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This chapter documents how hostel residents approach physical frailty and the end of life. Their back-and-forth trips can continue only so long as the men are in a fit state to travel: eventually, ill-health and/or loss of autonomy force the men to choose where to live out their days. Sect. considers the possibility of returning home. While some returns in a situation of reduced autonomy are voluntary, others are occasioned by elements of constraint. The various options available for those who would remain in France are unappealing. Section covers the possibility of remaining in the hostel to receive care and assistance for everyday tasks. However, in terms of facilities and architectural layout, many hostels remain an unsuitable environment for older people with advanced dependency. Section turns to the option of bringing a relative (usually the spouse) to France to care for an individual with reduced autonomy. Due to hardening immigration policies this often proves unfeasible. A further possibility is to move into a French care home (Sect. ). Yet to enter a dedicated residential care home is to renounce the residents’ remittance sending role, given that the fees charged are so high. Finally, Sect. discusses return mobility at the very end of life, encompassing not only ‘last-minute’ returns but also the widespread practice of posthumous repatriation (Sect. ). Returning home to die means that an individual can be assured of a funeral in accordance with the proper religious rites.

This chapter documents how hostel residents approach physical frailty and the end of life. Their back-and-forth trips can continue only so long as the men are in a fit state to travel: eventually, ill-health and/or loss of autonomy force the men to choose where to live out their days. Sect. considers the possibility of returning home. While some returns in a situation of reduced autonomy are voluntary, others are occasioned by elements of constraint. The various options available for those who would remain in France are unappealing. Section covers the possibility of remaining in the hostel to receive care and assistance for everyday tasks. However, in terms of facilities and architectural layout, many hostels remain an unsuitable environment for older people with advanced dependency. Section turns to the option of bringing a relative (usually the spouse) to France to care for an individual with reduced autonomy. Due to hardening immigration policies this often proves unfeasible. A further possibility is to move into a French care home (Sect. ). Yet to enter a dedicated residential care home is to renounce the residents’ remittance sending role, given that the fees charged are so high. Finally, Sect. discusses return mobility at the very end of life, encompassing not only ‘last-minute’ returns but also the widespread practice of posthumous repatriation (Sect. ). Returning home to die means that an individual can be assured of a funeral in accordance with the proper religious rites.

In Austria, as in most European states, claiming asylum is one of the few possibilities to enter the state legally for most non-European migrants who are not highly skilled (except for family reunification). In 2015, during the so-called refugee crisis, 88,340 persons submitted asylum applications in Austria, adding to applications that were already pending (Bundesministerium für Inneres 2017). An asylum procedure can last from a few days to several years. This empirical reality confronts a large number of actors in their everyday and working lives, including asylum claimants, legal representatives, NGOs, and decision-making officials. Public officials’ work, their decisions – which impact these individuals’ lives – and their institutional embeddedness are at the center of this study. This book is the result of my research on social practices and processes in a governmental agency. It concerns the work of public officials employed at the former Federal Asylum Office (FAO), an administrative unit of the Austrian Ministry of the Interior in charge of processing asylum applications in the first instance. These officials decide whether an asylum claimant is granted or denied asylum or subsidiary protection or receives a residence permit on humanitarian grounds in Austria. In this book, I investigate the “what, how, and why” of a bureaucratic agency as an organization within a governmental system (Krause and Meier 2003).

To illustrate the tensions between legal theory and administrative practice, it seems necessary to briefly sketch how highly regulated the asylum procedure is. Against this backdrop, the empirical findings will show that deciding upon asylum applications is more than “simply” applying the law to a case. The discussions in Parts II and III will highlight the variety of practices involved in putting this intricate legal framework into practice.

This chapter explores the structural framework of the organization and caseworkers’ working conditions at the Federal Asylum Office. Familiarization with the organization and its key processes provides the background for an in-depth examination of decision makers’ practices in administering asylum claims and how they are influenced by organizational structures. The findings are categorized into three main topics. First, the formal structure and organization of the FAO is explained, including the institutional environment and embedding. The chapter also includes a reconstructive process-oriented analysis of an asylum record, providing a network perspective on actors, processes and practices. This analysis is followed by an excursus on the importance of materiality in the asylum procedure. After describing the formal and informal requirements for the job, the second section addresses organizational socialization, explaining how decision-making officials begin the new job and eventually develop routines. The third section explores what it means to work as a member of the organization in the context of New Public Management. Issues such as hierarchy and management as well as productivity and time pressure are discussed, followed by a focus on control and the measurement of quantity instead of quality. Finally, organizational development and change are briefly covered. The last section illustrates the identified ideal-typical workflow from the distribution of files and the organization of summons to making and writing the decision.

To better understand what exactly is going on in the asylum interview, it is essential to have a feel for the complexity of the legal framework (briefly outlined in Chap. ) and knowledge of the organizational aims (presented in Chap. ). The juxtaposition of these different normative frames of reference highlights some structural tensions due to contrasting objectives and logics, which will be explained in greater detail in Part III.

One tension that caseworkers encounter in everyday work is that between normative regulation and the room for maneuver (which goes beyond discretion). This chapter shows how decision-making officials deal with this tension in processing asylum claims. On a superficial level, officials’ task consists of applying the law; however, this is anything but a clear task. Deciding upon asylum claims requires the application of general laws to particular individual situations, and this implies more than strictly following rules. Applying a rule also means shifting, changing, supplementing, replacing, or violating a rule; to a certain extent, rule application always implies interpretation, manipulation, circumvention (Ortmann 2003). Moreover, norms, rules and preferences can only be fully constituted in situ; that is, decision criteria are interpreted and modified in view of the situational and contextual circumstances. As with the application of any norm, there are also “peripheral” zones in the application of law. These gray zones with unclear borders play a vital role in officials’ work. Dealing with questions of the law can be especially difficult for those decision makers who do not have a legal education.

Another dilemma with which caseworkers are confronted in everyday work is undecidability. This issue can be understood as the key dilemma of the procedure and one that is specific to the asylum procedure in contrast to other contexts of street-level bureaucracy. This chapter explores officials’ practices in dealing with this tension. Despite – or perhaps due to – extensive standardization, officials are regularly confronted with uncertainty. A fundamental problem of the asylum procedure is that there is rarely unambiguous evidence; claimants and officials often produce counterevidence against each other’s view. However, decisions are indispensable regardless of how much uncertainty is involved; “take the file [and] you should know what will come out in the end, yes, approximately know,” the superior told Sabine when she started to work at the FAO. To reach a decision that can be justified and legitimized, caseworkers depend on authoritative “facts.” After exploring officials’ practices of accessing and using information in processing asylum claims, I analyze how facts are socially constructed in everyday work and discuss the prominent and problematic role of credibility.

Another structural contradiction inherent in the asylum procedure is the conflict between a focus on the asylum claimant as a human being and a faceless case. This chapter examines how officials try – or do not try – to reconcile these. I explore what shapes their practices and how these practices shape the interaction with claimants.

A fourth dilemma with which public officials are confronted in the process of deciding upon asylum claims is responsibility versus dissociation. This dilemma is related to the structural tension of the human versus the faceless case, which was discussed in the previous chapter, and can be regarded as a translation of that dilemma with a focus on the moral (individual) and ethical (societal) aspects of decision makers’ work. This chapter explores caseworkers’ practices of balancing these two poles when processing asylum claims. Similar to the previous chapters, it will become clear how these practices are strongly related to the organizational working conditions at the FAO. Thus, the mutual influence and reproduction of structure and agency will be highlighted.