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

这个项目的重点是非洲移民寻求政治庇护的城市中西部，因为他们导航的复杂的政治法律景观当代美国移民政策。具体而言，研究调查如何寻求庇护的过程有助于移民的塑造？通过审查的主观性：（a）体制机构（移民官员或非政府组织工作人员）利用各种话语和资源使寻求庇护者成为一个可知和可管理的对象，以及B）寻求庇护者如何应对这些体制产生的主体性形式，进而采用、抵制或转化它们。一方面，人权话语（以及越来越多的创伤话语）与另一方面，国家安全话语之间的紧张关系在9/11后的美国尤其明显，因为最近的法律的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，以及参与者观察，将在机构环境（移民官员，非政府组织工作人员）和寻求庇护者的日常社会世界中进行。各机构收集的数据将有助于了解寻求庇护者是如何构成的？值得吗(or不）的法律的地位，以及如何跨国话语的人权，创伤和国家安全是谈判的那些谁颁布移民法。在寻求庇护者中收集的数据将有助于深入了解移徙者如何积极应对通过法律的和体制机构强加给他们的社会和政治类别，以及寻求庇护者如何塑造他们所处的法律的进程以及如何被这些进程塑造。该项目认为，当前的历史时刻提供了一个独特的机会，审查移民法律和做法的生活后果（包括有意和无意）。这项研究还旨在阐明不同的行为者如何在同一背景下，使法律以不同的方式有意义。最后，这项研究旨在更广泛地解决难民研究中人种学工作的缺乏问题。

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.