Importing forensic biomedicine into asylum adjudication: Genetic ancestry and isotope testing in the United Kingdom

TY - CHAP

T1 - Importing forensic biomedicine into asylum adjudication

T2 - Genetic ancestry and isotope testing in the United Kingdom

AU - Tutton, Richard

AU - Hauskeller, Christine

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © Cambridge University Press 2015.

PY - 2014/1/1

Y1 - 2014/1/1

N2 - When refugees apply for asylum, they have to relate a narrative of their persecution in their country of origin. Evaluating the veracity or otherwise of these narratives is central to the asylum adjudication process. Over the past decade or so, determination of national identity has become vitally important in assessing whether someone claiming the right to asylum is a legitimate refugee or an economic migrant. Border agencies have focused increasingly on the possibility that economic migrants might pose as citizens of particular countries in order to gain access to Britain as recognized refugees. This phenomenon has become known as “nationality swapping.” Border control agencies have introduced several methods to eliminate supposed pretend asylum seekers. In this chapter we discuss the Human Provenance Pilot Project (HPPP) conducted in 2009–10 by the U.K. Border Agency (UKBA) that investigated the utility of genetic ancestry and isotope testing as means of corroborating refugees’ nationality claims. At its launch, the HPPP was heavily criticized by leading scientists, journalists, and parliamentarians on scientific as well as ethical grounds. In response, the UKBA scaled it back to a small pilot study that came to an end in spring 2010. Over a year later, in June 2011, the UKBA finally announced that the tested techniques would not be introduced into asylum procedures, at least for the time being. The use of molecular biological techniques for determining nationality – an exclusively political category – is clearly a highly problematic endeavor. The fact that the UKBA should have taken an interest in using such technologies in the first place, and then persisted with trialing them in the face of concerted scientific opposition, appears at first sight to be rather surprising. However, closer analysis reveals that the Border Agency’s turn to these technologies is quite in keeping with the increasingly prejudicial tenor of asylum policy and practice within the United Kingdom. As we show in this chapter, the molecular technologies of genetic ancestry and isotope testing had previously been employed for forensic purposes in criminal investigations, and they were imported into asylum adjudication directly from that context. Their adoption by the UKBA is indicative of a growing tendency on the part of the British immigration authorities to adopt forms of expert inquiry and knowledge production developed originally for purposes of criminal investigation, and to redirect that expertise to the work of challenging asylum seekers’ personal testimony.

AB - When refugees apply for asylum, they have to relate a narrative of their persecution in their country of origin. Evaluating the veracity or otherwise of these narratives is central to the asylum adjudication process. Over the past decade or so, determination of national identity has become vitally important in assessing whether someone claiming the right to asylum is a legitimate refugee or an economic migrant. Border agencies have focused increasingly on the possibility that economic migrants might pose as citizens of particular countries in order to gain access to Britain as recognized refugees. This phenomenon has become known as “nationality swapping.” Border control agencies have introduced several methods to eliminate supposed pretend asylum seekers. In this chapter we discuss the Human Provenance Pilot Project (HPPP) conducted in 2009–10 by the U.K. Border Agency (UKBA) that investigated the utility of genetic ancestry and isotope testing as means of corroborating refugees’ nationality claims. At its launch, the HPPP was heavily criticized by leading scientists, journalists, and parliamentarians on scientific as well as ethical grounds. In response, the UKBA scaled it back to a small pilot study that came to an end in spring 2010. Over a year later, in June 2011, the UKBA finally announced that the tested techniques would not be introduced into asylum procedures, at least for the time being. The use of molecular biological techniques for determining nationality – an exclusively political category – is clearly a highly problematic endeavor. The fact that the UKBA should have taken an interest in using such technologies in the first place, and then persisted with trialing them in the face of concerted scientific opposition, appears at first sight to be rather surprising. However, closer analysis reveals that the Border Agency’s turn to these technologies is quite in keeping with the increasingly prejudicial tenor of asylum policy and practice within the United Kingdom. As we show in this chapter, the molecular technologies of genetic ancestry and isotope testing had previously been employed for forensic purposes in criminal investigations, and they were imported into asylum adjudication directly from that context. Their adoption by the UKBA is indicative of a growing tendency on the part of the British immigration authorities to adopt forms of expert inquiry and knowledge production developed originally for purposes of criminal investigation, and to redirect that expertise to the work of challenging asylum seekers’ personal testimony.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84954093648&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1017/CBO9781107706460.013

DO - 10.1017/CBO9781107706460.013

M3 - Chapter

AN - SCOPUS:84954093648

SN - 9781107069060

SP - 202

EP - 220

BT - Adjudicating Refugee and Asylum Status

PB - Cambridge University Press

ER -