Judging Refugees: Narrative and Oral Testimony in Refugee Status Determination [Hardcover]

Reveals the impossible demands for narrative placed on refugee applicants and their oral testimony within state processes for refugee status determination.A critical, interdisciplinary account of how refugees and their oral testimony are judged by refugee-receiving states. A comprehensive legal analysis of systems of refugee status determination in Australia and Canada and the role of narrative studies and narrative theory in understanding international refugee law and its application.A critical, interdisciplinary account of how refugees and their oral testimony are judged by refugee-receiving states. A comprehensive legal analysis of systems of refugee status determination in Australia and Canada and the role of narrative studies and narrative theory in understanding international refugee law and its application.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. NlSE