Paper Borders

This PhD study addresses the tension between a (children’s) rights-based approach and the imperative to ascertain the veracity of claims in asylum processes, specifically present in asylum interviews. Drawing on narrative interviews with professionals and co-creative visual research with young newcomers in Brussels, this work unravels the daily intricacies of the asylum procedure. The primary focus is on the pivotal moment where children heavily rely on their voice, story, and institutional performance to determine their fate. The results, echoing multiple voices, reveal the challenges young people face to meet institutional requirements in a system not set up with children in mind. Notably, the narratives of the young participants in the project underscore that an understanding of asylum hearings cannot be isolated from experiences of injustice before, during, and after the hearing itself. As such, the results depict the complex interaction between waithood, time, and existential uncertainty and shed light on experiences of procedural injustices that permeate the asylum process. Based on these findings, the author makes a provocation: can procedures be fair and “just” in a system that is experienced as inherently violent?