‘The Truth of Oneself’: Governing Homosexual Asylum Seekers Through Confession

This article addresses the question of how the ‘truth’ about homosexual asylum seekers is constituted through legal proceedings, what kinds of subjectivities are produced in the asylum process and how these issues reflect the EU law as it relates to questions of asylum. The analysis is carried out through the Foucauldian concept of confession and case analysis of the Court of Justice of the European Union’s legal praxis. The article concludes that the credibility assessment of homosexual asylum seekers can be understood as a confessional practice where ‘truth-telling’ subjects are produced and linked to relationships of power and domination.