The Institution of Gender-Based Asylum and Epistemic Injustice: A Structural Limit

Abstract

One of the recent attempts to explore epistemic dimensions of forced displacement focuses on the institution of gender-based asylum and hopes to detect forms of epistemic injustice within assessments of gender related asylum applications. Following this attempt, I aim in this paper to demonstrate how the institution of gender-based asylum is structured to produce epistemic injustice at least in the forms of testimonial injustice and contributory injustice. This structural limit becomes visible when we realize how the institution of asylum is formed to provide legitimacy to the institutional comfort the respective migration courts and boards enjoy. This institutional comfort afforded to migration boards and courts by the existing asylum regimes in the current order of nation-states leads to a systemic prioritization of state actors’ epistemic resources rather than that of applicants, which, in turn, results in epistemic injustice and impacts the determination of applicants’ refugee status.

Violent Enactments and Erasures: A Western Capitalist Ontology of Labor in Organizational Rhetoric About Resettled Syrian Refugees

“…The tensions highlight the complexities of relationships between humanitarian organizations, the communities in which they work, the populations they intend to serve, and the potential for dependency (Papa et al, 2006). These ties are not necessarily negative (Rojas, 2007), but this research reminds us to be cautious in what realities are sustained by discourse, such as the ambiguous and arbitrary way information can be used by migration courts in their decision-making for their own institutional comfort and legitimacy (Sertler, 2018).…”

“…These represent mechanisms for sense-making, constructing systems of meaning that generate and regulate understanding in particular contexts (Cheney, 1991;Green Jr. et al, 2008;Mumby & Stohl, 1991), including what meanings are salient in the enactment of transnational migration (Sertler, 2018). Organizations develop and circulate epistemic, discursive resources for interpreting the world and our place within it, but their privileged position in social stratification simultaneously restricts options for understanding (Mynster & Edwards, 2014;Sertler, 2018). Organizational rhetoric is a significant contributor to meaning-making, but must be analyzed and critiqued in regards to the context of its creation, those it attempts to represent, and its role in manifesting certain societal orders.…”

“…Organizational rhetoric presents discursive resources, such as a “concept, phrase, expression, trope, or other linguistic device” (Kuhn et al, 2008, p. 163) that direct the interpretation of certain conceptions of experiences, persons, or places, such as those about labor (Kuhn et al, 2008). These represent mechanisms for sense-making, constructing systems of meaning that generate and regulate understanding in particular contexts (Cheney, 1991; Green Jr. et al, 2008; Mumby & Stohl, 1991), including what meanings are salient in the enactment of transnational migration (Sertler, 2018). Organizations develop and circulate epistemic, discursive resources for interpreting the world and our place within it, but their privileged position in social stratification simultaneously restricts options for understanding (Mynster & Edwards, 2014; Sertler, 2018).…”

Cultural Gaslighting

“…Ezgi Sertler demonstrates how these institutions are structured to foreclose on applicants’ knowledge while reifying the power of state actors. She writes, “this structural limit becomes visible when we realize how the institution of asylum is formed to provide legitimacy to the institutional comfort the respective migration courts and boards enjoy.” Sertler introduces the important notion of “institutional comfort” to describe “the ways in which state actors in migration courts and boards are systemically afforded the ability to arbitrarily and ambiguously misinterpret asylum applicants’ experiences, cultures, and countries” (Sertler 2018, 5). Epistemic assumptions and norms are structurally tipped in favor of the credibility of state actors at the expense of applicant credibility.…”