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

如今，英国内政部是如何“研究历史”的？内政部、殖民地和外交部过去是如何“做历史”的？“诚信”是英国移民中的一个概念，通常被视为表面价值，但实际上需要历史分析。我的博士研究的是“信誉”的发展，这一概念将种族、性别和犯罪行为组织到英国政府驱逐英国人到前英国殖民地的政策中。“可信度”是“难民身份确定”的法律来源的核心，自20世纪90年代以来，它一直是关于可信人物和真实文献证据的论述的重要组成部分。我的项目旨在将赋予内政部（Home Office）个案工作者的权力历史化，以证实或质疑与英国晚期殖民统治、非殖民化和战后移民控制相关的生活史。该项目将今天的区域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纳入更广泛的学术知识生产谱系和与前英国殖民地有关的政府政策的背景。除了提供基于判例法、立法和议会辩论的“可信度”解释外，我的项目还分析了“可信度”话语是如何受到不同类型的运动以及与英国移民管制的日常互动的挑战和重新制定的。种族主义和反种族主义团体——包括帝国主义白人女权主义者、殖民地服务养老金领取者、新英联邦移民和难民权利活动家——是如何使移民、移民制度和大英帝国遗产的“可信度”变得可信的？最终，我的项目询问我们记录英国殖民主义历史的政治语言如何与非政治化（在难民公约的五个类别内）以及随后从前英国殖民地向英国的经济移民的刑事定罪相关。这个项目将把“真正的”寻求庇护者和“欺诈的”经济移民之间的分离历史化，这种二元对立现在被认为是“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.