Anthea Vogl, Judging Refugees: Narrative and Oral Testimony in Refugee Status Determination (Cambridge University Press 2024) xiv + 174 pp, ISBN 978-1-108-83185-7 (hbk), ISBN 978-1-108-92743-7 (pbk)

It has been several decades now since the emergence of a scholarly interest in the assessment of credibility in asylum procedures. Over this time, researchers from around the world and across several disciplines have provided valuable insights into the discourse in these assessments, demonstrating their many flaws, and often also offering meaningful suggestions for improvements to law, policy, and practice.

Anthea Vogl’s book provides a new and compelling account of how credibility assessments continue to be fundamentally flawed processes, despite these myriad critiques and recommendations. Vogl achieves this through the most substantial and persuasive account to date of the impossible narrative demands placed on people seeking asylum, drawing on a set of transcripts and observations of hearings and writen decisions from Australia and Canada.