When determining who should be accepted as a refugee, decision-makers use information about asylum-seekers’ home countries to assess the credibility of the claim and the risk of future persecution. As such, country information plays a decisive role in the outcome of asylum claims. Based on asylum case files and interviews with decision-makers in Norway, I investigate the use of country information in the refugee status determination process and compare the specific pieces of country information that decision-makers used in their assessments to landmarks on maps. Landmarks here are understood as decision-makers’ interpretations about places, customs, and political and social conditions in asylum-seekers’ home countries. To come across as credible, applicants had to demonstrate knowledge of landmarks familiar to decision-makers, but they also needed to present a story that testified to their personal experience with the landscape in their home countries. Minor deviations from the landmarks could undermine a claim’s credibility. The metaphor of the map as a seemingly objective representation of reality illustrates the authority of country information in the refugee status determination process. As I demonstrate, however, decision-makers based their knowledge of such landmarks not only on formal sources of information, but also on the narratives of other applicants, assumptions about rational behavior, and their own everyday experience with places. In line with the legal mandate to produce a binary decision, decision-makers had to consolidate uncertain information into solid landmarks that enabled them to clearly distinguish between refugees and non-refugees. Because of their important role in enabling such distinctions, landmarks are key in refugee protection on the one hand and migration control on the other.

在确定谁应该被接受为难民时，决策者使用有关寻求庇护者的母国的信息来评估申请的可信度和未来遭受迫害的风险。因此，国家信息在庇护申请的结果中起着决定性的作用。根据庇护案件档案和对挪威决策者的采访，我调查了国家信息在难民身份确定过程中的使用，并将决策者在评估中使用的特定国家信息与地图上的地标进行了比较. 这里的地标被理解为决策者对寻求庇护者母国的地方、习俗以及政治和社会条件的解释。为了给人留下可信的印象，申请人必须展示决策者熟悉的地标知识，但他们还需要展示一个故事来证明他们对本国景观的个人经历。与地标的微小偏差可能会破坏声明的可信度。将地图比喻为看似客观的现实再现，说明了国家信息在难民身份确定过程中的权威性。然而，正如我所展示的，决策者不仅基于正式的信息来源，而且基于其他申请者的叙述、对理性行为的假设、以及他们自己对地方的日常体验。根据产生二元决策的法律授权，决策者必须将不确定的信息整合到可靠的地标中，使他们能够清楚地区分难民和非难民。由于地标在实现这种区分方面的重要作用，一方面是难民保护的关键，另一方面是移民控制。