Asserting Existence: Agentive Narratives Arising From the Restraints of Seeking Asylum in East Anglia, Britain

Abstract

This article is based on fieldwork (2002–2003) in Great Yarmouth and Norwich in Britain with asylum seekers from Iraq, Iran, Kenya, Kosovo, Congo, and Montenegro as they await the outcome to their application for refugee status. During this period of liminality, their narratives were both urgent and repetitive expressions of their current immigration status and, to a lesser extent, their past experiences. In this article, I consider how such narratives are elicited by asylum seekers to craft an agentive capacity during this liminal period to overcome an existential crisis and assert their existence within society. Stories that recount traumatic experiences work as a way of reconciling a past that can no longer exist and a current state of liminality with a new sense of being in the world.

The Lived Experience of Pregnancy Among HIV-Positive Refugee Women

“…The usefulness of liminality has been noted by other authors who identify it as a pivotal concept in relation to situation-specific theory of well-being in refugee women experiencing transition. 20 The liminal aspect of this reality describes an "in-between" space in which change and adaptation occur. Because this study involves women from different ethnic, religious, and racial geographical origins, liminality denotes a "transcultural space in which strategies for personal and communal selfhood is elaborated."…”

“…She saw her pregnancy in Canada as an opportunity to regain a sense of connection that had been previously lost. She offered the following explanation during her interview: [19][20] Tulun articulated the loss imposed on her by HIV infection and the cultural expectations surrounding motherhood in her country of origin. She articulated that "'here," in Canada, women living with HIV infection have an opportunity to reconnect by fulfilling these expectations.…”

Citizens‐in‐Waiting, Deportees‐in‐Waiting: Power, Temporality, and Suffering in the U.S. Asylum System

“…Hassan's case illustrates the ways in which asylum seekers can oscillate between “stagnation and immobility” and “the agentive action of struggle, persistence, and communication” (Rainbird , 464). Tension between possibility and foreclosure, between desire and defeat, was a constant in asylum seekers’ lives.…”

“…Moreover, some asylum seekers suggested that the pain associated with the political asylum process could inflict enduring psychic distress. As Joseph told me, “Even if they [asylum seekers] are granted, they've gone through some kind of psychological torture.” Waiting itself could thus be experienced as a kind of “psychological imprisonment” whose effects outlasted the determination of the asylum claim (Rainbird , 470).…”

“…Here, Hassan illustrated how the “social death” experienced by asylum seekers in limbo (Rainbird , 466) could be translated into a literal death. As Hassan forcefully claimed, a judge's decision is not just a decision, but rather it makes or destroys life.…”