Research Project

Mariza Avgeris is conducting a research project titled "Epistemic Injustice in the Refugee Status Determination of Disabled Asylum Claims: A Critical Sociolegal Analysis of Germany, Greece and the UK", under the Walter Benjamin Programme, supervised by Prof. Sabine Hess at the Centre for Global Migration Studies. The project addresses a significant and largely overlooked gap at the intersection of disability and asylum law: despite persons with disabilities constituting approximately 15% of the global population, there has been remarkably little research on how their claims are adjudicated in European asylum systems. The core argument is that existing refugee status determination (RSD) procedures are structurally designed around the figure of a rational, coherent subject — an assumption that systematically disadvantages disabled claimants, whose disabilities affect both the substance of their claims (e.g. as a basis for persecution or membership in a particular social group) and the procedure (e.g. credibility assessment, communication, and evidence-gathering).

The project employs a mixed critical sociolegal methodology, combining doctrinal analysis of EU, CRPD, and international asylum and disability law with critical textual analysis of case law from asylum authorities, the CJEU, and the ECtHR, as well as semi-structured interviews with adjudicators and NGO experts across the three jurisdictions. Drawing on Critical Disability Studies and the theory of epistemic injustice, it examines how the failure to provide adequate procedural accommodations — such as early disability identification, adapted hearing procedures, and medico-legal evidence — transforms the vulnerability of disabled claimants into an evidentiary disadvantage, often leading to adverse credibility findings and protection gaps. The research ultimately aims to produce comparative findings and concrete policy recommendations to bring asylum adjudication into compliance with the human rights model of disability enshrined in the CRPD.