Making sense of noncitizens’ rights claims in asylum appeal hearings: practices and sentiments of procedural justice among German administrative judges

Where Asylum and Austerity Meet: Deservingness and In/Exclusion in Rochdale

“…Discursive constructions of authenticity and deservingness have a binary opposite in the figure of the “bogus asylum seeker” that are embodied and routinised through a default mode of suspicion and/or apathy (Nyers 2006; Tyler 2013). Likewise, support outcomes are not contingent on refugee performativity alone but also hinge on finding a receptive and responsive audience (see Ataç 2019; McKinnon 2009; Vetters 2022) in the form of service gatekeepers. As such—and in the context of service decline in austerity—the default routine of referring on effectively excluded many refugees from advocacy within local service networks in Rochdale; unless they were able both to successfully perform certain prescriptive traits and find a receptive audience.…”

Post‐2015 refugees in Germany: “Culture of welcome”, solidarity or exclusion?

“…This has become particularly crystallized in the European policy debates during the summer of 2015 and the ensuing “crisis” rhetoric which has substantially upheld and reproduced the oversimplified dichotomy between migrants and refugees (Crawley & Skleparis, 2018). In Germany, the distinction is also inscribed in a clear doctrinal separation of asylum and immigration as legal claims (Vetters, 2022). Yet the legal certainty in theory often fails to turn into reality.…”

“…Recent literature focusing on the rights claims of post‐2015 refugees has revealed the discriminatory and discretionary bureaucratic practices in the processes of asylum determination (Schittenhelm & Schneider, 2017; Schneider et al, 2020) as well as the shadow of suspicion that reigns over the assessments (Borelli & Wyss, 2022) that ultimately render these decisions illegible to migrants. These bureaucratic encounters are afflicted by the strict distinction, and the “changing of tracks” remains an anomaly in the German context, even though exceptions happen in specific hardship cases ( Härtefallkommission ) and at times in the least expected spaces such as administrative courts (see Vetters, 2022 on the latter).…”

The making of procedural justice: enacting the state and (non)citizenship

“…The special issue starts with an investigation of spaces that are quintessentially statist and legalistic: courtrooms. The first two articles, by Johannesson (2022) and Vetters (2022) respectively, focus on how procedural norms in asylum law are interpreted and enacted in courts when asylum seekers appeal unfavourable decisions handed down by the competent administrative authorities. Through ethnographic accounts, both authors reconstitute the court and formal status decisions as a site of struggles over citizenship and highlight the practical and procedural work that goes into (re)producing formal legal categories.…”

“…Administrative Judges' Constructions of Sameness and Difference in Asylum Adjudications', Livia Johannesson (2022) analyses the procedural consequences that flow from Swedish asylum judges' understanding of the principle of equality. In the second article, 'Making Sense of Noncitizens' Rights Claims in Asylum Appeal Hearings: Practices and Sentiments of Procedural Justice among German Administrative Judges', Larissa Vetters (2022) explores how procedural rules and practices affect legal categorizations and shines a light on important distinctions within the category of noncitizens. In 'Informing for the Sake of It: Legal Intricacies, Acceleration and Suspicion in Germany and Switzerland', Lisa Borrelli and Anna Wyss (2022) highlight how such procedural rights as the rights to information and due process are hollowed out by the structural dynamics embedded in administrative practice.…”