https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9269-2822
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ABSTRACT
This article explores the significance of local contexts in the reception of asylum seekers by drawing on a qualitative study on the governance and implementation of reception policies in Luxembourg. Whilst contributing to a growing scholarship that has stressed the importance of the local dimension of asylum politics, the article advances the debate by unpacking the local and highlighting its internal multiplicity. It does so by exposing the heterogeneity of reception practices within individual local settings. Such heterogeneity, the article argues, calls into question an understanding of the local as a coherent unit of analysis in the field of asylum governance.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank three anonymous reviewers as well as all research participants who contributed to the research by offering their time and insights during interviews.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 We use inverted commas to distance ourselves from the discourse of crisis that is often used, in an acritical way, to describe migration processes. Besides framing the movement of people as an anomaly in a presumed settled normality, the language of crisis also obfuscates historical, political, and economic reasons that produced displacement in the first place. What has been framed as the “refugee crisis” should rather be interpreted as the crisis of EU’s asylum policies, which failed to stop asylum seekers at EU’s external borders and to provide equivalent reception standards to all asylum applicants.
2 In 2015, 2,447 asylum applications were registered in Luxembourg, whereas the total number of asylum applications that were registered the previous year was 1,091 (Ministère des Affaires Etrangères et Europèennes Citation2016, 90). The main countries of origin of asylum applicants in 2015 were Syria and Iraq (Ministère des Affaires Etrangères et Europèennes Citation2016, 90).
4 All interviews were conducted by Lorenzo Vianelli.
5 The article refers to the reception of asylum seekers, that is those people who autonomously arrive in Luxembourg and apply for asylum in the country. It does not refer to so-called “quota refugees,” that is recognized refugees who arrive in Luxembourg through resettlement programs.
6 Following the adoption of the Law of 4 December 2019, OLAI was replaced by the National Reception Office (ONA) at the beginning of 2020.
7 Most interviews were conducted in French. The translation into English is ours.