Psychodynamic Perspectives on Asylum Seekers and the Asylum-Seeking Process

Encountering Well-Founded Fear

Barbara K. Eisold

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429756061
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Psychodynamic Perspectives on Asylum Seekers and the Asylum-Seeking Process looks at the psychosocial assessment of asylum seekers from three perspectives: forensic, psychodynamic, and political and then attempts to better understand, from a psychodynamic perspective, differences in the historical/motivational routes of asylum seekers themselves.

Barbara Eisold begins in Chapter One by exploring the unique evaluation relationship of psychosocial assessment and the striking will to survive of the asylum seekers that it puts into focus, using a psychodynamic lens. The forensic value of psychosocial assessment and its potential as both a political and a therapeutic tool are then described. Chapter Two describes individuals, who, by background and personal characteristics, shared a profound desire to protest, gravely compromising their survival at home and forcing them to seek asylum elsewhere. Chapter Three discusses women who have suffered female genital mutilation and includes a discussion of the development of strong personal agency in one case. Chapter Four describes abused women from Central America forced to flee from femicide. The evolution of femicide is explored, including the development of honor-bound machismo and the wide-spread disregard of law. The hold men have on women is then examined from a psychodynamic perspective.

Psychodynamic Perspectives on Asylum Seekers and the Asylum-Seeking Process will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, and all mental health professionals working with asylum seekers.

Chapter 1

The nature of psychosocial asylum evaluations¹

Implications for client and clinician

Introduction

Who are asylum seekers?

Asylum seekers come from all over the world. They do not necessarily share common backgrounds or beliefs. They are living in a country not their own—for the purposes of this book, in the United States.² Usually (but not always), in their rush to depart, they have left identifying papers behind. Without these they have no valid immigration status. Once here, they petition for legal protection to remain, based on their “well-founded fear”³ of persecution in their country of origin. The five “protected” grounds for which they may claim to be persecuted are: their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or their political opinion. Under the principle of “non-refoulement,” (non-return)⁴ they cannot be sent home unless they fail to demonstrate a valid reason to remain. Despite the fact that each case is unique, each applicant must present some evidence, “‘direct or circumstantial,”⁵ that she was persecuted for at least one of the five “protected grounds” listed above.⁶

Once they have arrived in the United States, asylum seekers follow different paths through the complexities of our legal system, depending, first of all, upon whether they came with or without valid immigration papers. A student visa is an example of valid immigration status. In Appendix I, I have briefly outlined the various legal categories under which seekers can apply for asylum, depending on their differing claims. Every asylum seeker, however, must present her claim before a representative of the law. Often the first of these representatives is an asylum officer, not a federal judge. These individuals are graduates of a required training course.⁷ Only after the petitioner has failed with the asylum officer, is she referred to a judge. Each of these individuals faces different dilemmas in assessing a claim.⁸ A psychosocial evaluation is frequently submitted to the official, either judge or asylum officer, because it is accepted as evidence in support of an asylum claim.

The psychosocial assessment process: legal benefits and beyond

Forensic goals

My services to asylum seekers are sought by an attorney.⁹ Although some asylum seekers do not secure the assistance of an attorney to help them through the process of applying for asylum, those who do have a much greater chance of success.¹⁰ An attorney will not only represent them, as necessary, in court, but will request the necessary supporting documents. Many asylees are able to find an attorney who will work pro-bono.¹¹ Whether paid or not, the attorney will be the star of the court presentation. All other contributors (psychologist, medical doctor, country experts, etc.) are secondary figures.

More and more frequently, a psychosocial evaluation is requested by an attorney because, as described above, the court considers psychological symptoms, especially PTSD, to be evidence that an applicant’s “well-founded fear” is the outcome of concrete events –—traumatic ones—which were caused when the individual was persecuted elsewhere.¹² In fact, according to Vaisman-Tzachor (2014, p. 4) “the psychological evaluation is [often] . . . the only viable evidentiary vehicle by which to demonstrate the veracity of persecution.” Thus, along with other advantages that may accrue from such an evaluation, the main one is its acceptance as corroboration of the client’s story.

