TY  - BOOK
AU  - Affolter, Laura
AB  - 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.
DO  - 10.1007/978-3-030-61512-3
ID  - OAPEN ID: ONIX_20201214_9783030615123_31
ID  - OAPEN ID: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/43293
KW  - Human Rights and Crime
KW  - Criminal Justice
KW  - Migration
KW  - Human Geography
KW  - Human Rights
KW  - Social Justice, Equality and Human Rights
KW  - Socio-Legal Studies
KW  - Biotechnology
KW  - socio-legal
KW  - borders
KW  - bureaucracy
KW  - at the heart of the state
KW  - asylum procedure
KW  - asylum decision-making
KW  - law and discretion
KW  - Open Access
KW  - Crime & criminology
KW  - Human rights, civil rights
KW  - Criminal justice law
KW  - Migration, immigration & emigration
KW  - Politics & government
L1  - https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/43293/1/2021_Book_AsylumMatters.pdf
L1  - https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/43293/1/2021_Book_AsylumMatters.pdf
LA  - English
LK  - https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/27525
PB  - Springer Nature
PY  - 2021
TI  - Asylum Matters : On the Front Line of Administrative Decision-Making
ER  - 
