Making the Right Decision: Justice in the Asylum Bureaucracy in Norway

Liodden, Tone Maia

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-94749-5_12

Cited by 15 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Mitt doktorgradsprosjekt i sosiologi handlet om hvordan saksbehandlere i Utlendingsdirektoratet (UDI) avgjør hvem som anerkjennes som flyktning (Liodden, 2017). Datamaterialet i prosjektet besto av intervjuer med saksbehandlere, dokumenter i et utvalg asylsaker og observasjoner av asylsaker i retten.…”

Section: Vurdering Av Asylsaker I Udiunclassified

Hva slags data får vi av intervjuer? Hvordan gripe praksis, taus kunnskap og mer enn forskjønnende selvpresentasjoner med intervjuer

Mangset

2024

Tett På Profesjon, Arbeid Og Politikk: Kvalitative Metodeutfordringer Og Verktøy for Å Løse Dem

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This chapter addresses two challenges in interviewing: how to grasp tacit and taken for granted practices and representations, and how to get data on accounts or practices that are not part of the official discourse on the phenomenon under study. Professional practices and life more generally are full of routinised practices and tacit knowledge that the people engaging in them are hardly aware of doing. Yet, such practices may be very defining for a profession, or be a key to understanding power-relations. However, how can we as researchers grasp them? Another challenge for researchers is the way people tend to say one thing and do something else. Getting behind established self-presentations and grasping people’s practices is a challenge, in particular through interviews. However, although we surely should try to diversify the methods we use, interviews are often the only or the best approach in a given situation. Does that mean that we should give up on getting data on practices? This chapter discusses the relationship between data on discourse (or accounts, representations, norms) and data on practice, and defines this relationship in terms of a continuum rather than a dichotomy. Finally, it discusses specific tools that one can use in interviews to get data on practice, and data on representations and norms closer to practice.

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Section: Vurdering Av Asylsaker I Udiunclassified

Hva slags data får vi av intervjuer? Hvordan gripe praksis, taus kunnskap og mer enn forskjønnende selvpresentasjoner med intervjuer

Mangset

2024

Tett På Profesjon, Arbeid Og Politikk: Kvalitative Metodeutfordringer Og Verktøy for Å Løse Dem

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Section: Vurdering Av Asylsaker I Udiunclassified

Etnografi og kritisk humanisme: Kraften i tykke beskrivelser

Vike

2024

Tett På Profesjon, Arbeid Og Politikk: Kvalitative Metodeutfordringer Og Verktøy for Å Løse Dem

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This chapter addresses three fundamental and related challenges ethnographic research faces in our own time: weakened legitimacy, thin descriptions and poverty of theory. The first mainly concerns changing views on what are considered good research ethics, something which imposes considerable restrictions on the potential of ethnography, particularly by limiting access to important arenas for fieldwork. The second – the risk that thin descriptions become dominant – is partly a consequence of the first but is also influenced by the fact that many (and probably more and more) ethnographic analyses are based on interviews alone. By theory poverty, I refer to the tendency for the understanding of ethnographic material to be to some extent disconnected from relevant theoretical reflection, and instead, for example, reduced to coding processes. I would argue that if we look at these challenges in context, we may be in a good position to recognize the need to exploit the great opportunities of ethnography even better.

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“…A way out of this dilemma for decision-makers has been to value "asylum while devaluing those who claim it" (Fassin & Kobelinsky, 2012, p. 274), which assumes that the fewer people who are granted asylum, the more protected the Refugee Convention. Other researchers have concluded that decision-makers solve this dilemma by referring to procedural matters as a way to signify justice in the absence of certainty (Johannesson, 2017;Affolter, Miaz & Poertner, 2019;Liodden, 2019).…”

Section: Contested Assumptions Underpinning Credibility Assessmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Symbolic Life of Courts: How Judicial Language, Actions, and Objects Legitimize Credibility Assessments of Asylum Appeals

Johannesson

2022

Int. Migration & Integration

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Asylum determinations are highly complex and difficult decisions. At the heart of this decision lies a credibility assessment of the asylum claimant’s narrative, which confronts the decision-maker with a seemingly straightforward question: do I believe this person’s story? To uphold legitimacy of this assessment, semi-legal criteria have been established internationally. However, these criteria have been criticized for relying on inaccurate and simplistic assumptions about human behavior, autobiographical memory, and communication. In light of this contestation, I ask how the legal-administrative practice of assessing credibility of asylum applications gains legitimacy in the eyes of the public, policy-makers, and legal professionals despite resting on highly disputable assumptions? To answer this question, I draw on interviews, observations, and written judgements from the Swedish administrative courts to explore how symbolic messages are tacitly conveyed through the use of judicial language, activities, and objects. The analysis suggests that cohesive, albeit tacit, messages about credibility assessments being accurate (rather than arbitrary), objective (rather than subjective), professional (rather than lay), and just (rather than unjust) are produced to both near and distant audiences. The study contributes to the literature on credibility assessments by offering a theoretical perspective that can unpack the relationship between symbolic communication in courts and perceived legitimacy for disputed practices within asylum determinations and migration control.

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Making the Right Decision: Justice in the Asylum Bureaucracy in Norway

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

Cited by 15 publications

References 22 publications

Hva slags data får vi av intervjuer? Hvordan gripe praksis, taus kunnskap og mer enn forskjønnende selvpresentasjoner med intervjuer

Hva slags data får vi av intervjuer? Hvordan gripe praksis, taus kunnskap og mer enn forskjønnende selvpresentasjoner med intervjuer

Etnografi og kritisk humanisme: Kraften i tykke beskrivelser

The Symbolic Life of Courts: How Judicial Language, Actions, and Objects Legitimize Credibility Assessments of Asylum Appeals

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