Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T00:52:09.334Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Asylum Courts, Transnational Petitioning, and Digital Dispersal in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2020

Benjamin N. Lawrance ,
Erin B. Corcoran  and
Louise Hooper
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Asylum court records are a potentially important evidentiary basis for postcolonial African history. Asylum-seeking is a contemporary transnational iteration of a rich African petitioning tradition. In the contemporary era, the digitization of court records, and their dispersal as a function of the shifting division of work between ministries, courts, and related bureaucracies, presents a challenge to researchers. Digital record keeping may improve accessibility, but only if researchers are familiar with the technology and archival methods and practices accompanying digitization.

Résumé

Résumé

Les archives des cours du droit d'asile constituent une source potentiellement importante pour l’histoire africaine postcoloniale. La recherche d’asile est une nouvelle manifestation transnationale d'une longue tradition de déposition de pétitions en Afrique. Aujourd’hui, la numérisation des archives judiciaires et leur dispersion en fonction de la division du travail entre ministères, tribunaux et administrations compétentes constituent un défi pour les chercheurs. La conservation d’archives numériques peut améliorer l’accessibilité, mais uniquement si les chercheurs connaissent les technologies ainsi que les méthodes et pratiques d'archivage accompagnant la numérisation.

Type
Archives and the Digital Turn
Information
History in Africa , Volume 47 , June 2020 , pp. 243 - 267
Copyright
© African Studies Association, 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahlman, Jeffrey, Living with Nkrumahism: Nation, State, and Pan-Africanism in Ghana (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2017).Google Scholar
Allman, Jean, “Phantoms of the Archive: Kwame Nkrumah, a Nazi Pilot Named Hanna, and the Contingencies of Postcolonial History-Writing,” American Historical Review 118–1 (2013), 104–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barber, Karin, The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arminda, Bradford Bepko, “Public Availability or Practical Obscurity: The Debate over Public Access to Court Records on the Internet,” New York Law School Law Review 49–3 (2004–2005), 967–992.Google Scholar
Brown, Susan, “Don’t Mind the Gap: Evolving Digital Modes of Scholarly Production across the Digital Humanities Divide,” in: Coleman, Daniel and Kamboureli, Smaro (eds.), The Culture of the Humanities (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2011), 203–231.Google Scholar
Bruce-Lockhardt, Katherine, “The Archival Afterlives of Prison Officers in Idi Amin’s Uganda: Writing Social Histories of the Postcolonial State,” History in Africa 44 (2018), 245–274.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buckland, Michael, “What is a ‘Digital Document?’” Document Numérique (Paris) 2–2 (1998), 221–230.Google Scholar
Burrill, Emily S., “Disputing Wife Abuse: Tribunal Narratives of the Corporal Punishment of Wives in Colonial Sikasso, 1930s,” Cahiers d’Études Africaines 185/186 (2005), 603–622.Google Scholar
Burrill, Emily S., States of Marriage: Gender, Justice, and Rights in Colonial Mali (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2015).Google Scholar
Chanock, Martin, Law, Custom, and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).Google Scholar
Clifford, James, “Identity in Mashpee,” in: The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 277–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, Barbara, Marriage in Maradi: Gender and Culture in a Hausa Society in Niger (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 1997).Google Scholar
Corcoran, Erin B., “Bypassing Civil Gideon: A Legislative Proposal to Address the Rising Costs and Unmet Legal Needs of Unrepresented Immigrants,” West Virginia Law Review 115 (2012), 643–685.Google Scholar
Cupchik, Gerald C., “The Digitized Self in the Internet Age,” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 5–4 (2011), 318–328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Decker, Alicia, In Idi Amin’s Shadow: Women, Gender, and Militarism in Uganda (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2014).Google Scholar
des Forges, Alison, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (New York: Human Rights First, 1999).Google Scholar
