How is "credibility" made? A genealogy of UK Border Practices, 1914 - 2009

英国内政部今天是如何“做历史”的？内政部、殖民地部和外交部过去是如何“做历史”的？“可信度”是英国移民中的一个概念，通常被认为是表面价值，但实际上需要进行历史分析。我的博士学位调查了“可信度”的发展，将种族，性别和犯罪组织到英国驱逐人民的政府政策中。前英国殖民地。“可信度”是“难民地位确定”的法律的依据的核心，自1990年代以来，也是关于可信人物和真实文件证据的论述的重要组成部分。我的项目规定赋予内政部个案工作者的权力，以验证或诋毁英国后期殖民治理，非殖民化和战后移民控制的历史生活史的历史。该项目将今天的地区研究学者向庇护法庭提供的关于寻求庇护者原籍国的专家证人报告置于与前英国殖民地有关的学术知识和政府政策的更广泛谱系中。除了根据判例法、立法和议会辩论提供“可信度”的说明外，我的项目分析了“可信度”话语是如何被各种不同的运动和与英国移民控制的日常互动所挑战和重新表述的。种族主义和反种族主义团体--包括帝国主义白色女权主义者、殖民地服务养老金领取者、新联邦移民和难民权利活动家--如何使移民、移民制度和大英帝国遗产的“可信度”变得更高？最终，我的项目问我们如何注册英国殖民主义历史的政治语言与非政治化（在难民公约的五个类别内）和随后从前英国殖民地到英国的经济移民的犯罪化。该项目将历史化“真正的”寻求庇护者和“欺诈性”经济移民之间的分离，这种二元关系现在被认为是“后自由主义”政治话语的标志。

How does the UK Home Office "do history" today? How have the Home, Colonial and Foreign Offices "done history" in the past? "Credibility" is a concept in British immigration often taken at face value but actually in need of historical analysis. My PhD investigates the development of "credibility" as notion that organises race, gender and criminality into governmental policies for deporting people in the U.K. to former British colonies. "Credibility" is central in legal sources of "refugee status determination" and since the 1990s part and parcel of a discourse about credible characters and authentic documentary evidence. My project sets out to historicise the authority given to Home Office caseworkers to validate or discredit life histories in relation to histories of British late colonial governance, decolonisation and post-war immigration controls. The project contextualises the provision of expert witness reports by today's Area Studies scholars to Asylum Tribunal Courts about asylum seekers' countries of origin within a wider genealogy of the production of academic knowledge and government policies relating to former British colonies.In addition to offering an account of "credibility" based on caselaw, legislation and parliamentary debates, my project parses how "credibility" discourse has been challenged and reformulated by very different kinds of campaigns and everyday interactions with British immigration controls. How have both racist and anti-racist groups - including imperialist white feminists, Colonial Service pensioners, New Commonwealth immigrants and refugee rights activists - rendered the "credibility" of migrants, of the immigration system, and of the British Empire's legacies?Ultimately, my project asks how the political language in which we register the history of British colonialism relates to the depoliticisation (within the five categories of the Refugee Convention) and subsequent criminalisation of economic migration to Britain from former British colonies. This project will historicise the separation between "genuine" asylum-seekers and "fraudulent" economic migrants, a binary now considered the hallmark of 'postliberal' political discourse.