The Politics Of Credibility: Assembling Decisions On Asylum Applications In Brazil

Decisions to deny asylum are often based on highly speculative credibility assessments. Language barriers, trauma, and cultural misconceptions have all been shown to impact the perceptions examiners form about cases. Yet, although contestable in principle, many negative rulings retain an aura of objectivity and are accepted as justified by the case's lack of empirical support and legal fit. This article examines how this aura of objectivity is accomplished. How is it that the essentially contestable nature of credibility assessments gets downplayed, so that the decision to deny asylum appears to be dictated by law and evidence? To address this question, the article draws on a case encountered during ethnographic research on the work of status determination in Brazil: the decision to deny refugee status to the asylum seeker known as Mrs. Z. It is argued that maintaining the perception that there was a pivotal moment of definition is a central aspect of how the decision to deny Mrs. Z's request came across as warranted. Talk of a pivotal moment of definition, the article shows, fosters the perception that the relevant sources of controversy "have been dealt with," foreclosing the possibility of dissent. Drawing on the work of American ethnomethodologist Michael Lynch, I adapt the notion of " phase-work" to refer to this discursive device.