Diop, Papa Momar, Guides des archives du Sénégal colonial (Paris: l’Harmattan, 2011), 174–175.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel, The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Routledge 1989).Google Scholar
Girvan, Anita, “wii 2 r ephemera: Archiving Eco-Cultural Morphology,” CTheory (ctheory.net, 30 April 2013), https://www.mmduvic.ca/index.php/ctheory/article/view/14793/5670.Google Scholar
Good, Anthony, Anthropology and Expertise in the Asylum Courts (New York: Routledge-Cavendish, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hogg, Trina Leah, “From Bandits to Political Prisoners: Detention and Deportation on the Sierra Leone Frontier,” in: Carpenter, Nathan R. and Lawrance, Benjamin N. (eds.), Africans in Exile: Mobility, Law, and Identity (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2018), 54–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacquemet, Marco, “The Digitalization of the Asylum Process (and the Digitizing of Evidence),” in: Haas, Bridget M. and Shuman, Amy (eds.), Technologies of Suspicion and the Ethics of Obligation in Political Asylum (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2019), 153–176.Google Scholar
Jean-Baptiste, Rachel, Conjugal Rights: Marriage, Sexuality and Urban Life in Colonial Libreville, Gabon (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2014).Google Scholar
Korieh, Chima, “‘May It Please Your Honor:’ Letters of Petition as Historical Evidence in an African Colonial Context,” History in Africa 37 (2010), 83–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawrance, Benjamin N., “Petitioners, ‘Bush Lawyers,’ and Letter Writers: Court Access in British-Occupied Lomé, 1914–1920,” in: Lawrance, Benjamin N., Osborn, Emily L. and Roberts, Richard L. (eds.), Intermediaries, Interpreters and Clerks: African Employees and the Making of Colonial Africa (Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 94–114.Google Scholar
Lawrance, Benjamin N., Locality, Mobility and ‘Nation:’ Periurban Colonialism in Togo’s Eweland, 1900–1960 (Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007).Google Scholar
Lawrance, Benjamin N., “Boko Haram, Refugee Mimesis, and the Archive of Contemporary Gender-Based Violence,” Radical History Review 126 (2016), 159–170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawrance, Benjamin N., Berger, Iris, Redeker, Tricia Hepner, Tague, Joanna and Terretta, Meredith, “Law, Expertise, and Protean Ideas about African Migrants,” in: Berger, Iris, Redeker, Tricia Hepner, Lawrance, Benjamin N., Tague, Joanna and Terretta, Meredith (eds.), African Asylum at a Crossroads: Activism, Expert Testimony, and Refugee Rights (Athens OH: Ohio University Press), 1–27.Google Scholar
Leahy, Mark, “Apologies for Blanks or Laments for Dumbness: Tina Darragh’s Opposable Dumbs as Open Source and/or Open Content,” C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-Century Writings 4–1 (2016), 1–27.Google Scholar
Leary, Patrick, “Googling the Victorians,” Journal of Victorian Culture 10–1 (2005), 72–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicholson, Bob, “The Digital Turn: Exploring the Methodological Possibilities of Digital Newspaper Archives,” Media History 19–1 (2013), 59–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lichtblau, Eric, “Report Faults Aids in Hiring at Justice Dept.,” Washington Post (29 July 2008), at A1.Google Scholar
Lydon, Ghislaine, “Slavery, Exchange, and Islamic Law: A Glimpse from the Archives of Mali and Mauritania,” African Economic History 33 (2005), 117–148.Google Scholar
Lydon, Ghislaine, “Islamic Legal Culture and Slave-Ownership Contests in Nineteenth-Century Sahara,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 40–3 (2007), 391–439.Google Scholar
MacDonald, Ian, and Toal, Ronan (eds.), Macdonald’s Immigration Law and Practice (LexisNexus, 2015).Google Scholar
Mann, Kristin, Marrying Well: Marriage, Status, and Social Change among the Educated Elite in Colonial Lagos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).Google Scholar
Mann, Kristin, and Roberts, Richard (eds.), Law in Colonial Africa (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 1991).Google Scholar
McKay, Sally, “Kristin Lucas’s Refresh: Embodied Imaginings,” RACAR: Revue d'art canadienne 40–1 (2015), 55–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKinnon, Sara L., “Citizenship and the Performance of Credibility: Audiencing Gender-Based Asylum Seekers in US Immigration Courts,” Text and Performance Quarterly 29–3 (2009), 205–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKinnon, Sara L., Gendered Asylum: Race and Violence in U.S. Law and Politics (Urbana-Champaign IL: University of Illinois Press, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meneses, Maria Paula, “Pluralism, Law and Citizenship in Mozambique: Mapping the Complexity,” Oficina do Centro de Estudos Sociais 291 (2007), 10–12.Google Scholar
