Between individual examination and collective management: what productivity injunctions do to asylum adjudication
This article asks the general question of the conditions for asylum decision-making, analyzing how the imperatives of efficiency and bureaucratic productivity influence the implementation of the right to asylum. Based on an ethnographic survey within the asylum administration in Switzerland, this article analyzes how productivity and efficiency pressures spread through asylum adjudication and how they are concretely translated into practices by the injunctions of middle-range managers, by their processing strategies and priorities, as well as by the decision-making support instruments. This article develops two main arguments. First, the individual adjudication of asylum requests comes under tension with collective management of them: indeed, not only is this individual examination part of the organizational logic of managing migratory “flows” – the situation of the number and origin of asylum seekers influencing processing priorities and strategies – but it is also based on guidelines defined by the institution. This analysis leads to questioning the syllogistic form of decisions that are most often taken regarding secondary implementation norms guiding asylum officers’ perception of possible decisions for a case. Secondly, the article highlights the role of middle-range managers in the implementation of the public policy through their power (discretionary and normative) to guide and supervise asylum policy implementation practices.