Paper short abstract:

Based on an ethnographic study of the asylum process I argue that a liberal humanist compassion for ‘the refugee’ is translated into a set of legal practices performed in a detention centre for ‘asylum seekers’. I focus on practices of conditional entrance and on the enactments of a national border.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is part of an ongoing ethnographic study of the Dutch asylum process. Asylum practices revolve, for an important part, around separating the 'deserving refugee' from the 'undeserving non-refugee'. I explore how expert practices, the sites and objects of the asylum procedure form a (national) border performance and performativity and, consequently, work to produce specific imaginaries of national belonging.

With this paper I focus on the effort and time spent before an official asylum decision is made: on the work of persons applying for asylum to convince immigration officials and asylum lawyers of their deservingness, and on the work of lawyers and IND officers to legally deliberate over a person's deservingness. The paper argues that a category of (liberal, humanist) 'compassion' -for the refugee- is translated into a strict set of legal practices and routines performed in a detention centre for 'asylum seekers'. Compassion forms a condition of entrance, of hospitality and, importantly, compassion itself becomes a highly conditional 'mould' of deservingness, one to fit or fail. The paper zooms in on how the legal form of refugee is practiced, performed, recognized, suspended, suspected, and, in the end, decided over. With that I argue that a rationalized form of compassion opens up two possibilities, one of 'welcome' and one of 'unwelcome', of a harsh non-hospitality. I argue that conditional compassion and its selective 'welcoming' produce a continuously repeated national border: a border shouldered by a detention centre, embodied by asylum applicants, and enacted by its bureaucrats and legal 'experts'.