This open access monograph provides sociological insight into governmental action on the administration of asylum in the European context. It offers an in-depth understanding of how decision-making officials encounter and respond to structural contradictions in the asylum procedure produced by diverging legal, political, and administrative objectives.The study focuses on structural aspects on the one hand, such as legal and organisational elements, and aspects of agency on the other hand, examining the social practices and processes going on at the frontside and the backside of the administrative asylum system.Coverage is based on a case study using ethnographic methods, including qualitative interviews, participant observation, as well as artefact analysis. This case study is positioned within a broader context and allows for comparison within and beyond the European system, building a bridge to the international scientific community.In addition, the author links the empirical findings to sociological theory. She explains the identified patterns of social practice in asylum administration along the theories of social practices, social construction and structuration. This helps to contribute to the often missing theoretical development in this particular field of research.Overall, this book provides a sociological contribution to a key issue in today's debate on immigration in Europe and beyond. It will appeal to researchers, policy makers, administrators, and practitioners as well as students and readers interested in immigration and asylum. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

This open access monograph provides sociological insight into governmental action on the administration of asylum in the European context. It offers an in-depth understanding of how decision-making officials encounter and respond to structural contradictions in the asylum procedure produced by diverging legal, political, and administrative objectives. The study focuses on structural aspects on the one hand, such as legal and organisational elements, and aspects of agency on the other hand, examining the social practices and processes going on at the frontside and the backside of the administrative asylum system. Coverage is based on a case study using ethnographic methods, including qualitative interviews, participant observation, as well as artefact analysis. This case study is positioned within a broader context and allows for comparison within and beyond the European system, building a bridge to the international scientific community. In addition, the author links the empirical findings to sociological theory. She explains the identified patterns of social practice in asylum administration along the theories of social practices, social construction and structuration. This helps to contribute to the often missing theoretical development in this particular field of research. Overall, this book provides a sociological contribution to a key issue in today's debate on immigration in Europe and beyond. It will appeal to researchers, policy makers, administrators, and practitioners as well as students and readers interested in immigration and asylum.

Drawing on new research material from ten European countries, Asylum Determination in Europe: Ethnographic Perspectives brings together a range of detailed accounts of the legal and bureaucratic processes by which asylum claims are decided.The book includes a legal overview of European asylum determination procedures, followed by sections on the diverse actors involved, the means by which they communicate, and the ways in which they make life and death decisions on a daily basis. It offers a contextually rich account that moves beyond doctrinal law to uncover the gaps and variances between formal policy and legislation, and law as actually practiced. The contributors employ a variety of disciplinary perspectives - sociological, anthropological, geographical and linguistic - but are united in their use of an ethnographic methodological approach. Through this lens, the book captures the confusion, improvisation, inconsistency, complexity and emotional turmoil inherent to the process of claiming asylum in Europe.

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.

Drawing together previously disjointed scholarship on the topic of asylum and conversion from Islam to Christianity, this book shows how boundaries of belonging are negotiated between Middle Eastern ex-Muslim asylum seekers, church representatives, lawyers, legal decision-makers and policymakers. With case studies from European countries such as Germany, Austria, Finland and Sweden, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach including ethnographic and other qualitative research, discourse analysis and case law analysis, to explore the complexities of the phenomenon of asylum and conversion from Islam to Christianity. This book is an authoritative resource for academic scholars in fields as diverse as migration and refugee studies, anthropology, sociology, religious studies, law and socio-legal studies, as well as legal and religious practitioners.

In The End of Asylum, three experts in immigration law offer a comprehensive examination of the rise and demise of the US asylum system, showing how the Trump administration has put forth regulations, policies, and practices all designed to end opportunities for asylum seekers and what we can do about it.

This ethnographic book enhances our understanding of asylum screening, an area of immigration that is often overlooked and remains under-researched. Falsely perceived as a one-dimensional function of static state power, it is here revealed that asylum decisions at borders respond to a complex cultural construction, saturated by a meta-message of disbelief, denial and moral panics. The author demonstrates that immigration officers’ work patterns, behavior and decisions are informed by such stereotyping, which has led to asylum narratives being interpreted in the light of concepts of social acceptability and rejection. Establishing a parallel with law enforcement, the author argues that this process replicates a professional world of categorization and control, forged within an autonomous immigration service subculture. This timely work will appeal to students and scholars of migration studies, identity and ethnic studies, social anthropology, sociology, law and policy studies.