Contradictory Discourses of Protection and Control in Transnational Asylum Law
in Journal of Legal Anthropology
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Carol Bohmer
Carol Bohmer
Dartmouth College carol.bohmer@dartmouth.edu
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Amy Shuman
Amy Shuman
The Ohio State University shuman.1@osu.edu
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For immigration authorities, the goal of asylum hearings is to differentiate between economic migrants and legitimate political asylum seekers. However, in the stories asylum seekers tell, these categories often blur. Nevertheless, the asylum process uses this differentiation to conceal inequities in the system, and to justify denials. This article examines political asylum as a transnational and culturally local process and argues that contradictions between protection and control underlie some of the seemingly absurd denials of asylum applications.