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

今天，英国内政部是如何“创造历史”的？英国内政部、殖民部和外交部过去是如何“创造历史”的？“可信度”是英国移民中的一个概念，通常从表面上看，但实际上需要进行历史分析。我的博士研究的是“公信力”的发展，即将种族、性别和犯罪行为组织到政府将英国人驱逐到前英国殖民地的政策中。“公信力”是“难民地位确定”的法律来源的核心，自1990年代以来，“公信力”是关于可信人物和真实文件证据的重要论述。我的项目旨在对内政部社会工作者被赋予的权力进行历史化，以证实或诋毁与英国晚期殖民统治、非殖民化和战后移民控制历史相关的生活史。该项目将当今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置于一个更广泛的谱系中，其中包括与前英国殖民地有关的学术知识和政府政策的产生。除了基于案例、立法和议会辩论提供“可信度”的描述外，我的项目还分析了非常不同的运动和与英国移民管制的日常互动是如何挑战和重塑“可信度”话语的。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人士--是如何给移民、移民制度和大英帝国遗产带来“可信度”的？归根结底，我的项目要问的是，我们用来记录英国殖民主义历史的政治语言与非政治化(在“难民公约”的五类范围内)以及随后从前不列颠殖民地向英国的经济移民的刑事化有何关联。这个项目将使“真正的”寻求庇护者和“欺诈性”经济移民之间的分离成为历史，这种二元结构现在被认为是“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.