Spirited Away: Asylum Law and the Institutional Violence of Legal Discourse

Abstract:     
This paper takes the case file of a Sri Lankan asylum seeker found in the archives at the Federal Court of Montreal in March 2007 and submits it to a textual analysis. Starting with the "facts" as stated in the Judicial Review decision, the analysis works backwards through the rest of the file, uncovering the various discursive processes by which those "facts" were eventually arrived at. The violence done to this person's story by the legal institution is not only patent but, it is claimed, representative. Legal discourse, and not just in the context of asylum law, is more motivated, more political and more dehumanizing than we like to admit.

Keywords: asylum, asylum seeker, refugee, law, Sri Lanka, Canada, legal discourse, textual analysis, Derrida

JEL Classifications: K39

Accepted Paper Series