Epistemic Justice and the Right to Be Believed

Sor Juana's intellectual arguments were frequently dismissed not because they lacked merit but because she was a woman whose voice was deemed unreliable by institutional authority. This is epistemic injustice—the systematic denial of someone's capacity to know and communicate truth. Immigrants face similar epistemic injustice: their accounts of persecution are questioned, their expertise in their own cultures is subordinated to external 'experts,' and their interpretations of their own experiences are overridden by bureaucratic assessments. This concept, illuminated through the Sophos tradition, asserts that justice requires recognizing immigrants as knowers—of their own histories, their reasons for migration, their capabilities, and their needs. It challenges systems that privilege official documentation or institutional interpretation over lived testimony. Epistemic justice means creating spaces where immigrants' knowledge—about danger, opportunity, identity, and possibility—is treated as credible and authoritative, particularly regarding their own lives.