Volume 35
Issue
2
Date
2021

Sites of (Mis)Translation: The Credible Fear Process in United States Immigration Detention

by Kif Augustine-Adams & D. Carolina Núñez

The credible fear interview presents a high-stakes encounter in the circumscribed legal process afforded to individuals in immigration detention as they seek asylum in the United States. Limited research, however, exists on the sociolegal consequences of translation and interpretation in the asylum process generally and the credible fear context specifically. This article advances that scholarship in the context of the credible fear process for detained individuals by focusing on two sites of potential (mis)translation and (mis)interpretation: 1) explaining “credible fear” and 2) transposing individual facts and trauma into the legal categories that United States and international asylum law recognize as forming the basis for asylum claims. 

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