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Unmasking the Cultural Construction of Asylum Screening at the Border

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Entrapping Asylum Seekers

Part of the book series: Transnational Crime, Crime Control and Security ((TCCCS))

Abstract

The asylum screening process at borders is largely perceived as a legislative, administrative and political action, detached from personal inference, exempted from prejudice and disengaged from its historic-cultural background. Thus, immigration officers are seen as mere enforcers, unaccountable for their decisions but responsible for the enaction of a rule. This chapter questions this assumption to argue that beyond the implementation of rules, asylum screening responds to profound cultural constructions articulated through the actions and interactions of immigration officers. Stemming from the phenomenological understanding that subjective meanings give rise to an apparently objective social world, this chapter reveals that asylum screening is a complex categorizing and labelling process guided by the assembly of certain ‘truths as knowledge’ about social acceptance and rejection. Grounded on an unprecedented ethnography of immigration officials’ training routines in the UK, the analysis evidences how asylum screening is forged within an immigration subculture, which remains largely unaffected by legal and policy regulations but is saturated by the meta-messages of disbelief, denial and moral panics.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    DI/V-UK6-AR00-CIO: In this, and all subsequent quotes, there is a code that indicates that it is empirical material from immigration officers, expressed either as extracts from in-depth interviews (indicated as I/V) or from notes from participant observation (indicated as P/O). Part of the code also indicates the category of the person interviewed: HMI—Her Majesty’s Inspector; CIO—Chief Immigration Officer; IO—Immigration Officer; AIO—Assistant Immigration Officer; TO—Training Officer; and NR—new recruit. The rest of the code is for data management purposes only. The codes do not follow a clear pattern so confidentiality and anonymity are assured.

  2. 2.

    Acknowledgement and thanks to the UK Economic and Social Research Council that kindly funded this investigation (Grant: R00429934237). Further thanks to Aidan McGovern for his role in expanding the research and thorough editing work.

  3. 3.

    DI/V-UK-P32:81-208:212-IO.

  4. 4.

    Aside from the training course, participant observation was conducted at six-month intervals at ports: on arrival, in-between interviews and after the interviews.

  5. 5.

    Participant observation of the training was not restricted to formal sessions but included the breaks when new recruits and trainers commented on the content of sessions, often deviating from the official guidelines to relay the informal expectations of the job (see Jubany 2017). The data was gathered from research conducted within the UK border management agency between 1999 and 2002–3, while in 2013 a second main investigation began, to extrapolate the conclusions of this work to a wider framework.

  6. 6.

    DI/V-UK3-AR00-IO.

  7. 7.

    While the empirical grounds for this research were conducted within the now defunct Immigration and Nationality Directorate in the UK, further investigation reveals that the training plans for new recruits remains unchanged, with the focus placed on learning interview techniques towards challenging the applicants’ credibility, as is reflected in recent policy and training documents issued by the Home Office (2015a, b). Despite changes to the nomenclature and organizational structures of the UK border control, the messages conveyed by official documents remain strikingly similar and coupled with evidence that continues to highlight the concealed decision-making processes of asylum decisions within the UK (Asylum Aid 2011; Anderson et al. 2014; Souter 2011), and asylum screening continues to be determined by the overarching meta-messages of disbelief and deterrence (Jubany 2017).

  8. 8.

    The aims of the UNHCR handbook are to provide guidelines to determine refugee status and to clarify the definition of the term ‘refugee’ for the purposes of the convention. This is specifically addressed ‘to those who in their daily work are called upon to determine refugee status’ (UNHCR 2011, p. 42), mainly immigration officers. Despite this, since 2002 neither the UNHCR nor the British Refugee Council has had any presence in the UK training course, as the role of officers in protecting asylum seekers’ rights has been further obscured within the asylum governance structures.

  9. 9.

    D/I-UK14-AR00-5-IO.

  10. 10.

    P/O-UK-P-UK22/JN00-TA-2-TO.

  11. 11.

    P/O-UK-P-UK12JN00-T2-TO.

  12. 12.

    D/V-UK-P14: 279-478:484-IO.

  13. 13.

    P/O-UK-P39:5-73:75-TO.

  14. 14.

    P/O-UK-20-00-ME-TS.

  15. 15.

    DI/V-PUK22J-T5-TO.

  16. 16.

    DI/V-UK9-MY00-TO.

  17. 17.

    Training Officer—P/O-UK20JN-TO.

  18. 18.

    P/O-UK12J-T3-TO.

  19. 19.

    P/O-TO-UK10JN-T5-TO.

  20. 20.

    Training Officer—P/O-36:81-268:269.

  21. 21.

    DI/V-UK-P2:2-51:70-IO.

  22. 22.

    P/O-2:23-70:79-TO.

  23. 23.

    P/O-UK20JN-TO.

  24. 24.

    DI/V-UK-P2:183:192-IO.

  25. 25.

    P/O-TO-UK07JN-T/S1-TS.

  26. 26.

    The jurisdictional as well as organizational procedures in the UK establish that immigration officers do not have the legal power or duty to decide on asylum seekers’ applications. At the time of the research, immigration officers in the UK received and interviewed asylum seekers, before forwarding a report containing their decision to a Chief Immigration Officer at Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) headquarters. Here decisions were legally endorsed and the verdict sent to the applicant. This changed under the New Asylum Model (Home Office 2006), which was intended to encourage greater accountability for officers by merging the roles of interviewer and caseworker; yet the process remains the same, with higher-ranked officers in UK Visas and Immigration now approving decisions.

  27. 27.

    DI/V-UK-P:13:179-693:694-IO.

  28. 28.

    DI/V-UK-P6:145-501:504-IO.

  29. 29.

    For further analysis of the criteria used and the ways assumed human behaviour affects asylum decisions, see Jubany (2011, 2017) and Herlihy et al. (2010).

  30. 30.

    DI/V-UK5-17-IO.

  31. 31.

    DI/V-UK5-AR00-IO.

  32. 32.

    DI/V-UK-P19:303-IO.

  33. 33.

    DI/V-P1-349:360-CIO.

  34. 34.

    This is evidenced in relation to the Detained Fast Track (DFT) procedures and the negative rationalization of evidence within the immigration service. In one such case, despite documentary evidence being presented to support that the applicant had been tortured, the caseworker denied that the events took place, noting that the evidence of torture did not prove that the applicant was tortured.

  35. 35.

    DI/V-UK15-AR00-CIO.

  36. 36.

    DI/V-P6-785:792-IO.

  37. 37.

    DI/V-UK-P18-546:560-IO.

  38. 38.

    DI/V-UK-P13:328-536:53-7-IO.

  39. 39.

    DI/V-P13-33:35-IO.

  40. 40.

    DI/V-UK-P6:170-908:913-IO.

  41. 41.

    DI/V-P13:329-546:548-IO.

  42. 42.

    DI/V-UK6-AR00-CIO.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Anthropology, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Olga Jubany

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  1. Olga Jubany
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Anthropology, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

    Francesco Vecchio

  2. Centre for Law and Justice, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia

    Alison Gerard

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Jubany, O. (2017). Unmasking the Cultural Construction of Asylum Screening at the Border. In: Vecchio, F., Gerard, A. (eds) Entrapping Asylum Seekers. Transnational Crime, Crime Control and Security. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58739-8_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58739-8_2

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