The Location of Truth: Bodies and Voices in the Italian Asylum Procedure

Abstract

AbstractThis article analyzes the role increasingly played by oral testimony in asylum procedures in the years 2011–2013, when the “Arab spring” and the war on Libya caused a sudden increase in the number of migrants entering Italy, as well as a peak in rejections. Drawing from ethnographic cases, I suggest that in Italy this shift was based on assumptions about the scientific objectivity and neutrality of interviewing and translation techniques. I argue that such assumptions fall apart under scrutiny by revealing all assessment techniques (both of written evidence and oral testimony) as spaces of contestation. Furthermore, I suggest that they conceal the sharp hardening of European asylum politics under supposedly neutral technicalities. At times of a perceived “refugee crisis,” the mere assessment of the oral narrative allowed for easier and speedier rejections.