ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the determination of asylum cases in Denmark, as elsewhere, ostensibly rests on the authoritative rationalities of law, country of origin information and medical and linguistic examinations, the steady bureaucratic practices of the sovereign state. It provides some background on the Danish asylum system. The chapter turns to the centrality of credibility determination in asylum processes and then to the use of documents. It focuses on this paradox has prompted quite an extensive philosophical literature. The chapter suggests a perspective on documents in the Danish asylum system that compares them explicitly with the fetishes of early colonial trade encounters. According to Pietz, early European merchants saw fetishes as key explanatory models for 'African society' in general. Doubt is at once a property and a product of the Danish asylum system. For asylum seekers, the value of their documents is overwhelmingly to do with the value the Danish asylum system places in them.
