https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010618783640 Security Dialogue 2018, Vol. 49(5) 382–399 © The Author(s) 2018 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0967010618783640 journals.sagepub.com/home/sdi Obviously without foundation: Discretion and the identification of clearly abusive asylum applicants Bruno Magalhães Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Abstract This article looks at how asylum examiners in Brazil account for their ability to identify asylum applications they see as clearly abusive. The argument highlights a proclivity in examiners’ talk to shift discursive registers, from law and evidence to psychological and social bias, when talking about identifications they agree and do not agree with. This way of talking, it is argued, allows examiners to treat the refusal of clearly abusive claims as self-explanatory, while also acknowledging discretion as an inescapable feature of asylum decision- making. By relying on this ambiguous style of speaking truth, which portrays the outcome of claims as both dependent on and free of discretion, Brazilian examiners accrue authority to their views. Decisions to deny clearly abusive claims are rendered reasonable, in spite of barely being accounted for. What is worse, register-shifting kills the drive to ask what makes these denials so obvious by making the very question sound absurd. Keywords Asylum and abuse, Brazil, borders, decision and discretion, critical security studies, enactment and refugees Introduction Brazil’s Federal Attorney sounded certain that something fishy was going on. Many asylum-seek- ers in Brazil were not asylum-seekers at all, it seemed. Although they claimed to fear persecution, these claimants were fraudulently using asylum requests to circumvent immigration rules. The press release talked openly about bogus applicants abusing the asylum procedure: ‘Refugee status is often sought in an abusive way, as a subterfuge by foreigners who do not have rights threatened in the country of origin and who, in fact, intended to immigrate to Brazil’ (AGU, 2017, my transla- tion). This article looks into how examiners in Brazil account for their ability to single out these ‘clearly abusive’ and ‘manifestly unfounded’ requests, as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Corresponding author: Bruno Magalhães, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Rua Marquês de São Vicente, 225, Vila dos Diretórios, Casa 20, Rio de Janeiro, 22451-900, Brazil. Email: brunoepbm@gmail.com 783640SDI 0 0 10.1177/0967010618783640Security DialogueMagalhães research-article 2018 Article