2026/01/22 by Sharelle Anne Aitchison
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Migration, Health and Trauma #Migration, Refugees, and Integration #Torture, Ethics, and Law
paper · doi:10.1093/ijrl/eeag001
openalex publication_date 2026/01/22 · openalex created_date 2026/07/30 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Abstract International law operates on an emergency time model, where the law responds primarily to crisis moments as distinct to systemic, structural processes and underlying contextual dynamics. This model extends to refugee status determination, where decision makers predominantly construct harm within the meaning of ‘being persecuted’ on a linear, episodic, temporal logic that is forward-looking. Whereas future episodes of physical harm lend themselves to this model, mental harms, such as trauma, that are cyclical, slow, and sustained, are less compatible. Contemporary neuroscience conveys how trauma states, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), may develop slowly and extend in time. They can be long-acting, continuum contingent, and even irreversible. Western dualist legal approaches in refugee law typically overlook the sustained temporal arc of mental harm and/or designate it as past harm, in contradistinction to qualifying future harm within the refugee definition. This renders serious mental harm precipitated prior to, and continuing at the time of, refugee status determination invisible to the ‘being persecuted’ standard and leads to exclusionary protection outcomes for the most vulnerable under the Refugee Convention. With a particular focus on contemporary neuroscience and alternative temporal knowledges, this paper explores the slow violence of mental trauma and through a reparative reading of the refugee definition calls for a non-dualist temporal interpretation that renders visible ongoing mental trauma within the refugee definition. It invites scholarship from differing standpoints and disciplines to contribute collaboratively to an ongoing conversation as to the spatial and temporal parameters of harm within refugee status determination.