Second‐hand Emotion? Exploring the Contagion and Impact of Trauma and Distress in the Asylum Law Context

Applicants' accounts of experiences of fear, trauma, violence, and persecution are central to the process of claiming asylum. These narratives are, at a human level, primed to provoke emotional responses, not only in the narrator but also in those to whom the account is relayed. In this article, we explore the vectors of emotionality that permeate asylum decision‐making in the United Kingdom, focusing particularly on the risk faced by the professionals involved of suffering vicarious trauma. More specifically, based on a series of 104 semi‐structured interviews with asylum stakeholders and observation of 48 appeals to the Immigration and Asylum Chamber of the First‐tier Tribunal, this article identifies the adoption by legal and quasi‐legal professionals of emotional coping strategies – of detachment and denial of responsibility – that risk being deployed in maladaptive ways that jeopardize the prospects for justice.     

Seen but Not Heard? Parallels and Dissonances in the Treatment of Rape Narratives across the Asylum and Criminal Justice Contexts

A significant proportion of women seeking refugee status in the United Kingdom will claim to have been raped in their country of origin. Even where this is not the sole basis of an asylum claim, it may be relevant to its determination. While criminal justice responses to rape have been the subject of extensive academic criticism and legislative reform, the processes of disclosure and credibility assessment in the asylum context have received little attention. This article explores possible parallels and dissonances in the treatment of rape across the asylum and criminal justice contexts, drawing in particular on the findings of a 2007 pilot study. It considers how problems such as the underreporting of rape, the inability of the victim to 'tell the story' in her own words, a hostile adjudicative environment, and the tendency to regard factors such as late disclosure, narrative inconsistency, and calm demeanour with suspicion – may be replicated and compounded in asylum cases. It also acknowledges the complex intersection of race, gender, culture, and nationality in this context.     

Exhibiting the collections of the Spanish Crown and nobility for the nation: the Count of Valencia de Don Juan and the 1892 European historical exhibition

This article focuses on the place and role accorded to the collections of the Spanish Crown and nobility at the Exposición Histórico-Europea organized in Madrid in 1892. It sets the exhibition in the political and cultural context of the Fourth Centenary of the Discovery of America and analyses the role of Juan Crooke y Navarrot, the Count of Valencia de Don Juan to understand how royal and aristocratic collections were instrumentalized in a bid to assert the place of the Spanish monarchy on the European and international scene and strengthen its prestige. Commissioner of Crown property, the Count of Valencia de Don Juan was one of the members of the nobility who exhibited their collections to the public. Therefore, his investment in the organization of the exhibition, as a non-professional curator, helps understand what the event meant for Spanish nobility. This enables us to gauge what role such exhibiting played in the construction of the national heritage and art historiography of Spain.