Political asylum is one remedy for human rights abuses. By offering safe haven to people fleeing ... more Political asylum is one remedy for human rights abuses. By offering safe haven to people fleeing persecution in their homelands, countries providing political asylum acknowledge that violence can make some places too dangerous for members of particular groups. Asylum law addresses human rights abuses on an individual basis and does not apply to many of those who, it could be argued, suffer from such abuses. Discourses about human rights abuses play a significant role in particular political asylum cases. It has been argued that a human rights vision of refugee law would refocus away from the provision of individual sanctuary in the host country and toward an emphasis on the refugee's right to return to his country of origin to live a life without human rights abuses. In this paper, we first briefly discuss the history of political asylum policy in relation to its connection to human rights, and then turn to a particular case in which the violations of human rights are unquestionable but the individual's application was twice denied before being granted asylum status. We examine in depth the case of a woman who fled Cameroon to the US where she claimed asylum. We argue that these denials illustrate the ways in which credibility concerns and the asylum hearing officers' reliance on scenarios that meet their assumptions and expectations often outweigh an assessment of the human rights violations involved in the case.
This chapter focuses on cultural assessments to illustrate the difficulty of evaluating evidence ... more This chapter focuses on cultural assessments to illustrate the difficulty of evaluating evidence cross culturally. The authors examine the use of bribery and corruption; bribery falls into the category of things that are “illegal” and therefore make the officials suspicious. They assume this is something only people from asylum-sending countries do, though in fact we all do it but we consider it perfectly acceptable and call it “networking” or “making use of contacts.” The authors show that certain kinds of fraudulence are considered offensive and reprehensible (and not credible) even though they are business as usual in the society from which the applicant is fleeing and especially so for someone fleeing persecution.
For immigration authorities, the goal of asylum hearings is to differentiate between economic mig... more For immigration authorities, the goal of asylum hearings is to differentiate between economic migrants and legitimate political asylum seekers. However, in the stories asylum seekers tell, these categories often blur. Nevertheless, the asylum process uses this differentiation to conceal inequities in the system, and to justify denials. This article examines political asylum as a transnational and culturally local process and argues that contradictions between protection and control underlie some of the seemingly absurd denials of asylum applications.
In 2005, President Bush signed the Read ID Act, requiring applicants for asylum to provide docume... more In 2005, President Bush signed the Read ID Act, requiring applicants for asylum to provide documentation of their identity and allowing judges to deny asylum to anyone whose family may be connected with a terrorist group. The act is one example of how political asylum policy is intertwined with international security issues.
ABSTRACT Building on Barad’s (2007) discursive entanglements, we explore discussions about weight... more ABSTRACT Building on Barad’s (2007) discursive entanglements, we explore discussions about weight-loss surgery among Girth & Mirthers, a nationwide social club of big gay men ostracized from the larger gay community because of their size. They promote size acceptance, but are suspicious of surgeons promising social normality through gastric bypass. In interviews, they revealed positions regarding weight-loss surgery such as respect for others’ personal choices, soft opposition to invasive surgery, comparison to sadomasochism, and matters of attraction. Their positions coincide somewhat with those of feminist fat activists. Their live-and-let-live attitude can also be understood as a claim of control over one’s own body.
Page 1. AMY SHUMAN AND CAROL BOHMER Representing Trauma: Political Asylum Narrative ... We sugges... more Page 1. AMY SHUMAN AND CAROL BOHMER Representing Trauma: Political Asylum Narrative ... We suggest that AMY SHUMAN is Professor of English and Anthropology and Director of the Center for Folklore Studies, The Ohio State University, Columbus. ...
... In this paper, we discuss the availability and sustainability of the Social Smoking: An Unten... more ... In this paper, we discuss the availability and sustainability of the Social Smoking: An Untenable Position Jason Whitesel* Ohio State University Amy Shuman Ohio State University * Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the National Meeting of the Popular Culture ...
My review of the past thirty years of narrative scholarship returns to the work of Harvey Sacks a... more My review of the past thirty years of narrative scholarship returns to the work of Harvey Sacks and Erving Goffman, situated in Dell Hymes’ ethnography of communication, to examine where their interactive model for understanding narrative has taken us. Although in some disciplines, narrative research is used as empirical evidence of how people interpret their experiences, Sacks’ work points more to the ways that personal narrative destabilizes the relationship between narrative and experience. Current work focuses on narrative at its limits, including the study of fragmented, rather than coherent, selves; multiply voiced, rather than monologic, points of view; and compromised, rather than easily empathetic, relations of understanding. This work builds on, rather than departs from, research on narrative thirty years ago. In this essay, I suggest a connection between early research on entitlement and contemporary research on the ethics of narrative, and I focus in particular on the pr...
