Why is the job of the case officer unlike any other 'everyday job'?
The job of the case officer
Case officers are key actors of the asylum procedure. The way case officers experience their job, interviewing an applicant and taking a decision, was the focus of a Thematic Meeting organised by the EUAA and held in Bratislava on 17-18 October 2023.
Who is a case officer and what do they do?
Case officers work for asylum authorities. They are responsible for examining applications for international protection.
They conduct interviews with asylum seekers to gather essential information on the reasons why they ask for protection. Case officers contribute to the decision-making on the asylum application by assessing each case individually, in light of the information available on the asylum seeker's country of origin, and of EU and national asylum law.
Depending on the national asylum authority, case officers may also have a wider range of tasks.
In Slovakia, case workers have to deal with many different tasks and responsibilities, as well as with many administrative burdens. We have to process asylum applications, which means conducting interviews, examining COI [Country of Origin Information], drafting decisions. To say it in simple terms: we have to do everything by ourselves. A few of us also deal with tasks related to the EU agenda and participate in various activities abroad. Most of us are also directly involved in activities related to temporary protection helping Ukrainian nationals who flee from Ukraine as a consequence of the Russian aggression. These are just three examples but there are also many more unplanned tasks that might require our immediate attention.
Michal FranekCase officer from the Migration Office of the Slovak Ministry of the Interior
What is it like to be a case officer?
Asked to summarise in three words what it means to be a case officer, Michal Franek chose the following: "helping people, decision-making, responsibility".
Dr Nick Gill, Professor of Human Geography at the University of Exeter, has studied what it means to be a case officer. Ethnographic research shows the complexity of their role. As he explains:
Asylum decision-making is a field where there are abstract rules (e.g., laws and policies) but these rules are not at all exhaustive. Case officers therefore must work out their individual approaches to their jobs. Typically, they learn how to use their discretion not from formal rules and policies, but via the acquisition of tacit, informal knowledge gained through experience ‘on the job’ and from colleagues.
Why is the job of the case officer unlike any other 'everyday job'?
You’ve read what Michal Franek told us about the multiplicity of tasks that sometimes case officers deal with. Here is what Professor Gill tells us about other challenging aspects:
Asylum case officers’ work is challenging because they are often asked to make decisions under conditions of high uncertainty. It is, for instance, frequently not possible to be sure what has happened to applicants, let alone predict what will happen if they are returned. Applicants might be limited in their abilities to narrate their experiences, perhaps due to impediments related to their memory, language differences, nerves, or (dis)abilities. Some may not tell the whole truth for various reasons, and country of origin information is not always exhaustive or consistent. Under these conditions, asylum case officers must make delicate judgement calls based on their training and the available information. At the same time, asylum case officers are at the forefront of global events, learning about and responding to the human consequences of key conflicts worldwide. Their work is important both to applicants, and to the countries whose asylum policies they implement and uphold. The unique combination of challenge and importance inherent to asylum case officers’ work sets it apart from other jobs.
Nick GillProfessor of Human Geography at the University of Exeter
The job of a case officer can therefore be emotionally charged. We asked Professor Gill how case officers balance emotional engagement and distance:
Research has revealed a range of emotions associated with asylum case officers’ work, from anger, to pity, frustration, excitement, horror, gratitude, voyeurism, elation, and job satisfaction. Faced with this galaxy of emotions, there is a risk of emotional overload which can lead to numbness, withdrawal, and indifference, especially given the possibility of secondary trauma from some applicants’ accounts. Asylum case officers deal with emotions in lots of different ways depending on their personalities, length of tenure in the job, and the working cultures they find themselves within. Countries also take different approaches to supporting their asylum case workers emotionally.
The job of a case officer is interesting and rewarding in many ways. Michal Franek shared with us an example of a situation in which he was particularly happy to be a case officer:
Providing assistance to people fleeing Ukraine just a few moments after the Russian invasion started. I was deployed to Michalovce and Humenne, two towns close to the border in eastern Slovakia, where registration centres for Ukrainians were set up. There, people fleeing from Ukraine could find humanitarian, administrative or any other types of assistance immediately after they crossed our border. When I saw how grateful Ukrainian people were, I felt happy that I could be helpful.