Asylum matters : on the front line of administrative decision-making / Laura Affolter.
2021
K3268.3 .A34 2020
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Details
Title
Asylum matters : on the front line of administrative decision-making / Laura Affolter.
Author
Affolter, Laura, author.
ISBN
9783030615123 (electronic bk.)
303061512X (electronic bk.)
9783030615116
3030615111
303061512X (electronic bk.)
9783030615116
3030615111
Published
Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, [2021]
Language
English
Description
1 online resource
Other Standard Identifiers
10.1007/978-3-030-61512-3 doi
Call Number
K3268.3 .A34 2020
Dewey Decimal Classification
342.494083
Summary
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. 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).
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Access Note
Open access
Digital File Characteristics
text file
PDF
Source of Description
Online resource; title from PDF title page (SpringerLink, viewed February 17, 2021).
Series
Palgrave Macmillan socio-legal studies.
Available in Other Form
Asylum matters.
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Table of Contents
Shaping administrative practice: the institutional habitus
Studying everyday practice(s) in the SEM
Asylum decision-making in Switzerland
Knowledge as practice: producing decisional certainty
Getting in line with the office
The good decision-maker or protecting the system
The normalisation of disbelief.
Studying everyday practice(s) in the SEM
Asylum decision-making in Switzerland
Knowledge as practice: producing decisional certainty
Getting in line with the office
The good decision-maker or protecting the system
The normalisation of disbelief.