Constructing truths in a culture of disbelief

Abstract

While a multitude of immigration officers enforce the numerous laws and policies regulating the arrival of asylum seekers, their work is often hidden from the public eye and ignored by academic debate, leaving fundamental questions unanswered: Is the migration debate blinded by bureaucracy or oblivious to the complexity of the asylum screening process? This article originates from an ethnographic study, which included over 80 interviews, six months of participant observation and four years of familiarization with the main actors, framed by a triangulation scheme that allowed in-depth exploration of the field from within. The study’s conclusions expose how identifying immigration officers’ subculture is key to understanding asylum controls and to reach beyond the legal shield and the rhetorical concepts of political debate. Based on this empirical research, this article exposes how officers’ criteria for screening individuals are not derived from regulations or laws but their own categorizations, rules and values derived from ambiguous stereotypes nurtured by officers’ experiences and social prejudices.

Seeking ‘common information’ among refugees, program workers, and academic researchers

“…Official records are often used for pursuing the goals of the nation-states that create them (Graeber, 2015). Much of the information created around refugees is used to exercise power over them, for instance in order to assess the credibility of the evidence presented in asylum claims (Madziva and Loundnes, 2018;Jubany, 2011;Thomas, 2006). This also becomes evident in the widespread practice of biometric identification in Europe (Ajana, 2013).…”

“…The definition refers to the individual's subjective experience of "fear", but governmental assessors determine if that fear is "well-founded". Jubany (2011) andSouter (2011) describe how UK immigration officers come to subjective decisions on whether the information presented meets the criteria. In France, refugees' experiences may be 'authenticated' as traumatic by psychoanalysis (Fassin and Rechtman, 2008).…”

From “illegality” to Tolerance and Beyond: Irregular Immigration as a Selective and Dynamic Process

“…Not only must migrants be able to reach a country in which to apply for asylum, they must also pass the filters ascertaining the validity of their claims. They must convincingly demonstrate that they are the victims of forced mobility (Jubany, ).…”

Un/Doing Ethnicity in Intervening Swiss Street-Level Bureaucracy. A Police Service and a Child Welfare Service – an Ethnographic Perspective

“…Beide Einrichtungen erbringen Zuwendungen oder Dienstleistungen (Leistungsverwaltung), verfügen gleichzeitig aber auch über besondere Eingriffsrechte und können qua hoheitlichem Mandat rechtsstaatliche Ansprüche mit Zwang durchsetzen -das Jugendamt bloss in jenen Fällen, in denen es als Mandatsträger der Kindes-und (vgl. Lipsky 1980;Jubany 2011), die das jeweils situative Herstellen oder Verwischen sozial bedeutsamer Differenzen wie auch das Austarieren hoheitsstaatlicher Eingriffe erlauben (vgl. Piñeiro et al 2017;Pasche et al i. E;Piñeiro 2011).…”