The Multiple Truths of Asylum – Public Lecture by Prof Didier Fassin (5 juin, Johannesbourg)

Presentation by Prof. Didier Fassin,

James D. Wolfensohn Professor of Social Science,
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton,
École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris.

Wednesday 5 June 2013, 6:00 – 7:30 pm

(Refreshments will be served)

The Atrium, Southwest Engineering Building, East Campus University of the Witwatersrand

One of the oldest social institutions, asylum has been formally recognized by the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees. Yet, during the past decades, with the increasing number of claimants and the growing reluctance of states to offer them protection, asylum has become a major global issue, although unevenly distributed across the planet.

Based on ten years of research, mostly in Europe, this lecture examines the refugee question through an inquiry into the concept of truth. Firstly, it will be shown that the truth of asylum, far from being definitively inscribed in an international text, is permanently reinterpreted and transformed, including new dimensions while lessening others. Secondly, it will be analyzed how the truths of the asylum-seekers, instead of being unveiled through their narrative, are matters of appreciation by state agents, which largely exceed the veracity of the stories or the sincerity of the applicants. The refugee question thus reveals crucial political and moral issues of our time.

Bio

Professor Fassin is the James D. Wolfensohn Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study of Princeton and a Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.  An anthropologist, sociologist and physician, he is the author of the seminal monograph When Bodies Remember: Experiences and Politics of AIDS in South Africa. He has also developed a critique of humanitarianism, in particular  around migration, asylum, and international assistance in Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present. His most recent study, Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing, addresses law enforcement in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Professor Didier Fassin is as an AW Mellon Distinguished Visiting Scholar hosted at the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS), Wits University, for 3 weeks.