As a health professional offering pro-bono assistance to an asylee,¹³ attorneys find me through an agency. There are a number of such agencies.¹⁴ Most recently, the agency from which I have been receiving referrals is Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), in New York City.^15,16

The primary goal, in completing an evaluation remains essentially unchanged for the psychologist/mental health professional, regardless of the nature of the case. That goal is to describe in detail the client’s experience of persecution/torture and its effects, as these occurred at home and as they continue to be experienced. To do this well, however, it behooves the evaluator also to learn about the applicant’s well-being before she was persecuted, for the sake of comparing the past to the present. Thus the interview should also include a brief account of the client’s past history, both personal and professional.

Before completing an evaluation, it is useful to understand the nature of the client’s legal claim, whether it is an affirmative or defensive asylum claim or a claim for withholding from removal under an alternative legal form (see Appendix I for help here), because the nature of the claim often has some bearing on the subject matter that should be covered in the interview. For example, I recently evaluated a seventeen year old girl, still a child (that is, a person under the age of eighteen) from the legal standpoint. She was applying for asylum as an individual with Special Immigrant Juvenile status, for which she was eligible because—as required—her parents had abandoned her before she was five. However, she was also applying as a victim of persecution. She met the legal requirements for the latter because she had witnessed the murder of a friend and then had been kidnapped herself and threatened at gunpoint by the murdering gang.¹⁷ Special Immigrant Juvenile status and persecution are not only separate claims, from a legal standpoint, but they also have separate emotional effects. Thus each needed to be covered separately in my interview.

It is also important to be sensitive to the fact that marginalization of different groups has different effects, first because of the age at which the marginalization begins and then because of the location in which it took place. A gay man who has been marginalized by both his family and his culture (Pepper, 2005; Reading & Rubin, 2011) will probably have suffered longer and in different ways in some countries than a man who has been punished for the political affiliations he developed as an adult. An individual from a certain part of the world, Africa, for example, may have particular culturally ingrained difficulties in representing herself (Smith, Stuart, & Gangsei, 2015). A person who has suffered multiple traumas (Herman, 2004) will have a wide range of symptoms, which may differ from symptoms resulting from trauma that began in adulthood (Boulanger, 2007). For those who come from cultures in which speaking about one’s feelings is frowned upon and discouraged (Blackwell, 2005), telling their personal stories may be difficult. The uniqueness of each case should determine the content of the interview and the manner in which trauma is explored.

Depending on its unique characteristics, the attorney in charge may ask the psychologist to emphasize certain details in regard to some aspect of a given case. For example, in cases in which the asylee is applying beyond the one year deadline, the psychologist may be asked to explain the circumstances which have determined this delay. Much less frequently, when the client has been psychotic, the psychologist may be asked to describe where and how her contact with reality might have affected her perceptions, especially of persecution.

Finally, although not specifically important to forensic needs, I deem it important to describe the circumstances in which my interview has taken place, whether in my personal office (usual) or in another setting, especially if that other setting is a prison. When the latter is the case, I try to describe the surroundings in some detail, emphasizing its effects on the applicant’s wellbeing. Imprisoning an asylee deprives that person of her rights under the law, according to the original Geneva Conventions. Recently, however, the UNHCR has set new detention guidelines¹⁸ because, in fact, so many countries, pressed by increasing numbers of immigrants, are detaining asylum seekers along with immigrants with other claims. The United States is a grave offender in this regard. In describing the effects of this treatment on the petitioner, in my affidavit, I can underscore the fact that her rights are being abused. Please see Appendix II for more about this.

