MOTHER OF EXILES: A TWO-PAPER DISCUSSION OF ANTI-OPPRESSIVE THEORIES APPLIED TO THE ASYLUM PROCESS

This two-paper dissertation examines the U.S. asylum process and applicant narrative through the frameworks of liberation psychology and narrative therapy, exploring how individuals navigate the task of recounting their lives within a legal system structured by borders, ideology, and historical power. The first paper situates the U.S. asylum system within historical, political, and ideological contexts. Using liberation psychology, it traces how structures of power shape not only policy but also the conditions under which people must describe their experiences of persecution. The second paper applies narrative therapy concepts to examine how asylum testimonies are constructed and how this process engages identity, memory, and meaning. Across both papers, I argue that testimony is not simply a recounting of events but a negotiated narrative shaped by law, culture, power, and the individual’s own interpretive and expressive choices. The asylum process can impose narrative constraints, distort lived experience, or demand coherence where persecution or fear of persecution has left rupture. Yet individuals also bring insight, resilience, and narrative authority to this process. This dissertation highlights these tensions—between structure and agency, silence and speech, erasure and presence—as central to understanding asylum testimony as both a legal requirement and a deeply human act. Finally, this work outlines future directions for qualitative, quantitative, and participatory research that examine testimony creation as a relational, psychological, and political phenomenon. It invites scholars and practitioners to imagine asylum systems informed by a deeper understanding of narrative, liberation, and the longstanding human practice of movement in search of safety and belonging.