the Day That Decides Everything: Asylum Seekers, Fear, and Politics of Refugee Status Determination

For millions of asylum seekers worldwide, everything depends on a single day: the day of their refugee status determination (RSD) hearing. In that room, fear must be performed, proven, and believed. But what counts as credible fear? Who decides? And what political, psychological, and institutional forces shape those decisions?In The Day That Decides Everything, Professor Yiombi Thona draws on more than two decades of academic research and international advocacy, as well as his own six years navigating refugee status determination proceedings in South Korea, to deliver a penetrating analysis of RSD systems across multiple jurisdictions. The book examines the legal architecture of refugee protection from the 1951 Convention through contemporary regional frameworks, engages critical theorists including Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu, and investigates the psychology of trauma, memory, and credibility assessment that shapes outcomes in asylum hearings.Thona argues that the RSD hearing has been examined with remarkable unevenness in the scholarly literature: extensive work exists on the international legal framework, but far less systematic attention has gone to the hearing itself as a lived, procedural, and deeply human event. This book addresses that gap, bringing rigor from law, psychology, anthropology, and political science to ask why a process designed to protect the world's most vulnerable so often fails them.Essential reading for scholars and students of refugee law, forced migration, and human rights; for legal practitioners and adjudicators; and for anyone seeking to understand how institutions decide whose fear is real.

Pagina's: 486, Hardcover, Diaspora Academy Press