Managing Asylum: Street-Level Organizations and Refugee Crises

Abstract

In 2015 the so-called “European refugee crisis” began to put advanced democratic states to the test. How would they manage millions of asylum-seekers living within their borders – in the state, but not yet of the state? This article interrogates what it means to manage asylum, focusing on street-level organizations at the interface between asylum-seekers and the state.

Keywords:

• street-level organizations
• refugee crisis
• asylum politics
• management
• welfare state
• comparative human rights

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge research support from the Danish Fund for Independent Research, Neubauer Collegium at the University of Chicago; and early support for Brodkin’s exploratory research from the Hunter College, Silberman School, Moses Distinguished Professor Research Fund.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The street-level approach to comparative analysis of migration and asylum is discussed in the introduction to this Special Issue (Breidahl et al. 2024, this issue).

2. An additional 2.2 million asylum-seekers registered between 2018 and 2021 (Eurostat 2022).

3. We recognize “crisis” as label fraught with political connotations and adopt a critical posture, examining its on-the-ground realities. On crises and SLOs, see also Brodkin (2021).

4. Lundsted (forthcoming) captures the tensions in managing asylum when he conceives of asylum-seeking as “an administrative journey” in which “asylum-seekers are forced to navigate the vagaries of opaque rules and obscure administrative procedures under great stress” while policymakers and administrators try “to impose order and regularity on the uncertainty represented by people on the move”.

5. On “dignified” life see Slingenberg (2021); on “meaningful life” see Dansk Røde Kors Asylafdeling (2009).

6. See https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/7203832/3-04032016-AP-EN.pdf, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2016/08/02/appendix-a-asylum-applications-1985-through-2015.

7. A full review of this literature is beyond the scope of this article. For comparative perspectives see, for example, Brodkin and Marston (2013); van Berkel et al. (2017); ; Wright et al. (2020); and O’Sullivan et al. (2021).

8. This can be expressed as a street-level calculus of choice, a function of resources and demands moderated by incentives or C = (R:D)ⁱ (Brodkin 2011, p. 259).

9. A substantial comparative body of street-level studies examines how management and governance strategies reshape conditions of work and, indirectly, policy-as-produced. See, for example, Brodkin and Marston (2013); Murphy and Loftus (2015); van Berkel et al. (2017); Lotta and Rocha (2019); O’Sullivan et al. (2021).

10. While a full review of the literature is not possible here, for recent examples see Boland and Griffin (2015); Matarese and Caswell (2018); Wright et al. (2020); Finn (2021).

11. Although the salience of structural conditions to the claimant/client experience has not been well-theorized, some studies have begun to take close account of structural conditions and responses to them. See, for example, Redman (2021); Wright and Dwyer (2022); Sichling (forthcoming).

12. These are 2023 payment rates for individuals living in asylum centers. Those living separately receive slightly more. See https://www.nyidanmark.dk/en-GB/Waiting/Asylum/Conditions%20for%20asylum%20seekers.

13. In special cases that combine internships with a training course, praktik may extend to 26 weeks.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond [9038-00107A] and the Neubauer Collegium, University of Chicago.

Notes on contributors

Karen N. Breidahl

Karen N. Breidahl’s research and writing is specialised in the interplay between migration studies, comparative welfare state research and street level research on (non)citizens’ encounters with frontline organizations. She is involved in several major research projects on these issues, utilizing both qualitative and quantitative methods. Breidahl is associate professor at Aalborg Universtity, Denmark.

Evelyn Z. Brodkin

Evelyn Z. Brodkin’s research and writing explore the intersection of welfare state politics, street-level organizations, public policy and management. In research conducted in the US and internationally, she has examined politics and policies from the state-level to the street-level, focusing on issues of poverty and inequality, social and human rights, and international migration. Brodkin is emerita associate professor at the University of Chicago.