Girth & Mirth (G&M) is a social group for big gay men who face exclusion and discrimination from ... more Girth & Mirth (G&M) is a social group for big gay men who face exclusion and discrimination from both mainstream and gay communities. Based on extensive ethnographic research and interview data, we consider a variety of the group’s activities, including gatherings at coffeehouses, participation in a gay pride parade, and a national carnivalesque weekend retreat. The group engages in performances that are complicit with both heteronormative gender practices and normative gay men’s practices and that reinscribe capitalist commodified desires. This exploration of the full range of G&M’s activities, from the everyday to the carnivalesque, provides an opportunity to examine how a stigmatized group negotiates visible and less visible forms of discrimination through a playful reconfiguration of heteronormative masculine performances.
Building on Erving Goffman's discussion of stigma, this essay explores how stigma and normalc... more Building on Erving Goffman's discussion of stigma, this essay explores how stigma and normalcy produce each other. Stigmatizing includes processes of recognition, misrecognition, estrangement, and othering. We consider how the stigmatized vernacular produces and deploys visibility, invisibility, and hypervisibility of cultural practices. Examining the experiences of political asylum seekers, we suggest that routinized violence produces a new kind of ordinary for victims of persecution; when these stigmatized individuals seek refuge in a new country, officials sometimes further stigmatize them by insisting on their own categories of 'normal.' We argue that any assessment of cultural context that depends on cultural norms is insufficient for understanding stigmatizing situations: conceptualizing 'the normal' is itself a means for enacting exclusions, and the stigmatized vernacular can be a pervasive mechanism for concealing discrimination under the guise of what is 'normal.' We propose that studying the stigmatized vernacular can serve as a critique of the veneration of the folk in folkloristic research.
... Carol Bohmer Department of Government, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA Amy Shu... more ... Carol Bohmer Department of Government, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA Amy Shuman Department of English, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA The ... Page 2. 604 C. Bohmer and A. Shuman restricted ...
See a streaming video of the keynote lecture by Ratna Kapur. This streaming video requires RealPl... more See a streaming video of the keynote lecture by Ratna Kapur. This streaming video requires RealPlayer. If you do not have RealPlayer, you can download it free.
In this chapter, the authors examine the role of narrative in the asylum hearing process. In the ... more In this chapter, the authors examine the role of narrative in the asylum hearing process. In the absence of documentation, these narratives of what happened are a primary form of evidence and, thus, a focal point for suspicion. Narrative is a culturally specific form; how much description is given, and when it is given, whether at the beginning or in the middle of an account, differs according to cultural conventions. In some cases, asylum applicants fail to offer enough contextual information to explain what might otherwise look like a discrepancy. Although it is impossible to know with any certainty that a narrative is fraudulent, it is possible to identify some of the dimensions of narrative that are helpful for understanding discrepancies. The authors use discourse analysis to better understand the complexities of testimony, and the ways in which “truth” and “lies” are framed and perceived.
The Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 2013
The purpose of this study was to confirm and extend prior research on the attitudes and experienc... more The purpose of this study was to confirm and extend prior research on the attitudes and experiences of typical college students towards students with intellectual disabilities who were enrolled in an inclusive postsecondary program. College students enrolled in a Disability Studies Internship class completed surveys, journals, and participated in a focus group to share their perceptions and experiences as educational coaches and mentors with students with intellectual disabilities. The results confirmed previous studies that typical students, with prior experience and high comfort ratings, agree that students with intellectual disabilities have the ability to participate in college experiences such as classes, campus organizations, and living in dorms with support. Additional themes that emerged from the qualitative analysis indicated that the disability studies interns were challenged to balance program requirements and the dignity of risk and self-determination of students with ID...
Political asylum is one remedy for human rights abuses. By offering safe haven to people fleeing ... more Political asylum is one remedy for human rights abuses. By offering safe haven to people fleeing persecution in their homelands, countries providing political asylum acknowledge that violence can make some places too dangerous for members of particular groups. Asylum law addresses human rights abuses on an individual basis and does not apply to many of those who, it could be argued, suffer from such abuses. Discourses about human rights abuses play a significant role in particular political asylum cases. It has been argued that a human rights vision of refugee law would refocus away from the provision of individual sanctuary in the host country and toward an emphasis on the refugee's right to return to his country of origin to live a life without human rights abuses. In this paper, we first briefly discuss the history of political asylum policy in relation to its connection to human rights, and then turn to a particular case in which the violations of human rights are unquestionable but the individual's application was twice denied before being granted asylum status. We examine in depth the case of a woman who fled Cameroon to the US where she claimed asylum. We argue that these denials illustrate the ways in which credibility concerns and the asylum hearing officers' reliance on scenarios that meet their assumptions and expectations often outweigh an assessment of the human rights violations involved in the case.
