Taking the ‘Just’ Decision: Caseworkers and Their Communities of Interpretation in the Swiss Asylum Office

Affolter, Laura; Miaz, Jonathan; Poertner, Ephraim

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-94749-5_13

Cited by 21 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Much practice-oriented research on migration bureaucracies follows Lipsky’s ( 2010 ) seminal work on street-level bureaucracies. Examining different policy fields and geographical spaces, it bespeaks the variety of practices within these bureaucracies that might result in messy, incoherent processes and demonstrates the important role organisational routines and techniques play in shaping actions and decisions (Affolter et al 2019 ; Alpes and Spire 2014 ; Ellermann 2009 ; Eule et al 2019 ).…”

Section: Border Control a Practice Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Shaping migration at the border: the entangled rationalities of border control practices

Achermann

2021

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This article analyses how border guards as members of a state organisation shape the movement of non-nationals into the territory of a nation state. Based on ethnographic fieldwork on the Swiss Border Guard (SBG), it explores the rationalities—understood as stabilised ways of reasoning and acting—that characterise practices within this state organisation. Combining organisational and structuration theory with a street-level bureaucracy perspective allows for a differentiated analysis of the various facets of border guards’ everyday work. Four rationalities of border-control practices are identified and compared: security, humanitarian, cost-calculation, and pragmatic rationality. I argue that, by considering both the specific goals and imperatives of border control and the characteristics of street-level bureaucrats acting within a state organisation, these entangled logics explain the complex and incoherent social reality of border control. More generally, the results contribute to organisational theory by pointing to the importance of taking into account that multiple entangled rationalities structure the practices of an organisation’s members.

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Section: Border Control a Practice Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Shaping migration at the border: the entangled rationalities of border control practices

Achermann

2021

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“…Thus, "belonging" may mean different things to different decisionmakers working in the SEM. At least in part, this has to do with the different "groups", or what elsewhere-building on Wenger (2003)-we have called "communities of interpretation" that co-exist within the office (Affolter et al 2019).…”

Section: Becoming a Member Of The Officementioning

confidence: 99%

Getting in Line with the Office

Affolter

2020

Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies

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This chapter explores how asylum caseworkers are socialised on the job and thereby acquire an institutional habitus. Decision-makers are disciplined, incentivised, compelled, but also “ideationally conditioned” (Gill in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34 (2): 215–233, 2009) to think, act and feel in certain ways. The chapter argues that how organisational socialisation works can only be understood by taking three factors into account: what belonging to the office and to different “communities of interpretation” (Affolter, Miaz, and Poertner in Asylum Determination in Europe: Ethnographic Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, pp. 263–284, 2019; Wenger in Knowing in Organizations: A Practice-Based Approach. M.E. Sharp, Armonk, pp. 76–99, 2003) within the office means; how decision-makers acquire, and are taught, the necessary Dienstwissen (Weber in Economy and Society. University of California Press, Berkeley, 2013 [1978]) for carrying out their tasks; and the accountability decision-makers feel towards other actors: peers and superiors, but also politicians, the media and “the public”. Together these aspects of organisational socialisation shape what decision-makers come to perceive as “normal” and “appropriate” practices. Through becoming members of the office, they develop a “socialised subjectivity” (Bourdieu and Wacquant in An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Polity Press, Cambridge, pp. 61–215, 1992) which, in turn, shapes their everyday decision-making practices.

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“…The third reason for finding the concept of the institutional habitus useful for understanding practices of asylum decision-making is the importance it gives to the issue of belonging. Institutional belonging, both to the office as a whole as well as to individual divisions of the SEM, on the one hand, shapes what decision-makers come to perceive as their duties and what it means to professionally fulfil them, which, in turn, shapes their everyday practices (see also Affolter et al 2019). On the other hand, institutional belonging is important because the institution becomes a site where experiences come to be shared and are collectively made.…”

Section: The Institutional Habitus: a Brief Conceptual Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shaping Administrative Practice: The Institutional Habitus

Affolter

2020

Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies

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In order to understand how regularities in administrative practice are produced, the shaping of administrative caseworkers’ discretionary practices must be studied. This chapter adopts a holistic way of doing so, arguing that regulatory frameworks, the structural conditions of bureaucratic decision-making, the ideological environments administrations are embedded in as well as professional norms and values shape administrative caseworkers’ practices. Furthermore, the chapter argues that officials develop specific dispositions through organisational socialisation. For this purpose, building on Bourdieu, the concept of the institutional habitus is introduced. The chapter argues that the institutional habitus not only shapes everyday administrative practice but also reaffirms the very regulatory constraints, norms and values that lie at its heart. With regard to the empirical focus of this book—credibility assessments in asylum procedures—the concept of the institutional habitus allows us to analytically grasp the socialised subjectivity which emerges out of caseworkers’ socialisation in the office.

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Taking the ‘Just’ Decision: Caseworkers and Their Communities of Interpretation in the Swiss Asylum Office

Cited by 21 publications

References 25 publications

Shaping migration at the border: the entangled rationalities of border control practices

Shaping migration at the border: the entangled rationalities of border control practices

Getting in Line with the Office

Shaping Administrative Practice: The Institutional Habitus

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