Hostname: page-component-669899f699-tzmfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-25T01:28:16.578Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reconfiguring the Deserving Refugee: Cultural Categories of Worth and the Making of Refugee Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Talia Shiff
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Studies on asylum give little explanatory power to the role of categories of worth in how lawmakers formulate asylum law in lack of a clear policy framework for determining eligibility for asylum status. This article contends that during periods of policy upheaval, distinctions of worth shift to forefront lawmaking: lawmakers renegotiate the moral boundaries between categories of deserving and undeserving refugees to give content in ambiguous law. In the United States, lawmakers drew on the concept of immutability—the notion that to be worthy of protection you must be targeted on account of traits beyond your control to change—to distinguish between “undeserving” Central Americans fleeing civil wars and gang violence, and “deserving” women subjected to gender violence. Understanding how categories of worth inform the formulation and implementation of law in periods of policy upheaval advances understandings of asylum policy and expands scholarship on the role of ideas about worth in processes of institutional change.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 102 - 132
Copyright
© 2019 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, the Josephine De Karman Fellowship Trust and the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy. My deep gratitude also goes to Ann Orloff for her meticulous reading and insightful comments. For valuable comments on previous drafts I thank Savina Balasubramanian, John Hagan, Michèle Lamont, Ron Levi, Liz Onasch, Ann Orloff, Jane Pryma and Diana Rodriguez, as well as participants of Harvard's Comparative Inequality and Inclusion Cluster, and Harvard's Weather head Scholars Program. The comments by the anonymous reviewers have also been extremely helpful.

