ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the work of different legal actors, the importance of key legal terms and the work of country experts who need to critically engage with the legal process of cultural expertise to assist asylum applicants to secure protection. As signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention the United Kingdom, Canada and the USA are required to create a Refugee Determination System (RDS) that conforms with the Refugee Convention and international law (Hamlin 2014). An RDS involves state institutions, an independent judiciary and refugee lawyers in a process that fairly assesses an asylum applicant's claim for protection: the process is lengthy and legalistic and most asylum applicants are refused protection. The asylum procedure begins when an applicant lodges an application with the administrative authority responsible for deciding initial asylum claims. The bureaucrats who make these decisions have no legal training and, in most cases, they refuse the claim.
