Evaluating the Case: Encounters of Schematic Accordance and Schematic Discordance in Asylum Adjudications

• In Event: 4422 - Section on Sociology of Law Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 03. The Law and Organizations in Action

Abstract

This paper offers a new conceptual framework for identifying the conditions that lead to shifts in frontline actors’ disposition from rule-bound bureaucrats to moral deliberators using the example of U.S. asylum. Interviews with asylum officers suggest that when confronted with case scenarios that do not squarely fit within known agency categories but do resonate with deeply embedded categories of worth, frontline actors no longer engage with their subjects as indifferent bureaucrats but rather critically reflect upon the categorization process itself. Contrary to mainstream depictions of bureaucratic systems as rule-bound, technocratic and impersonal, this analysis suggests that bureaucracies also generate conditions for moral deliberation with significant implications for how frontline actors define their gatekeeping roles and proceed to evaluate applicants.

Author

• Talia Shiff, Northwestern University