Asylum procedures are based on screening and thus categorisation. Ideologically, categorising is a way of trying to understand who this "Other" is who arrives in our society, and to put - or not - a distance between them and us. We speak of illegal immigrants, migrants, economic migrants, refugees, exiles, travellers, undocumented migrants, etc.  It is the laws and administrative procedures that decide who will be an asylum seeker and then a statutory refugee or not.

It is therefore in the name of this performative ambition of categorisation that refugee sorting policies have been put in place.

But in legal terms, these categorisations have a power that is all the more restrictive because they are performativeThe verification of the categorisation criteria imposes a series of intensive tests and questioning, which transforms the procedure into a "stress test". This article seeks to describe the different steps and categorisations that occur in European countries through the testimony of Mamadou Ba who has gone through these experiences in both Belgium and Greece.