“What Is Truth?” Negotiating Christian Convert Asylum Seekers’ Credibility

• Date: 01 September 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/00027162211059454
• Author: Zoe Given-Wilson,Lena Rose
• Published date: 01 September 2021

ANNALS, AAPSS, 697, September 2021 221

DOI: 10.1177/00027162211059454

“What Is

Truth?”

Negotiating

Christian

Convert Asylum

Seekers’

Credibility

By

LENA ROSE

and

ZOE GIVEN-WILSON

1059454ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY“WHAT IS TRUTH?”

research-article2021

The arrival of more than five million refugees in Europe

since 2015 has led to increasing investigations into

Europe’s management of multiculturalism and reli-

gious pluralism. Studies to date have chiefly focused on

the integration of the cultural and religious “other,” but

we take a different approach by analyzing asylum pro-

ceedings in Germany, based on conversions from Islam

to Christianity. Negotiations of credibility of newly

converted Christian asylum seekers help to show how

European legal authorities conceive of their own his-

torically Christian identity and their expectations of

newcomers. We show how these negotiations are influ-

enced by the power dynamics in the courts, under-

standings of cultural and religious contexts, and

assumptions about conversion and Christianity. Our

interdisciplinary approach provides insights into how

European legal authorities navigate the challenge of

cultural and religious others to Europe’s cultural cohe-

sion, “values,” and secularism.

Keywords: asylum; credibility; religious conversion;

law; cognition

It is a midsummer afternoon in 2020 in a

German administrative court. The middle-

aged, male judge, interpreter, and one of the

authors (LR) are waiting for the solicitor and

appellant to arrive. The hearing will be based

on religious conversion and associated fear of

persecution. The atmosphere is informal, and

Lena Rose is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow

at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. She leads and

manages the project “Christianity on Trial: Asylum,

Conversion, and the Modern-Nation State” (2019–

2022), which focuses on the negotiation of Christianity

in asylum processes of religious converts.

Zoe Given-Wilson is a clinical psychologist and postdoc-

toral researcher at the Centre for the Study of Emotion

and Law at Royal Holloway. She has contributed to

UNHCR guidance on credibility assessment in young

people, UK Home Office training for asylum case work-

ers, and European Asylum Support Office training.

Correspondence: lena.rose@csls.ox.ac.uk