The Charade: Examining the Legal Construction and Legibility of 'Privileged' Asylum Seekers

• In Event: 40461 - Section on Sociology of Law Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 8: Contested Group Boundaries

Abstract

While the state describes the asylum process as one that is straightforward and objective, it is well known that it is anything but. In order to receive protection from the state through asylum, applicants must demonstrate they meet the system’s rigid standards and demonstrate they are equally credible and deserving. Applicants are regularly seen as suspect and very often, lacking credibility. Therefore, the standards for achieving asylum are incredibly difficult to meet. However, these realities do not apply to all asylum applicants equally. This article analyzes the construction of legal strategies for a group of asylum applicants who experience radically different decision outcomes than other applicants do. These applicants identify as part of the 76,000 Afghan nationals evacuated to the United States in 2021, also known as OAW parolees. While not explicitly stated, the parolees are experiencing a de facto blanket approval for their asylum claims yet are still required to apply on an individual basis. By drawing on fifteen months of ethnographic observations at an immigrants’ rights center and multiple interviews with immigration attorneys, legal caseworkers, and US asylum officers, I analyze how these individuals are able to reconceptualize their parolee clients’ experiences into ones matching codified definitions of eligibility for asylum. I explain the political contexts surrounding the parolees’ positive experiences with the asylum determination processes and the ways in which legal representatives come to understand this unique and anomalous situation.

Author

• Durana Saydee, University of California-Los Angeles