Abstract
From January 2018 until late July of the same year, I had an opportunity to participate in the Human Rights and Migration Law Clinic (hereafter HRMLC or ’the Clinic’) in Torino, where I got a chance to experience working with the asylum seekers, interviewing them, writing their Legal Memo as well as preparing them for the hearing in front of the Territorial Commission (Italian First Board Commissions). An important aspect of the Clinic in question is the fact that it is conducted in cooperation with the Department of Anthropology and it involves anthropology students in the work with the asylum seekers. From the very beginning, it was apparent to me why they have opted for the involvement of anthropologists. I was surprised to see how much anthropological training in recognizing and being aware of Eurocentric (or any other kind of) presuppositions can be useful in recognizing and understanding cultural misunderstandings that happen on a daily basis in the asylum claiming process, as it is now in Italy. Even so, the idea for this paper became clear to me only when I attended the first meeting anthropology students had with their supervisor, Professor Beneduce. The feedback students gave to their professor and in turn, his observations made me inspired to write the paper that is before you.
Highlights
Clinical education is potentially of equal value for both students of social sciences as well as for students of law
Starting from there, my own experience, as well as the reflections anthropology students had regarding their involvement with the Clinic will be used to argue that the field of asylum represents a potentially fruitful field for collaboration between law and anthropology, while the self-professed experience of the students will be understood as an indicator of the main issues that would arise as a consequence of potential implementation of anthropology in the asylum system as it exists today in Italy
The Human Rights and Migration Law Clinic was established in 2011 through collaboration between Ulrich Stege and Maurizio Veglio, as the first legal clinic in Piedmont region and one of the first law clinics in Italy; It is closely connected to the masters program at the International University College of Turin and mainly financed through funding dedicated to this institution (Stege and Veglio 2018, 1)
Summary
The Human Rights and Migration Law Clinic was established in 2011 through collaboration between Ulrich Stege and Maurizio Veglio, as the first legal clinic in Piedmont region and one of the first law clinics in Italy; It is closely connected to the masters program at the International University College of Turin and mainly financed through funding dedicated to this institution (Stege and Veglio 2018, 1). Besides the IUC, it is conducted with the cooperation and support of Departments of Law of the Universities of Turin and Eastern Piedmont, with the participation of students from all three faculties. It is that the Clinic was conceived as a response to two separate needs: one of students to “experience gaps between the law in the books and its implementation in practice, especially in the context of human rights and migration law practice” and the one that existed in the broader social context, where an increasing number of asylum seekers was in need of legal assistance with the support of the governmental institutions being insufficient (Stege and Veglio 2018, 2-6) It was in 2015 that HRMLC established a collaboration with Turin University’s Department of Anthropology when students from this discipline became involved in the work of the Clinic, with the main role of “supporting clinical students in interviewing asylum seekers and researching relevant Country of Origin Information” (Stege and Veglio 2018, 11).
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