This chapter focuses on cultural assessments to illustrate the difficulty of evaluating evidence ... more This chapter focuses on cultural assessments to illustrate the difficulty of evaluating evidence cross culturally. The authors examine the use of bribery and corruption; bribery falls into the category of things that are “illegal” and therefore make the officials suspicious. They assume this is something only people from asylum-sending countries do, though in fact we all do it but we consider it perfectly acceptable and call it “networking” or “making use of contacts.” The authors show that certain kinds of fraudulence are considered offensive and reprehensible (and not credible) even though they are business as usual in the society from which the applicant is fleeing and especially so for someone fleeing persecution.
For immigration authorities, the goal of asylum hearings is to differentiate between economic mig... more For immigration authorities, the goal of asylum hearings is to differentiate between economic migrants and legitimate political asylum seekers. However, in the stories asylum seekers tell, these categories often blur. Nevertheless, the asylum process uses this differentiation to conceal inequities in the system, and to justify denials. This article examines political asylum as a transnational and culturally local process and argues that contradictions between protection and control underlie some of the seemingly absurd denials of asylum applications.
In 2005, President Bush signed the Read ID Act, requiring applicants for asylum to provide docume... more In 2005, President Bush signed the Read ID Act, requiring applicants for asylum to provide documentation of their identity and allowing judges to deny asylum to anyone whose family may be connected with a terrorist group. The act is one example of how political asylum policy is intertwined with international security issues.
ABSTRACT Building on Barad’s (2007) discursive entanglements, we explore discussions about weight... more ABSTRACT Building on Barad’s (2007) discursive entanglements, we explore discussions about weight-loss surgery among Girth & Mirthers, a nationwide social club of big gay men ostracized from the larger gay community because of their size. They promote size acceptance, but are suspicious of surgeons promising social normality through gastric bypass. In interviews, they revealed positions regarding weight-loss surgery such as respect for others’ personal choices, soft opposition to invasive surgery, comparison to sadomasochism, and matters of attraction. Their positions coincide somewhat with those of feminist fat activists. Their live-and-let-live attitude can also be understood as a claim of control over one’s own body.
Page 1. AMY SHUMAN AND CAROL BOHMER Representing Trauma: Political Asylum Narrative ... We sugges... more Page 1. AMY SHUMAN AND CAROL BOHMER Representing Trauma: Political Asylum Narrative ... We suggest that AMY SHUMAN is Professor of English and Anthropology and Director of the Center for Folklore Studies, The Ohio State University, Columbus. ...
... In this paper, we discuss the availability and sustainability of the Social Smoking: An Unten... more ... In this paper, we discuss the availability and sustainability of the Social Smoking: An Untenable Position Jason Whitesel* Ohio State University Amy Shuman Ohio State University * Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the National Meeting of the Popular Culture ...
My review of the past thirty years of narrative scholarship returns to the work of Harvey Sacks a... more My review of the past thirty years of narrative scholarship returns to the work of Harvey Sacks and Erving Goffman, situated in Dell Hymes’ ethnography of communication, to examine where their interactive model for understanding narrative has taken us. Although in some disciplines, narrative research is used as empirical evidence of how people interpret their experiences, Sacks’ work points more to the ways that personal narrative destabilizes the relationship between narrative and experience. Current work focuses on narrative at its limits, including the study of fragmented, rather than coherent, selves; multiply voiced, rather than monologic, points of view; and compromised, rather than easily empathetic, relations of understanding. This work builds on, rather than departs from, research on narrative thirty years ago. In this essay, I suggest a connection between early research on entitlement and contemporary research on the ethics of narrative, and I focus in particular on the pr...
Girth & Mirth (G&M) is a social group for big gay men who face exclusion and discrimination from ... more Girth & Mirth (G&M) is a social group for big gay men who face exclusion and discrimination from both mainstream and gay communities. Based on extensive ethnographic research and interview data, we consider a variety of the group’s activities, including gatherings at coffeehouses, participation in a gay pride parade, and a national carnivalesque weekend retreat. The group engages in performances that are complicit with both heteronormative gender practices and normative gay men’s practices and that reinscribe capitalist commodified desires. This exploration of the full range of G&M’s activities, from the everyday to the carnivalesque, provides an opportunity to examine how a stigmatized group negotiates visible and less visible forms of discrimination through a playful reconfiguration of heteronormative masculine performances.
