Data as a Lens for Understanding what Constitutes Credibility in Asylum Decision-making
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Data as a Lens for Understanding what Constitutes Credibility in Asylum Decision-making. / Rask Nielsen, Trine; Holten Møller, Naja.
In: Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 6, No. GROUP, 3492825, 2022.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Data as a Lens for Understanding what Constitutes Credibility in Asylum Decision-making
AU - Rask Nielsen, Trine
AU - Holten Møller, Naja
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - In asylum decision-making, legal authorities rely on the criterion "credibility"as a measure for determining whether an individual has a legitimate asylum claim; that is, whether they have a well-founded fear of persecution upon returning to their country of origin. Nation states, international institutions, and NGOs increasingly seek to leverage data-driven technologies to support such decisions, deploying processes of data cleaning, contestation, and interpretation. We qualitatively analyzed 50 asylum cases to understand how the asylum decision-making process in Denmark leverages data to configure individuals as credible (or not). In this context, data can vary from the applicant's testimony to data acquired on the applicant from registers and alphanumerical data. Our findings suggest that legal authorities assess credibility through a largely discretionary practice, establishing certainty by ruling out divergence or contradiction between the different forms of data and documentation involved in an asylum case. As with other reclassification processes [following Bowker and Star 1999], credibility is an ambiguous prototypical concept for decision-makers to attempt certainty, especially important to consider in the design of data-driven technologies where stakeholders have differential power.
AB - In asylum decision-making, legal authorities rely on the criterion "credibility"as a measure for determining whether an individual has a legitimate asylum claim; that is, whether they have a well-founded fear of persecution upon returning to their country of origin. Nation states, international institutions, and NGOs increasingly seek to leverage data-driven technologies to support such decisions, deploying processes of data cleaning, contestation, and interpretation. We qualitatively analyzed 50 asylum cases to understand how the asylum decision-making process in Denmark leverages data to configure individuals as credible (or not). In this context, data can vary from the applicant's testimony to data acquired on the applicant from registers and alphanumerical data. Our findings suggest that legal authorities assess credibility through a largely discretionary practice, establishing certainty by ruling out divergence or contradiction between the different forms of data and documentation involved in an asylum case. As with other reclassification processes [following Bowker and Star 1999], credibility is an ambiguous prototypical concept for decision-makers to attempt certainty, especially important to consider in the design of data-driven technologies where stakeholders have differential power.
KW - asylum
KW - asylum decision-making
KW - categorization
KW - credibility
KW - data
KW - discretion
KW - refugees
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85123290871&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3492825
DO - 10.1145/3492825
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85123290871
VL - 6
JO - Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
JF - Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
SN - 2573-0142
IS - GROUP
M1 - 3492825
ER -
ID: 298481032