General set-up and procedure

Before meeting an asylee, I request all the data the attorney has collected. In order to proceed, I need to read either a moderately detailed written interview of the asylee or her personal affidavit. In reading either of these, I learn her history. In the margins I note my own questions about relevant aspects of the individual’s life which have not been covered before. I will use these questions to try to elicit a less rehearsed narrative than the one the asylee has told before, for by the time she gets to me, she will have already told her story a few times, to one attorney or another. Often, as a result, an asylee will have memorized much of her presentation or have developed a mode in which she describes it. One person I interviewed, for example, told her (absolutely hair-raising) story in a singsong, rhythmic manner. She put the extra details we arrived at during our interview into this rhythm as well. This may have helped to protect her from what, I learned later, had been life-disrupting despair. Another interviewee began crying as soon as she sat down. She cried, seemingly on cue, at various points in her story, until we got into new, unexplored territory. At that point, to my surprise, the crying stopped abruptly. She looked alert and seemed to be searching her mind for new details, apparently more interested in discovering these than in impressing me with her pain. Fresh, more authentic details, I believe, are not only convincing to the court, but help the client herself to better grasp the totality of her experience.

Often the surprises that emerge in these interviews are deeply touching. One woman, for example, told about the birth of a child she had had at the age of thirteen, the result of a rape, and of the terrible death of this child at the hands of uneducated relatives who had subjected him to a skull-forming ritual, which killed him. A middle-aged man—brilliant, an academic—described the deep depression into which he fell after his father died, the victim of a car crash, set up, he thought, by the political opposition. Neither the death of the woman’s son nor of the man’s father had been mentioned at all in their own affidavits, based on material collected by their attorneys at an earlier date.

When the client arrives, I seat her facing me. If there is an interpreter, I seat that person behind the client to her right. Although the presence of an interpreter inevitably creates a three-person event,¹⁹ I want the asylee to understand that, as much as possible, the interview we are about to undertake (and co-create) is between her and me, not between her and the interpreter, who in all likelihood she will have met before, in the office of her attorney. In addition to a bathroom, I offer something to drink (water, juice, soda, coffee) and usually some small sort of sustenance before we begin. Thus far, no one has ever accepted any of these before we begin, except water. At the end, however, clients often seem to welcome a bit of both food and drink.²⁰

I begin the interview by asking the applicant if she knows why she has been sent to see me. Usually the answer is vague; she may know that I am a psychologist, but what that has to do with her is unclear, maybe even a bit frightening. I explain that, as a psychologist, I will be asking her about the feelings she experienced, first at home, when she was persecuted, and then later, as a result of the persecution. I acknowledge that the interview may well be painful. I explain (looking at her hard, hoping to share my own feelings of incredulity about this) that I do this because her asylum officer (or judge) will consider her feelings to be proof that she has suffered! I try to make clear that I want to hear whatever she has to say about the things she has been through and about her feelings now, as a result.²¹ I underscore the fact that all of these feelings are normal. This information may be reassuring to an asylee, who may have wondered if she had gone crazy, given not only the presence of nightmares and flashbacks, but the presence of the uncomfortable conviction that the person she was before her escape has disappeared.²² I add that I intend to present her as positively as I can to the asylum official, as a person desirable as their neighbor and a co-citizen in the United States. In my experience, asylum seekers want to collaborate with this agenda. Thus, not only have I presented my goals, but I have also received permission to do a difficult interview (which is ethical) and so we begin.²³

There are a variety of approaches to ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Praise
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Long Cases
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Nature of Psychosocial Asylum Evaluations: Implications for Client and Clinician
• 2 Heroic Asylum Seekers from Around the World
• 3 Female Genital Mutilation and the Wish for “Life”: Cultural Considerations in the Development of Personal Agency
• 4 Central American Women on the Run: Feminicide and its History
• Afterword
• Appendix I: Asylum Law in Brief
• Appendix II: Imprisoning Asylum Seekers
• Appendix III: Outline: Prospective Affidavit of a Mental Health Professional in Support of an Asylum Seeker
• Appendix IV: Female Genital Mutilation: Facts and Figures
• Appendix V: Background Information: My Clients/Other Women with Fgm
• Index