| ID | 159873 |
| Title Proper | Tactical’ use of collective history |
| Other Title Information | the construction and certification of truth in life accounts for Sri Lankan Tamil asylum application in France |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Mantovan, Giacomo |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | This article focuses on how Sri Lankan Tamils construct their life histories for asylum applications in France. The construction of the truth in application documents is a crucial issue in citizenship requests and state-building: it determines who the asylum seekers are, and whether they will be integrated into the state or not. It is a citizen-making process, through which the state constructs its population and redefines its borders. This research has been carried out in a bureau drafting life narratives for asylum applications. It describes how the experience of persecution is transformed into an institutionalized biography through the work of a ‘public writer’. In particular, it shows that while the bureaucratic procedure follows the logic of ‘singularization’, a ‘tactical’ use of collective history plays a relevant role in the writing of these accounts: to give more credibility to theirs statements, asylum seekers use shared history to compose individual histories. Analysing the stakes and the various standpoints of the asylum demand, I will argue that the construction of truth, like the citizenship request itself, is not a simple matter of adapting to state laws and regulations, but is rather the fruit of the interaction between several actors with different interests. |
| `In' analytical Note | Contemporary South Asia Vol. 26, No.2; Jun 2018: p.221-237 |
| Journal Source | Contemporary South Asia Vol: 26 No 2 |
| Key Words | Citizenship ; France ; Asylum ; Sri Lankan Tamils ; Life Histories |