Examining Procedural Unfairness and Credibility Findings in the UK Asylum System

Abstract

Abstract This article addresses a key problem confronted by immigration judges (IJs) in their assessment of the asylum claims of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children – who are often not allowed to speak or participate in their own hearings – namely the manner in which asylum legal procedure is intertwined with an IJ’s decision to refuse the claim on the basis of adverse credibility. This article has three linked aims: to examine research that looks at how IJs decide credibility; to set out an ethnographic approach to better understand IJs’ decision-making; and to argue that asylum tribunals need to adopt appropriate guidelines.