References

References

Albiston, Catherine R. 2005. “Bargaining in the Shadow of Social Institutions: Competing Discourses and Social Change in Workplace Mobilization of Civil Rights.” Law & Society Review 39: 11–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michael, Amiraslani, Dezalay, Sara, and Levi, Ron. 2017. “Prosecutorial Strategies and Opening Statements: Justifying International Prosecutions from the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg through to the International Criminal Court.” In International Practices of Criminal Justice, 101–119. Routledge.Google Scholar
Andrews, Abigail L. 2018. “Moralizing Regulation: The Implications of Policing ‘Good’ Versus ‘Bad’ Immigrants.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 41: 2485–503.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anker, Deborah E. 1995. “Woman Refugees: Forgotten No Longer.” San Diego Law Rev. 32: 771.Google Scholar
Bail, Christopher A. 2008. “The configuration of symbolic boundaries against immigrants in Europe.” American sociological review 73: 37–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennett, Alan G. 1999. “The Cure that Harms: Sexual Orientation-Based Asylum and the Changing Definition of Persecution.” Golden Gate University Law Rev. 29: 279.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Jacqueline. 1996. “Embodied Rights: Gender Persecution State Sovereignty and Refugees.” Public Culture 9: 3–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhabha, Jacqueline. 2002. “Internationalist Gatekeepers: The Tension Between Asylum Advocacy and Human Rights.” Harvard Human Rights J. 15: 155.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Elizabeth. 2008. “Sexual Commerce and the Global Flow of Bodies, Desires, and Social Policies.” Sexuality Research & Social Policy 5: 1–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beyer, Gregg A. 1992. “Establishing the United States Asylum Officer Corps: A First Report.” International J. of Refugee Law 4: 455–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blair-Loy, Mary. 2009. Competing Devotions: Career and Family Among Women Executives. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Boltanski, Luc and Thévenot, Laurent. 2006. On Justification: Economies of Worth. Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bower, Karen. 1993. “Recognizing Violence Against Women as Persecution on the Basis of Membership in a Particular Social Group.” Georgetown Immigration Law J. 7: 173.Google Scholar
Boyle, Elizabeth Heger and Busse, Erika. 2006. “Institutional Vulnerablity and Opportunity: Immigration and America's ‘War on Terror.” Law & Social Inquiry 31: 947–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bunch, Charlotte. 1990. “Women's Rights as Human Rights: Toward a Re-vision of Human Rights.” Human Rights Quarterly 12: 486–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, John L. 1998. “Institutional analysis and the role of ideas in political economy.” Theory and society 27: 377–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, John L. 2002. “Ideas, politics, and public policy.” Annual review of sociology 28: 21–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Capetillo-Ponce, Jorge. 2008. “Framing the Debate on Taxes and Undocumented Workers: A Critical Review of Texts Supporting Proenforcement Policies and Practices.” Keeping Out the Other: A Critical Introduction to Immigration Enforcement Today 314–33.Google Scholar
Chavez, Leo. 2013. The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation. Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, Jessica A. 2015. “Against Immutability.” Yale Law J. 125: 2.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2001. “The Oppressed, the Suspect, and the Citizen: Subjectivity in Competing Accounts of Political Violence.” Law & Social Inquiry 26: 63–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dauvergne, Catherine and Millbank, Jenni. 2003. “Burdened by Proof: How the Australian Refugee Review Tribunal Has Failed Lesbian and Gay Asylum Seekers.” Federal Law Rev. 31: 299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobbin, Frank, John R. Sutton, John W. Meyer, and Richard Scott. 1993. “Equal opportunity law and the construction of internal labor markets.” American journal of Sociology 99: 396–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Douglas, Mary. 1986. How Institutions Think. Syracuse University Press.Google Scholar
DiMaggio, Paul. 1997. “Culture and Cognition.” Annual Review of Sociology 23: 263–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelman, Lauren B. 1992. “Legal Ambiguity and Symbolic Structures: Organizational Mediation of Civil Rights Law.” American J. of Sociology 97: 1531–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelman, Lauren B., Fuller, Sally Riggs, and Mara-Drita, Iona. 2001. “Diversity Rhetoric and the Managerialization of Law.” American J. of Sociology 106: 1589–641.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edelman, Lauren B. and Talesh, Shauhin A. 2011. “To Comply or Not to Comply—That Isn't the Question: How Organizations Construct the Meaning of Compliance.” In Explaining Compliance: Business Responses to Regulation, 103–22.Google Scholar
Fassin, Didier. 2013. “The Precarious Truth of Asylum.” Public Culture 25: 39–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fassin, Didier, Yasmine, Bouagga, Isabelle, Coutant, Jean-Sébastien, Eideliman, Fabrice, Fernandez, Nicolas, Fischer, Carolina, Kobelinski, Chowra, Makaremi, Sarah, Mazouz, and Roux, Sébastien. 2015. At the Heart of the State. Pluto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flores, René D. and Schachter, Ariela. 2018. “Who Are the ‘Illegals’? The Social Construction of Illegality in the United States.” American Sociological Rev. 83: 839–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frydman, Lisa and Desai, Neha. 2012. “Beacon of Hope or Failure of Protection? US Treatment of Asylum Claims Based on Persecution by Organized Gangs.” Immigration Briefings 12: 1–49.Google Scholar
Gibney, Matthew J. 2004. The Ethics and Politics of Asylum: Liberal Democracy and the Response to Refugees. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, Pamela. 1993. “Anyplace but Home: Asylum in the United States for Women Fleeing Intimate Violence.” Immigration and Nationality Law Rev. 15: 291.Google Scholar
Guy, Goodwin-Gill S. 1983. The Refugee in International Law. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Grahl-Madsen, Atle. 1972. The Status of Refugees in International Law, Vol. 2. Leyden: A.W. Sijthoff.Google Scholar
Grewal, Inderpal. 2005. Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas. Neoliberalisms: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Peter A. 1993. “Policy paradigms, social learning, and the state: the case of economic policymaking in Britain.” Comparative politics, 275–296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamlin, Rebecca. 2012. “International Law and Administrative Insulation: A Comparison of Refugee Status Determination Regimes in the United States, Canada, and Australia.” Law & Social Inquiry 37: 933–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamlin, Rebecca and Wolgin, Philip E. 2012. “Symbolic Politics and Policy Feedback: The United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees and American Refugee Policy in the Cold War.” International Migration Review 46: 586–624.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hasenfeld, Yeheskel. 2000. “Organizational Forms as Moral Practices: The Case of Welfare Departments.” Social Service Rev. 74: 329–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, Ivor C. 1999. “The refugee concept in group situations. Vol. 3. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Nancy. 1993. “Gender-Related Persecution: Assessing the Asylum Claims of Women.” Cornell International Law J. 26: 625.Google Scholar
Lamont, Michèle. 2009. How Professors Think. Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lamont, Michèle. 1992. Money, Morals, and Manners: The Culture of the French and the American Upper-Middle Class. University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lamont, Michèle and Thévenot, Laurent. 2000. “Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology.” Repertoires of Evaluation.Google Scholar
Lamont, Michelle. 2000. The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Class, Race and Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loescher, Gil and Scanlan, John A. 1998. Calculated Kindness. Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Luibhéid, Eithne. 2013. Pregnant on Arrival: Making the Illegal Immigrant. University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, David A. 2005. “Adelaide Abankwah, Fauziya Kasinga, and the Dilemmas of Political Asylum.” University of Virginia Legal Working Paper Series 28.Google Scholar
McKinnon, Sara L. 2016. Gendered Asylum: Race and Violence in US Law and Politics. University of Illinois Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menjívar, Cecilia. 2006. “Liminal Legality: Salvadoran and Guatemalan Immigrants' Lives in the United States.” American J. of Sociology 111: 999–1037.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neacsu, E. Dana. 2003. “Gender-Based Persecution as a Basis for Asylum: An Annotated Bibliography, 1993–2002.” Law Library J. 95: 191.Google Scholar
Pratt, Anna and Valverde, Mariana. 2002. “From Deserving Victims to Masters of Confusion: Redefining Refugees in the 1990s.” Canadian J. of Sociology/Cahiers Canadiens de Sociologie 135–61.Google Scholar
Razack, Sherene. 1995. “Domestic Violence as Gender Persecution: Policing the Borders of Nation, Race, and Gender.” Canadian J. of Women and the Law 8: 45.Google Scholar
Reimers, David M. 1992. Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to America. Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saguy, Abigail C. 2003. What Is Sexual Harassment? From Capitol Hill to the Sorbonne. University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sales, Rosemary. 2002. “The Deserving and the Undeserving? Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Welfare in Britain.” Critical Social Policy 22: 456–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skrentny, John D. 2006. “Policy-Elite Perceptions and Social Movement Success: Understanding Variations in Group Inclusion in Affirmative Action.” American J. of Sociology 111: 1762–815.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Somers, Margaret R. and Block, Fred. 2005. “From Poverty to Perversity: Ideas, Markets, and Institutions over 200 Years of Welfare Debate.” American Sociological Rev. 70: 260–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steensland, Brian. 2006. “Cultural Categories and the American Welfare State: The Case of Guaranteed Income Policy.” American J. of Sociology 111: 1273–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swidler, Ann. 1986. “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies.” American Sociological Rev. 51: 273–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swidler, Ann. 2013. Talk of Love: How Culture Matters. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ticktin, Miriam I. 2011. Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France. University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vaisey, Stephen. 2009. “Motivation and Justification: A Dual-Process Model of Culture in Action.” American J. of Sociology 114: 1675–715.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Volpp, Leti. 1996. “Talking “Culture": Gender, Race, Nation, and the Politics of Multiculturalism.” Columbia Law Rev. 96: 1573–617.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yoo, Grace J. 2008. “Immigrants and Welfare: Policy Constructions of Deservingness.” Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 6: 490–507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Cases Cited

Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677 (1973).Google Scholar
Matter of Acosta, 19 I&N Dec. 211, 233 (BIA 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanchez-Trujillo v. INS, 801 F. 2d 1571 (9th Cir. 1986)Google Scholar
Toboso-Alfonso, 20 I. & N. Dec. 819 (BIA 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matter of Kasinga, 21 I&N Dec. 357 (BIA 1996)Google Scholar
Matter of V-T-S-, 21 I&N Dec. 792 (BIA 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matter of C-A-L-, 21 I&N Dec. 754 (BIA 1997)Google Scholar
Matter of R-A-, 22 I&N Dec. 906 (BIA 1999)Google Scholar
Matter of A-M-E- & J-G-U-, 24 I&N Dec. 76 (BIA 2007)Google Scholar
Matter of A-R-C-G, 26 I&N Dec. 388, 390 (BIA 2014)Google Scholar
Matter of A-B-, 27 I&N Dec. 316 (A.G. 2018)Google Scholar

Statutes, Legislation, and Agency Guidelines Cited

Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons, 3 July 1951, A/Conf. 2/SR.3Google Scholar
UN General Assembly, Meeting on Refugees and Displaced Persons in South-East Asia, convened by the Secretary-General of the United Nations at Geneva, on 20 and 21 July 1979, and subsequent developments: Report of the Secretary-General, 7 November, 1979, A/34/627. http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae68f420.html (accessed July 10, 2018).Google Scholar
Public Law 96-212. 94 Stat. 103-118. March 17, 1980CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act, Pub. L. 104-208, 110 Stat. 3009-546, 1996.Google Scholar
Proposed Rules, Federal Register, Vol. 65, No. 236, December 7, 2000, p. 76595.Google Scholar
DHS Brief on Ms. Alvarado's Eligibility for Asylum in Matter of R-A- (2004), Center for Gender and Refugee Studies Website, available at: https://cgrs.uchastings.edu/sites/default/files/Matter_of_RA_DHS_Brief_02_19_2004.pdf [accessed July 10, 2018].Google Scholar
DHS Brief in Matter of L-R-, 2009. Center for Gender and Refugee Studies Website, available at: (Fassin 2013) [accessed July 10, 2018].Google Scholar
Nexus-Particular Social Group: Training Module Refugee, Asylum and International Operations Directorate, USCIS, 7/27/2015, p. 30, on file with author.Google Scholar