Rethinking Agency: Strategizing with, through and around asylum law

The “refugee” in political theory has long raised questions about citizenship, justice, and political obligations. However, what gets lost in these debates are the choices and strategies, that is, the political agency, of those who seek asylum. Contrary to this wisdom in political theory and refugee studies more broadly, this project argues that opting into the refugee status is an agential act. This agential act relies on telling a moral narrative about one’s life in a way that can be interpreted, by a discretionary state actor, as fitting with the legal category. Before going to Nogales, I had conducted 20 preliminary interviews with attorneys across the US (California, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Missouri, and Illinois) who work with and represent asylum seekers. Beyond helping me map out what the asylum process is like, the main reason why I first interviewed attorneys was to learn about asylum seekers themselves. At Nogales, I stayed and worked with Kino Border Initiative for six weeks, conducting interviews and participant observation at the organization and the border zone. The fieldwork helped me gather comprehensive and in-depth knowledge about the border and the asylum system beyond the official and institutional narrative in the “host country”, as well as the reasons why people embark on their asylum journeys. This material will serve towards the first chapter of my dissertation. Lastly, this fieldwork experience also helped me establish connections with asylum and migration institutions at the border.