An Illustration of Anthropology’s Contribution to Refugee Law Research

Abstract

This article contributes to the debates on the role of anthropology in refugee law research by showing the added value of an interdisciplinary approach to the understanding of complex asylum claims related to cultural and religious beliefs that are unfamiliar to the Western perspective. Based on the analysis of asylum claims in UK courts involving witchcraftbased persecution in the country of origin—both applicants who feared becoming victims of witchcraft practices and those who could be accused of having engaged in witchcraft practices—I demonstrate how anthropology can provide the tools for bridging the gaps between the law in the books and its implementation in practice and solving issues that are beyond the scope of the law. In particular, anthropology can feed into a broader legal conceptualization that accounts for the realities of our diverse societies and helps explain how fear of persecution due to witchcraft can indeed be real and connected with serious human rights violations. Moreover, cultural expertise can assist in assessing asylum claims in their cultural, historical, and political contexts, affording the claimant a fairer and better adjudicated outcome. Nevertheless, the use of anthropology inevitably comes with some challenges related to the different fields’ epistemologies, languages, and styles, as well as a lack of appreciation for interdisciplinarity in some areas of academia.