351 research outputs found
Navigating interdisciplinarity:Negotiating discipline, embodiment, and materiality on a field methods training course
This article elucidates some of the opportunities and challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration in teaching, drawing on our participant observation as both instructors of anthropological methods and honorary students of marine ecology and geomorphology methods on a research training field course. We argue that interdisciplinary methods training offers educators opportunities for self-reflexivity, recognition of the taken-for-granted aspects of our knowledge, and improved communication of the value of our work to others. However, we also show how decisions about course structure can reinforce disciplinary boundaries, limiting inter-epistemic knowledge production; how one epistemological approach may overshadow others, hindering interdisciplinary learning; and how methods training involves tacit and embodied knowledge and mastery of material methods, requiring repetition and experimentation. We offer insights into how we as educators can improve our communication of the value of anthropology and its methods. First, instructors in any discipline should develop an awareness of how their tacit knowledge affects the pedagogical process. Second, instead of enskilling instructors to teach a variety of methods, it may be more beneficial for instructors to teach their own areas of expertise, in dialogue and collaboration with other disciplines. Third, interdisciplinary courses must be carefully planned to allow equal participation of different disciplines, so that anthropology is understood on its own terms and embedded in the course from the outset
The limits of procedural discretion:Unequal treatment and vulnerability in Britain’s asylum appeals
This is the final version of the article. Available from SAGE Publications via the DOI in this record.Studies of procedural in-court judicial discretion have highlighted a dilemma between the imperative to reduce it owing to its potential misuse and preserve it owing to its importance in protecting vulnerable groups. This article offers a new framework with which to enter this debate and new quantitative empirical evidence that favours the former position over the latter. Drawing upon 240 in-person observations of Britain’s First Tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber), the article demonstrates that judicial discretionary behaviour that is either vulnerability-neutral, vulnerability-amplifying or correlated with extraneous factors outweighs vulnerability-redressing behaviour, despite the sensitivity of this particular jurisdiction and the guidelines that consequently exist for judges. These findings lend support to calls to limit judicial procedural discretion. The article concludes by offering some cost-effective suggestions about how to do so.The research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, grant number ES/J023426/1
'Hanging in-between': experiences of waiting among asylum seekers living in Glasgow
This thesis explores the experiences of applicants for Refugee Status in the United
Kingdom who had, at the time of the research, waited for between two and nine years
for the conclusion of the asylum process. Despite extensive lamentation of the delays
endured by asylum applicants in having their claims assessed, little social scientific
scholarship has substantively and critically engaged with this phenomenon, or even
with waiting as a universal condition. The present study fills this gap in knowledge,
conceptualising waiting as an informative, consequential phase in the quest for
protection, hope and security.
The study is based on twelve months of participant observation among
asylum seekers living in Glasgow under the dispersal regime. Narratives and tacit
aspects of everyday life are presented to both draw a multi-dimensional ethnographic
picture and acknowledge the asylum seekers’ agency. Their waiting entails a focus
on negative and positive, concrete and symbolic objects, which are located in the
future. However, their inability to affect or predict the arrival of these objects
produces uncertainty and passivity. Asylum seekers narrate overwhelmingly negative
experiences of asylum policies, such as dishonouring encounters with immigration
authorities; social dislocation; enforced poverty; interrupted life cycles; and an
inability to settle and belong in the UK. Yet despite the mutually reinforcing effects
of UK policy and of waiting, asylum seekers have benefited from formal support
structures provided under Scottish policy. Individuals have been able to re-construct
social ties; pursue educational opportunities; enhance personal security; gain greater
control over their ‘cases’; and undertake selective socio-cultural adaptation. They
have also utilised a discourse of ‘integration’ circulating in Scotland to garner public
support for their struggles for recognition and the right to remain. The thesis
concludes by reflecting on changes occurring after a form of Leave to Remain was
granted, and assesses the extent to which people were able to realise the ‘normal
lives’ for which they had been waiting
‘We no longer have faith and trust in anyone’:Misadventures in community consultation on the future of the Chagos Archipelago
Inconsistency in asylum appeal adjudication
Open access journalNew research findings indicate that factors such as the gender of the judge and of the appellant, and where the appellant lives, are influencing asylum appeal adjudication.Economic and Social Research Counci
Safeguarding sega:Transmission, inscription, and appropriation of Chagossian intangible cultural heritage
Experiencing Asylum Appeal Hearings:34 Ways to Improve Access to Justice at the First-tier Tribunal
The tribunal atmosphere: On qualitative barriers to access to justice
Vulnerable groups’ direct experiences and impressions of British courts and tribunals have often been overlooked by politicians and policy makers (JUSTICE, 2019). This paper takes a geographical, empirical approach to access to justice to respond to these concerns, paying attention to the atmosphere of First Tier Immigration and Asylum Tribunal hearings to explore the qualitative aspects of (in)access to justice during asylum appeals. It draws on 41 interviews with former appellants and 390 observations of hearings in the First tier immigration and asylum tribunal to unpack the lived experiences of tribunal users and to identify three ways in which the atmosphere in tribunals can constitute a barrier to access to justice. First, asylum appellants are frequently profoundly disorientated upon arrival at the tribunal. Second, appellants become distrustful of the courtroom when they cannot see it as independent of the state. Third they often experience the courtroom procedures and the interactions that take place as disrespectful, inhibiting their participation. These insights demonstrate how the concept of ‘atmosphere’ can illuminate legal debates in valuable ways. Additionally we argue that legal policy making must find better ways to take vulnerable litigants’ experiences into account
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