Building on Erving Goffman's discussion of stigma, this essay explores how stigma and normalc... more Building on Erving Goffman's discussion of stigma, this essay explores how stigma and normalcy produce each other. Stigmatizing includes processes of recognition, misrecognition, estrangement, and othering. We consider how the stigmatized vernacular produces and deploys visibility, invisibility, and hypervisibility of cultural practices. Examining the experiences of political asylum seekers, we suggest that routinized violence produces a new kind of ordinary for victims of persecution; when these stigmatized individuals seek refuge in a new country, officials sometimes further stigmatize them by insisting on their own categories of 'normal.' We argue that any assessment of cultural context that depends on cultural norms is insufficient for understanding stigmatizing situations: conceptualizing 'the normal' is itself a means for enacting exclusions, and the stigmatized vernacular can be a pervasive mechanism for concealing discrimination under the guise of what is 'normal.' We propose that studying the stigmatized vernacular can serve as a critique of the veneration of the folk in folkloristic research.
... Carol Bohmer Department of Government, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA Amy Shu... more ... Carol Bohmer Department of Government, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA Amy Shuman Department of English, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA The ... Page 2. 604 C. Bohmer and A. Shuman restricted ...
See a streaming video of the keynote lecture by Ratna Kapur. This streaming video requires RealPl... more See a streaming video of the keynote lecture by Ratna Kapur. This streaming video requires RealPlayer. If you do not have RealPlayer, you can download it free.
In this chapter, the authors examine the role of narrative in the asylum hearing process. In the ... more In this chapter, the authors examine the role of narrative in the asylum hearing process. In the absence of documentation, these narratives of what happened are a primary form of evidence and, thus, a focal point for suspicion. Narrative is a culturally specific form; how much description is given, and when it is given, whether at the beginning or in the middle of an account, differs according to cultural conventions. In some cases, asylum applicants fail to offer enough contextual information to explain what might otherwise look like a discrepancy. Although it is impossible to know with any certainty that a narrative is fraudulent, it is possible to identify some of the dimensions of narrative that are helpful for understanding discrepancies. The authors use discourse analysis to better understand the complexities of testimony, and the ways in which “truth” and “lies” are framed and perceived.
The Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 2013
The purpose of this study was to confirm and extend prior research on the attitudes and experienc... more The purpose of this study was to confirm and extend prior research on the attitudes and experiences of typical college students towards students with intellectual disabilities who were enrolled in an inclusive postsecondary program. College students enrolled in a Disability Studies Internship class completed surveys, journals, and participated in a focus group to share their perceptions and experiences as educational coaches and mentors with students with intellectual disabilities. The results confirmed previous studies that typical students, with prior experience and high comfort ratings, agree that students with intellectual disabilities have the ability to participate in college experiences such as classes, campus organizations, and living in dorms with support. Additional themes that emerged from the qualitative analysis indicated that the disability studies interns were challenged to balance program requirements and the dignity of risk and self-determination of students with ID...
Across the globe, migration has been met with intensifying modes of criminalization and securitiz... more Across the globe, migration has been met with intensifying modes of criminalization and securitization, and claims for political asylum are increasingly met with suspicion. Asylum seekers have become the focus of global debates surrounding humanitarian obligations, on the one hand, and concerns surrounding national security and border control, on the other. This timely book provides fine-tuned analyses of political asylum systems and the adjudication of asylum claims across a range of sociocultural and geopolitical contexts. The contributors to this volume, drawing on a variety of theoretical perspectives, offer critical insights into the processes by which tensions between humanitarianism and security are negotiated at the local level, often with deleterious consequences for asylum seekers. By investigating how a politics of suspicion within asylum systems is enacted in everyday practices and interactions, this volume’s contributors illustrate how asylum seekers are often produced as suspicious subjects by the very systems to which they appeal for protection.
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Papers by Amy Shuman
Pekka Hakamies
Scholarly Freedom
Amy Shuman
Speaking Out, Speaking for, and the Right to Speak on Behalf of Others
Kirsti Salmi-Niklander
Writers and listeners of Walotar – Exploring the oral-literary traditions of the Finnish community in Rockport, Massachusetts
News from the Finnish Literature Society
Dániel Bárth
Education and research in the Department of Folklore, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest