Judging Refugees
Narrative and Oral Testimony in Refugee Status Determination

Reveals the impossible demands for narrative placed on refugee applicants and their oral testimony within state processes for refugee status determination.

Anthea Vogl (Author)

9781108831857, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 March 2024

190 pages
25 x 17.5 x 1.6 cm, 0.51 kg

'This book powerfully demonstrates how language shapes the socio-legal realities of refugee applicants. While credibility assessment in asylum procedures has gained increased scholarly attention, this book stands out for its unique focus on narrative performance and assessment of oral testimony in Global North asylum policies. Readers will find invaluable data and empirical analysis of asylum interviews, as well as critical reflections on the global politics of migration management. This book is bound to become a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the interconnection between narrative performance and linguistic human rights in a refugee context.' Katrijn Maryns, Associate Professor of Translation, Interpreting and Communication, Ghent University

To access state-based refugee protection regimes, refugee applicants must speak. They must narrate the basis of their claims in person, often before a single decision-maker, repeatedly and at length. In Judging Refugees Anthea Vogl investigates the black box of the refugee oral hearing and the politics of narrative within individualised processes for refugee status determination (RSD). Drawing on a rich archive of administrative oral hearings in Australia and Canada, Vogl sets global trends of diminished and fast-tracked RSD against the critical role played by the discretionary spaces of refugee decision-making, and the gate-keeping functions of credibility assessment. Judging Refugees explores the disciplining role of 'good refugee' stories within RSD and demonstrates that refugee applicants must be able to present their evidence in model Anglo-European narrative forms to be judged as authentic, credible and ultimately, to be granted access to protection.

1. Introduction
2. Law, Literature, and Narrative in the Rsd Oral Hearing
3. How did we get Here? A history of the Oral Hearing in Australia and Canada
4. The Stock Narrative of becoming a refugee
5. Narrative contest as structuring the Oral Hearing
6. 'I'll Just Stop You There': fragmentation of Refugees' Oral Testimony
7. Beyond the demand for Narrative: genres of refugee testimony
8. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Human rights & civil liberties law [LNDC]