Moss, Michael, “Opening Pandora’s Box: What is an Archive in the Digital Environment?” in: Craven, Louise (ed.), What Are Archives? Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives: A Reader (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 71–87.Google Scholar
Nolte, Insa, “Colonial Politics and Precolonial History: Everyday Knowledge, Genre, and Truth in a Yoruba Town,” History in Africa 40 (2013), 1–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Osborn, Emily L., Our New Husbands Are Here: Households, Gender, and Politics in a West African State from the Slave Trade to Colonial Rule (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Pedersen, Susan, “Back to the League of Nations,” The American Historical Review 112–4 (2007), 1091–1117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rana, Shruti, “‘Streamlining’ the Rule of Law: How the Department of Justice is Undermining Judicial Review of Agency Action,” University of Illinois Law Review (2009), 829–855.Google Scholar
Roberts, Richard L., Litigants and Households: African Disputes and Colonial Courts in the French Soudan, 1895–1912 (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 2005).Google Scholar
Rockwell, Geoffrey, “A Short Guide to Evaluation of Digital Work,” Journal of Digital Humanities 1–4 (2009), 40–46.Google Scholar
Rodet, Marie, “‘Under the Guise of Guardianship and Marriage:’ Mobilizing Juvenile and Female Labor in the Aftermath of Slavery in Kayes, French Soudan, 1900–1939,” in: Roberts, Richard L. and Lawrance, Benjamin N. (eds.), Trafficking in Slavery's Wake: Law and the Experience of Women and Children in Africa (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2012), 86–100.Google Scholar
Sabharwal, Arjun, Digital Curation in the Digital Humanities: Preserving and Promoting Archival and Special Collections (Waltham MA: Chandos Publishing, 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saho, Bala, Contours of Change: Muslim Courts, Women, and Islamic Society in Colonial Bathurst, the Gambia, 1905–1965 (East Lansing MI: Michigan State University Press, 2018).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, James, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).Google Scholar
Smits, Thomas, “Problems and Possibilities of Digital Newspaper and Periodical Archives,” Tijdschrift voor Tijdschriftstudies 36 (2012), 139–146.Google Scholar
Solberg, Janine, “Googling the Archive: Digital Tools and the Practice of History,” Advances in the History of Rhetoric 15–1 (2012), 53–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Speck, Reto, and Links, Petra, “The Missing Voice: Archivists and Infrastructures for Humanities Research,” International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 7–1/2 (2013), 128–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Terretta, Meredith, “‘We Had Been Fooled into Thinking that the UN Watches over the Entire World:’ Human Rights, UN Trust Territories, and Africa’s Decolonization,” Human Rights Quarterly 34–2 (2012), 329–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Terretta, Meredith, “Cause lawyering et anticolonialisme: activisme politique et État de droit dans l’Afrique française, 1946–1960,” Politique africaine 138–2 (2015), 25–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Terretta, Meredith, “‘In the Colonies, Black Lives Don’t Matter:’ Legalism and Rights Claims across the French Empire,” Journal of Contemporary History 53–1 (2018), 12–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Terretta, Meredith, “The French Trials of Cléophas Kamitatu: Immigration Politics, Leftist Activism, and Françafrique in 1970s Paris,” in: Nathan R. Carpenter and Benjamin N. Lawrance (eds.), Africans in Exile: Mobility, Law, and Identity (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2018), 200–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Lisa, Briggs, Pam, Kerrigan, Finola and Hart, Andrew, “Exploring Digital Remediation in Support of Personal Reflection,” International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 110 (2018), 53–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Luise, “Hodgepodge Historiography: Documents, Itineraries, and the Absence of Archives,” History in Africa 42 (2015), 309–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar