In the present study the authors used an event-contingent daily recording strategy, the Rochester Interaction Record, to

This paper presents a protocol for a cluster-randomised study that evaluates the effectiveness of a skill-training programme for social work professionals with the aim of improving the follow-up of low-income families within Norwegian labour and welfare services. The protocol describes the programme as well as the research design of the trial.While the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration are responsible for developing and implementing the programme, researchers at Oslo and Akershus University College are conducting an independent evaluation of its effectiveness. The cluster-randomised field experiment will take place over a 40-month period, involving 29 labour and welfare offices, 58 family coordinators and, based on estimations, 650 families. The research is funded by the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration, who has reviewed the protocol.

Assessing claims for refugee status is a task often riddled with uncertainties, not least because of the challenge of establishing the credibility of the claims. The uncertainties enable divergent interpretations of both evidence and legal rules, thereby constituting a space for discretion in the refugee status determination process. This article explores how decision makers in the Norwegian asylum system reached a conviction about the outcome of asylum claims, despite numerous uncertainties. Decision makers who worked closely together developed a system of distinction that enabled them to single out applicants with protection needs from those who were not considered to be eligible. This system ordered the space for discretion, thereby reducing doubts about the outcome. It was based on the law and other formal sources, but also on recognizing patterns of difference and similarity with previous decisions. The emphasis on comparison between cases meant that the outcome of an individual application could not be understood in isolation; the distinctions between applicants who were accepted and those who were rejected depended, in part, on the case set as a whole. The findings suggest that, in a context of uncertainty, refugee status is to some extent determined by producing a local yardstick of who ‘the refugee’ is.

This chapter is based on the doctoral dissertation, 'The burdens of discretion. Managing uncertainty in the asylum bureaucracy' (Liodden 2017).

No abstract