‘When they’re lying, and they say you’re lying, then there’s no hope’: Asylum-seeking, trauma, and the abusive state

Abstract

This article explores the story of Sanwar, who fled Bangladesh following persecution for his sexuality, and spent five years struggling for asylum in the UK. Analysing our conversations together with his asylum paperwork, I show how trauma was apprehended in the asylum process, and how the process itself produced more trauma. Taking this trauma as diagnostic of state violence, I advance the notion of ‘the abusive state’: the disbelief Sanwar faced constituted gaslighting, echoing childhood abuse from his father, while the pressure to ‘change his story’, to perform as someone he was not, further figured as the impossible demand of a capricious, false authority. In the final section, I reflect on the moments when things fell apart and Sanwar attempted suicide, pointing to the ways in which suicidal subjectivities emerge in the asylum system. What might it mean to put suicide at the heart of our thinking, and feeling, about asylum? Keywords: asylum seeking; trauma; abuse; the state; suicide; immigration law