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Refugees often find themselves in precarious situations when trying to claim asylum. This paper examines the changing nature of legal advice in Switzerland, where a new law is drastically altering the asylum regime to a more centralised and tightly managed procedure. This reform directly affects the refugee advice community, which sees an increase in state funding opportunities paired with a higher demand for quality standards and 'managerial' practices. These changes reveal frictions between advice organisations and challenge long-standing agreements and collaborations. (Re-)emerging fault lines concern whether to collaborate with or oppose the Swiss asylum regimes, and whether to assist with asylum appeals with low chances of success. Structurally and individually, pre-existing notions of 'good advice' are being challenged and threaten to divide the advice community into political advocates and pragmatic caseworkers. The changing nature of advice thus brings with it both pitfalls and new opportunities that require careful examination.

PurposeThe article examines situations of unease during ethnographic fieldwork with migration control agents in Sweden, Denmark and Germany. It shows how these “tests” are both methodologically challenging and analytically valuable, and how they need to be addressed properly. The article concludes a special issue on “passing the test in organisational ethnography”.Design/methodology/approachThe article is based on ethnographic research with migration control agents, carried out by both authors in Denmark and Sweden (Annika) and Germany (Tobias). However, rather than presenting the main results from this research, the article focuses on the tests encountered during the research.FindingsThe article has two main findings. First, it provides an open typology of tests. Second, it proposes four ways in which ethnographers could address these tests: acknowledging them methodologically, working through them personally and collectively, unpacking them analytically and preparing others in teaching and peer-feedback.Research limitations/implicationsThe article encourages ethnographers to engage reflexively with fieldwork challenges, and provides a framework for doing so.Originality/valueThe article presents contributes to the current debate on organisational ethnography with recommendations of how to engage with tests in ethnographic fieldwork.

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