Judging Refugees

Narrative and Oral Testimony in Refugee Status Determination

Anthea Vogl

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2024
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781108934930
• Subtopic: Human Rights
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Series information
• Title page
• Imprints page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 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
• Appendix
• Index