Overview
- This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access
- Explores both the asylum process and bureaucratic decision-making in Switzerland
- Uses Switzerland as an ethnographic case study
- Examines the use of discretion
Part of the book series: Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies (PSLS)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This open access book examines everyday practices in an asylum administration. Asylum decisions are often criticised as being ‘subjective’ or ‘arbitrary’. Asylum Matters turns this claim on its head. Through the ethnographic study of asylum decision-making in the Swiss Secretariat for Migration, the book shows how regularities in administrative practice and ‘socialised subjectivity’ are produced. It argues that asylum caseworkers acquire an institutional habitus through their socialisation on the job, making them ‘carriers’ of routine practices. The different chapters of the book deal with what it means to methodologically study administrative practice: with how asylum proceedings work in Switzerland and with the role different types of knowledge play in overcoming the uncertainties inherent in refugee status and credibility determination. It sheds light on organisational socialisation processes and on the professional norms and values at the heart of administrative work. By doing so, it shows how disbelief becomes normalised in the office. This book speaks to legal scholars, sociologists, anthropologists, human geographers and political scientists interested in bureaucracy, asylum law, migration studies and socio-legal studies, and to NGOs working in the field of asylum.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Laura Affolter is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Research Group Sociology of Law at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, Germany, and Associate Researcher at the Institute for Social Anthropology in Bern, Switzerland. Her (co-authored) publications include Taking the ‘Just’ Decision (2019) and Keeping Numbers Low in the Name of Fairness (2020).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Asylum Matters
Book Subtitle: On the Front Line of Administrative Decision-Making
Authors: Laura Affolter
Series Title: Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61512-3
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Law and Criminology, Law and Criminology (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-61511-6Published: 01 December 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-61514-7Published: 17 December 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-61512-3Published: 30 November 2020
Series ISSN: 2947-9274
Series E-ISSN: 2947-9282
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVII, 203
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations, 2 illustrations in colour
Topics: Human Rights and Crime , Criminal Justice, Migration, Human Geography, Human Rights, Social Justice, Equality and Human Rights