Abstract
Asylum seekers are required to narrate past experiences to the UK Home Office, doctors, lawyers and psychologists as part of their claims for international protection. The Home Office often cites perceived inconsistencies in asylum interviews as grounds for refusal of their claims. A number of processes affect asylum seekers' abilities to narrate past experiences fully to the professionals interviewing them. The dilemmas around disclosure that asylum seekers face have received little attention to date. This work aims to explore the perspectives of UK-based medico-legal report-writing doctors, lawyers and psychologists whose work involves eliciting narratives from asylum seekers on the processes that affect asylum seekers' abilities to disclose sensitive personal information in interview settings. Eighteen professionals participated in semi-structured interviews in individual or focus group settings to discuss, from their perspectives of extensive collective professional experience, the narrative dilemmas experienced by asylum seekers with whom they have worked. Professionals identified a number of processes that made disclosure of personal information difficult for asylum seekers. These included asylum seekers' lack of trust towards the professionals conducting the interview, unclear ideas around pertinence of information for interviewers, feelings of fear, shame and guilt related to suspicions around collusions between UK and their country-of-origin's authorities, sexual trauma and, occasionally, their own involvement or collusion in crimes against others. Recommendations are made on how to improve the interview environment to encourage disclosure. These have important implications for future research and policy initiatives.
Highlights
This study revealed the unique vantage points of doctors, lawyers and psychologists with years of collective experience working with asylum seekers from different countries with different types of asylum claims, in professional relationships ranging from singular interviews to long-term therapeutic work
One of the key findings of this research is that, according to participants in this study, asylum seekers may sometimes select what information to disclose based on their perceptions of its pertinence to the particular interview or interviewer
Most participants conveyed that the time available to build a rapport with the asylum seekers they interviewed was directly related to the level of disclosure they subsequently received from the asylum seekers, owing to the development of a trusting relationship
Summary
The four main themes of processes influencing asylum seekers’ narratives that emerged from the interviews are reported here. A medico-legal report-writing doctor presented the example of an asylum seeker who had been imprisoned in a police station and jail, and refused to divulge details of her experiences in the police station A male asylum seeker who had divulged information about a rape to the doctor preparing his medico-legal report called the doctor years later to have his account of this significant event redacted He denied having ever mentioned it and wanted his statement altered, despite the doctor’s records clearly documenting his previous account of the rape. A medico-legal report-writing doctor had worked with an asylum seeker who drastically changed her narratives He thought this was because the asylum seeker’s abuser was present at the first interview, had acted as an interpreter for her and had controlled what was told to the doctor. There was a minor point of contention in the second focus group discussion with medico-legal report writing doctors regarding the balance between their roles as impartial witnesses and their urge to express their sympathy for the asylum seekers they work with
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