African Asylum at a Crossroads ─ Activism, Expert Testimony, and Refugee Rights

African Asylum at a Crossroads: Activism, Expert Testimony, and Refugee Rights examines the emerging trend of requests for expert opinions in asylum hearings or refugee status determinations. This is the first book to explore the role of court-based expertise in relation to African asylum cases and the first to establish a rigorous analytical framework for interpreting the effects of this new reliance on expert testimony.

Over the past two decades, courts in Western countries and beyond have begun demanding expert reports tailored to the experience of the individual claimant. As courts increasingly draw upon such testimony in their deliberations, expertise in matters of asylum and refugee status is emerging as an academic area with its own standards, protocols, and guidelines. This deeply thoughtful book explores these developments and their effects on both asylum seekers and the experts whose influence may determine their fate.

Contributors: Iris Berger, Carol Bohmer, John Campbell, Katherine Luongo, E. Ann McDougall, Karen Musalo, Tricia Redeker Hepner, Amy Shuman, Joanna T. Tague, Meredith Terretta, and Charlotte Walker-Said.

Iris Berger is Vincent O’Leary Professor of History at the University at Albany, State University of New York. She is the author ofSouth Africa in World History.

Tricia Redeker Hepner is an associate professor of anthropology and director of the Disasters, Displacement, and Human Rights Program at the University of Tennessee. She is the author ofSoldiers, Martyrs, Traitors, and Exiles: Political Conflict in Eritrea and the Diaspora.

Benjamin N. Lawrance is the Hon. Barber B. Conable, Jr. Endowed Professor of International Studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is the author ofTrafficking in Slavery’s Wake: Law and the Experience of Women and Children in Africa.

Joanna T. Tague is an assistant professor of African history at Denison University in Granville, Ohio.

Meredith Terretta is an associate professor of history at the University of Ottawa and the author ofNation of Outlaws, State of Violence: Nationalism, Grassfields Tradition, and State Building in Cameroon.