Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Lived Experiences of Asylum Seekers in the Urban Midwest

这个项目的重点是在城市中西部寻求政治庇护的非洲移民，因为他们导航当代美国移民政策的复杂政治法律景观。具体而言，该研究调查了寻求庇护的过程如何影响移民的形成。主体性通过检查：a)制度机构（移民官员或非政府组织工作人员）利用的各种话语和资源，使寻求庇护者成为一个可知的和可管理的对象，b)寻求庇护者谈判这些制度产生的主体性形式的方式，轮流采用，抵制或改变它们。在9/11后的美国，人权（以及越来越多的创伤）和国家安全之间的紧张关系尤其明显，因为最近的法律和政治措施使寻求庇护成为一个日益繁重的过程。数据收集包括半结构化和非结构化访谈以及参与性观察，并将在机构环境中（在移民官员，非政府组织工作人员中）和寻求庇护者的日常社会世界中进行。在机构机构之间收集的数据将引出有关如何将寻求庇护者定义为“值得”的信息。（或不）法律地位，以及那些制定移民法的人如何就人权、创伤和国家安全的跨国话语进行谈判。从寻求庇护者中收集的数据将有助于深入了解移民如何对通过法律和机构机构强加给他们的社会和政治类别作出主动反应，以及寻求庇护者如何塑造他们所处的法律程序并被其塑造。本项目认为，当前的历史时刻提供了一个独特的机会来检查移民法律和实践的生活后果（包括有意和无意的）。该研究还旨在阐明在同一背景下，不同的行为者如何以不同的方式使法律具有意义。最后，本研究力求更广泛地解决难民研究中民族志工作的缺乏问题。

This project focuses on African migrants seeking political asylum in the urban Midwest as they navigate the complex politico-legal landscape of contemporary U.S. migration policies. Specifically, the research investigates how the process of seeking asylum contributes to the shaping of migrants? subjectivities by examining: a) the various discourses and resources that institutional bodies (immigration officials or non-governmental organization workers) draw upon to render the asylum seeker a knowable and manageable object, and b) the ways in which asylum seekers negotiate these institutionally-produced forms of subjectivity, at turns adopting, resisting, or transforming them. The tension between the discourses of human rights (and, increasingly, of trauma), on the one hand, and the discourses of national security, on the other, is especially palpable in a post-9/11 U.S., as recent legal and political measures have made asylum seeking an increasingly onerous process. Data collection includes semi-structured and unstructured interviews, and participant observation, and will occur both in institutional settings (among immigration officials, NGO workers) and within the everyday social worlds of asylum seekers. Data collected among institutional bodies will elicit information on how asylum seekers are constructed as ?deserving? (or not) of legal status, and how transnational discourses of human rights, trauma, and national security are negotiated by those who enact migration law. Data collected among asylum seekers will provide insight into how migrants agentively respond to the social and political categories imposed on them via legal and institutional bodies, as well as how asylum seekers both shape and are shaped by the legal processes in which they are embedded. This project contends that the current historical moment provides a unique opportunity to examine the lived consequences (both intended and unintended) of immigration laws and practices. The study also aims to elucidate how different actors, within the same context, make law meaningful in disparate ways. Finally, the research seeks to address the paucity of ethnographic work within refugee studies more broadly.