In 2015, during the so-called “refugee crisis” in Europe, Finland was among the European countries receiving exceptionally large numbers of asylum applications. As the volume of asylum applications surged, however, the percentage of positive asylum decisions in Finland declined substantially. In this article, we explore reasons for this dramatic drop in recognitions rates and examine Finnish immigration control authorities’ use of discretion in asylum credibility assessment. Our approach is unique in its application of mixed methods to examine asylum decisions in pre- and post-crisis situations. We found that asylum caseworkers’ inconsistent assessment of similar facts and lack of faith in the veracity of applicants’ claims were essential to the mass denial of young Iraqi asylum applicants in Finland. This finding is important because it illustrates how asylum officers are able to “shift the border,” or generate a shift in asylum decision-making on a grand scale, without meaningful changes in law. Asylum officers, we show, are able to bring about such a shift via what we call collectivized discretion, or large-scale use of discretion, in asylum status determinations to control migration. Prior research on discretion in asylum decision-making highlights the individual decision-maker. This article expands discretion research by offering new insights on large-scale, collective discretionary shifts in the application of asylum law. We conclude that it is crucial that asylum status determinations be anchored in the individual assessment of each applicant's case, as collectivized discretion can lead to arbitrary results in the application of asylum law, potentially forcing those in need of refugee protection to face deportation.

2015年，在欧洲所谓的“难民危机”期间，芬兰是收到大量庇护申请的欧洲国家之一。然而，随着庇护申请量的激增，芬兰积极庇护决定的百分比大幅下降。在本文中，我们探讨了承认率急剧下降的原因，并考察了芬兰移民管制当局在庇护可信度评估中使用自由裁量权的情况。我们的方法在应用混合方法来检查危机前后情况下的庇护决定方面是独一无二的。我们发现，庇护个案工作人员对类似事实的不一致评估以及对申请人声称的真实性缺乏信心，对于在芬兰大规模拒绝伊拉克年轻庇护申请人而言至关重要。这一发现很重要，因为它说明了庇护官员如何能够“改变边界”，或者在没有有意义的法律变化的情况下大规模改变庇护决策。我们表明，庇护官员能够通过我们所说的方式实现这种转变集体自由裁量权，或大规模使用自由裁量权，在庇护身份确定中控制移民。先前关于庇护决策自由裁量权的研究强调了个体决策者。本文通过提供有关庇护法应用中大规模集体自由裁量权转变的新见解，扩展了自由裁量权研究。我们得出的结论是，庇护身份的确定必须以对每个申请人案件的个人评估为基础，因为集体自由裁量权可能导致庇护法适用的任意结果，可能迫使需要难民保护的人面临驱逐出境。