Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This chapter focuses on the first level of appeal in the Italian refugee status determination procedure. I use the “credibility issue” as a lens through which to observe how this notion is employed at the tribunals of Bologna and Turin, simultaneously as a core issue in the determination procedure, a sensitive category to handle with care, and an almost-empty shell used for purposes stretching out far beyond the tribunals themselves. Such purposes can only be grasped when shifting the gaze from the mechanics of civil law as enacted inside specific local sites, towards national and supra-national migratory policies, rooted in an entangling culture of denial that strongly impacts on local-level decisional procedures of recognition or rejection.

This chapter examines the meaning of justice in the asylum bureaucracy in Norway. Uncertainty and lack of reliable feedback makes it difficult to determine the accuracy of decisions. By comparing similar claims, decision-makers create local yardsticks of what a genuine refugee looks like. In this context, equal treatment to some extent comes to serve as a proxy for justice, in addition to creating a sense of certainty about the outcome. The uncertainty of asylum decisions is matched by outward certainty, as representatives of the institution have to meet public expectations about justice, whereby refugees are recognized as a clear-cut, objective category. The production of outward certainty contributes to the legitimacy of policies that involve high human costs, such as detention and deportation.

Decision-making in street-level bureaucracies has often been portrayed as being riddled with a practical dilemma: that of having to juggle between compassion and rigid rule-following. However, drawing on three ethnographic studies of Swiss asylum administration, we argue that often what are from the ‘outside’ perceived as conflicting rationales of decision-making, are not experienced as such by the caseworkers themselves. Rather these different rationales are made to fit. We argue that decision-makers’ ‘volitional allegiance’ with the office plays a crucial role thereby. For the caseworkers we encountered, decision-making is about taking ‘just decisions’, i.e. decisions that they consider ‘correct’ and ‘fair’. We suggest that these notions of correctness and fairness are crucially influenced by their affiliations and allegiances with different ‘communities of interpretation’ within the office.

Based on a qualitative study in the German asylum authority, this chapter focuses on how caseworkers are taught to deal with the uncertainties and quandaries of asylum administrative decision-making. The asylum administration is conceptualised as a relatively autonomous field in which ongoing processes of boundary work take place. Amongst others, these revolve around caseworkers’ emotional involvement and their creativity in handling the ‘stuff’ of casework. Focusing on references to emotions and materialities during a training course for decision-makers, the analysis demonstrates how they may be used both to counteract the unintended consequences of rationalisation and to delegate responsibility for dealing with conflicting demands onto the individual caseworker. Even seemingly mundane aspects of casework may thus become an object of struggles around bureaucratic autonomy and accountability.

This chapter identifies the key contributions of the book and reflects on ethnography as an approach to studying legal actors, communication and decision making. In terms of contributions, the book highlights the messy, contingent, discretionary, unreliable, inconsistent and unjust processes through which legal doctrine is translated into bureaucratic practice in the context of large scale, international asylum decision making systems. In particular the book explores two central axes of tension: between fairness and efficiency, and between consistency and variety. In terms of the effectiveness of legal ethnographies, the chapter argues that the ethnographies contained within the volume amply exemplify the standards of excellence that the literature on ethnography suggests that we use to evaluate ethnographic work.