbands, gangs and organized crime, and private security forces. While immigration lawyers and other advocates had made progress in getting courts to accept some of these forms of persecution as legitimate bases for asylum (primarily those labeled as “gender violence” towards women and LGBTI persons), others have been more difficult and recently the Trump administration has launched an attack on asylum that has set that any progress back tremendously. As academics who conduct research in Latin America, many of us have been asked to serve as expert witnesses in which we write country conditions reports that describe the types of persecution that give rise to asylum claims and the states’ “inability or unwillingness” to protect victims. This panel will provide a history of asylum law as it pertains to Latin American asylum seekers, discuss recent challenges created by the Trump administration, give ethnographic examples from cases we work on, and address issues that arise in our experiences as expert witnesses. In particular panelists will address the complex interstices between how we theorize and write about social issues that give rise to asylum claims as scholars and how we represent and testify about those same issues in country conditions reports that must address rigid legal arguments.

Sub Track

• Migration, Displacements, Diasporas

Session Organizer

• Sarah C England, Soka University of America

Chair

• Sarah C England, Soka University of America

Individual Presentations

• Writing about Gender-Based Violence in Country Conditions Reports: Feminist Critiques and Narratives of Machismo - Sarah C England, Soka University of America

• Culture, Violence and “Marriage” in the Problems of Guatemalan Women’s Asylum in the US - M. Gabriela Torres, Wheaton College

• Queering Asylum: Legal protections in U.S. asylum law for people fleeing persecution in Latin American countries because of their sexual orientation and gender identity - Kimberly A Gauderman, University of New Mexico

• Writing after (and before) the Matter of A-B: How can we avoid tropes of barbarism and civilization? - Ellen E Moodie, University of Illinois

• State-sponsored violence and its aftermath: meditations on expert witnessing - Lisa Maya Knauer, University of Massachusetts/Dartmouth