Life Stories, Disclosure and the Law
![handle is hein.journals/polar20 and id is 234 raw text is: Michelle McKinley
University of Kansas
Life Stories, Disclosure and the Law
This paper addresses the use of personal narratives in refugee women's applications for political
asylum' which recount past experiences of sexual abuse, intimate battering, and the persecutory
nature of cultural practices affecting women. The paper draws from my experience as a law
student working with clients seeking political asylum in the United States. My concern here is
to examine how legal advocates elicit and use the personal narratives of their clients for persuasive
and programmatic purposes. Part of the paper will be devoted to a critique of the appropriation
of women's narratives for advancing a particular feminist agenda demonstrably insensitive to
cultural differences. Much of the paper, however, describes the context in which lawyers elicit
the life stories of women in situations of trauma, statelessness and profound apprehension and
insecurity regarding their legal status in the United States. The paper contemplates a possible
synthesis between legal and anthropological modes of interrogation.
Life story elicitation is ineluctably coercive in the legal context-it is neither intimate nor
dialogic. Most refugee women have no evidentiary proof' of their persecution besides their
narratives. As such, the credibility of their narratives is pivotal in adjudicating their cases.
Moreover, lawyers are ethically bound to represent their clients solely on the basis of their
clients' narrative rendition of their lives. Truth therefore, is immaterial in legal representation.
Operating within these constraints, a zealous advocate must first get the [life] story straight,
then recast it into a persuasive and intelligible format for the judiciary to render a favorable
decision for her client.
Zealous advocates are also typically committed activists, who regard immigration litigation as
a vehicle for legal reform and social change. The boatloads of Chinese, Cubans and Haitians
desperate to come to America has unleashed strong anti-immigrant sentiments, which in turn
has sparked a series of hotly contested debates regarding the incorporation and exclusion of
others in the national community. But the contemporary debates about membership often
allude to a concept of community and national identity which is isolated and insulated from the
global movement of goods, capital and labor.2 The metaphors of nations as sinking lifeboats,
elite universities or private clubs besieged by applicants are untenable in light of the kinetic
reality of modern life. As Appadurai argues,
The landscape of persons who make up the shifting worlds in which we live:
immigrants, tourists, refugees, exiles, guest-workers, pilgrims and other
transitory groups constitutes an essential feature of modem life ..... Although
this[...] does not imply that stable networks of residence, kinship and friendship
no longer exist, it does imply that such stability is.... invariably influenced by
human mobility, as more people deal with the realities of having to move or
with the fantasies of wanting to move (1991:7 emphasis mine).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/polar20&div=27&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Life Stories, Disclosure and the Law
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