10 research outputs found
Communicative practices and contexts of interaction in the refugee status determination process in France
This chapter draws on material from an anthropological study of the asylum process in France, conducted between 2007 and 2009, to explore the following questions: What can ethnographic research contribute to knowledge and understanding of the kinds of communication that take place at successive stages of the refugee status determination process in France? What light can it throw, more specifically, on the relationship between forms of communicative practice and the different contexts or spaces in which interaction between those involved occurs? Finally, what are some of the difficulties associated with adopting an ethnographic approach to investigate asylum processes and how can researchers attempt to address these
Taking the âJust' Decision: Caseworkers and Their Communities of Interpretation in the Swiss Asylum Office
Decision-making in street-level bureaucracies has often been portrayed as being riddled with a practical dilemma: that of having to juggle between compassion and rigid rule-following. However, drawing on three ethnographic studies of Swiss asylum administration, we argue that often what are from the âoutsideâ perceived as conflicting rationales of decision-making, are not experienced as such by the caseworkers themselves. Rather these different rationales are made to fit. We argue that decision-makersâ âvolitional allegianceâ with the office plays a crucial role thereby.
For the caseworkers we encountered, decision-making is about taking âjust decisionsâ, i.e. decisions that they consider âcorrectâ and âfairâ. We suggest that these notions of correctness and fairness are crucially influenced by their affiliations and allegiances with different âcommunities of interpretationâ within the office