Deciding whether a person is entitled to international protection is difficult. Asylum authorities need to assessthe story of an applicant, who usually speaks unfamiliar languages, has a specific sociocultural background, and may be traumatized, and all this within a complex legal framework. This challenge of complexity is compounded by that of accessibility for research, as most scholarship has been either predominantly legal and/or based on secondary (interviews, document analysis) instead of primary (observations) data. This project will integrate insightsfrom four disciplines – linguistics, anthropology, psychology and law – to analyse the experiences of applicants, asylum officers, lawyers and interpreters. Embedded in a unique collaboration with the Belgian asylum authorities, and through in depth, longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork, the projectseeks to considerably broaden and deepen our understanding of the challenges that arise when processing asylum applications