The Queer Story and How to Tell It: The DSSH Model in Queer Asylum Determinations

Abstract

<p>European and Finnish national legislation and jurisprudence leave asylum decision-makers<br>with a wide margin of discretion in assessing queer asylum claims. For guidance, some refugee-receiving<br>countries, including Finland, rely on the so-called DSSH (‘Difference, Stigma, Shame, and Harm’) model.<br>Analysing asylum decision-makers’ interviews qualitatively, this article explores whether the narrative of<br>difference embedded in the DSSH model is manifested in decision-makers’ understandings of queer asylum<br>determinations. This article provides unique empirical data on a credibility assessment tool that, although<br>endorsed and applied by a number of asylum authorities, remains understudied. The model operationalizes<br>abstract and affective concepts (e.g., sexual identity, stigma, shame) that are difficult even for asylum decision-makers to grasp, risking to exclude those queer asylum applicants who are unable to relate to such<br>culturally context-sensitive abstractions or to convey emotions. The model could reinforce asylum decision-<br>makers’ stereotypical, gendered notions of queer asylum applicants. It is argued that by imposing and<br>reproducing an essentialist narrative on queer refugees the DSSH model may function as a filtering tool<br>in the immigration control system.</p>