“Look Me in the Eye”: Empathy and the Transmission of Trauma in the Refugee Determination Process

Debates between refugee advocates, institutional actors and the wider public regarding refugee claimants often evoke anger, fear and sadness, as well as more positive emotions such as compassion, suggesting a complex societal emotional response toward refugee stories. This article analyses the emotional interactions surrounding refugee determination hearings, as reflected in the discourse of administrative judges and refugees. Our results show that the concepts of empathy and compassion are often used by judges to confirm the benevolent image that the administrative tribunal wants to project as a representative body of the host country. However, the very unequal power relations of the hearing setting structure the transmission of the refugee stories in a way that often prevents an emotional encounter between decision makers and refugees. Beyond the specific context of the refugee determination process, these results illustrate how prevalent psychological models of empathy and the transmission of trauma implicitly reveal a political dimension that validates representations of the helpless but potentially dangerous Other, representations that often underlie broader north-south power relations.