Truth-Claim Capital at Borders: The Role of Trust in the State at a Regional Human Rights Court

Abstract

This article introduces the concept of truth-claim capital to examine positional struggles over representations of the social world as valid. Drawing on Bourdieu, the concept highlights power asymmetries in converting information into evidence and evidence into proof, as well as contestations over competing truth claims rather than the coexistence of multiple truths. State actors have denied pushbacks, during which people are refused access to asylum procedures and violently forced back across borders. Against this backdrop, this article examines how truth claims about border practices are decided on by registry staff and judges at a regional human rights court. Participant observations of the Cyprus-Lebanon border (2020–2024) and case law analysis demonstrate that legal truth is deeply embedded in interpretive practices and discretionary decisions that are conditioned by institutionalized trust in the state. Border violence is filtered out of judgments because legal actors’ discretion is shaped by, and entangled with, bureaucratic routines.