Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-pfhbr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-09T17:24:10.187Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Empathy and Expertise: Case Workers and Immigration/Asylum Applicants in London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Deborah James  and
Evan Killick
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Under recent reforms, the UK government has eroded state funding for civil legal aid. Funding cuts affect asylum and immigration law as produced, practiced, and mediated in the course of interactions between case workers and their clients in legal-aid-funded Law Centers in South London. The article explores the contradictory character of one-on-one relationships between case workers and clients. Despite pressure to quantify their work in “value for money” terms, the empathy that often motivates case workers drives them to provide exceptional levels of aid to their clients in facing an arbitrary bureaucracy. Such personalized commitment may persuade applicants to accept the decisions of that bureaucracy, thus reinforcing a hegemonic understanding of the power of the law. The article, however, challenges the assumption that, in attempting to shape immigrant/refugees as model—albeit second-class—citizens, case worker/client interactions necessarily subscribe to the categories and assumptions that underpin UK immigration and asylum law.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , Spring 2012 , pp. 430 - 455
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2012 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) and Asylum Aid. 2005. Justice Denied: Asylum and Immigration Legal Aid—A System in Crisis. London: BID/Asylum Aid.Google Scholar
Bloch, Alice, and Schuster, Liza. 2002. Asylum and Welfare: Contemporary Debates. Critical Social Policy 22 (3): 393–414.Google Scholar
Cohen, Stanley. 2001. States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering. New York: Wiley‐Blackwell.Google Scholar
Coleman, David, and Rowthorn, Robert. 2004. The Economic Effects of Immigration into the United Kingdom. Population and Development Review 30 (4): 579–624.Google Scholar
Conley, John M., and O'Barr, William M. 1990. Rules Versus Relationships: The Ethnography of Legal Discourse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Council on Social Action. 2009. Time Well‐Spent: The Importance of the One‐to‐One Relationship between Advice Workers and Their Clients. London: Community Links.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 1994. Enacting Law as Social Practice: The U.S. Sanctuary Movement as a Mode of Resistance. In Contested States: Law, Hegemony, and Resistance, ed. Hirsch, Susan and Lazarus‐Black, Mindie, 282–303. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan Bibler. 2003. Suspension of Deportation Hearings and Measures of “Americanness. Journal of Latin American Anthropology 8 (2): 58–95.Google Scholar
Crawley, Heaven. 1999. Breaking down the Barriers: A Report on the Conduct of Asylum Interviews at Ports. London: Immigration Law Practitioners' Association (ILPA).Google Scholar
Fassin, Didier. 2005. Compassion and Repression: The Moral Economy of Immigration Policies in France. Cultural Anthropology 20 (3): 362–87.Google Scholar
Gibney, Matthew J. 2003. The Ethics and Politics of Asylum: Liberal Democracy and the Response to Refugees. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gibney, Matthew J. 2008. Asylum and the Expansion of Deportation in the United Kingdom. Government and Opposition 43 (2): 146–67.Google Scholar
Gibney, Matthew J., and Hansen, R. 2003. Deportation and the Liberal State: New Issues in Refugee Research. Working Paper 77. Geneva: UNHCR.Google Scholar
Giordano, Cristiana. 2008. Practices of Translation and the Making of Migrant Subjectivities in Contemporary Italy. American Ethnologist 35 (4): 588–606.Google Scholar
Good, Anthony. 2004. Anthropology and Expertise in the British Asylum Courts. London: Glasshouse Press.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, Michael. 1993. The Social Production of Indifference. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 1983. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hummel, Ralph P. 1987. The Bureaucratic Experience. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
James, Deborah, and Killick, Evan. 2010. Ethical Dilemmas? UK Immigration, Legal Aid Funding Reform, and Case Workers. Anthropology Today 26 (1): 13–15.Google Scholar
Kelly, Tobias. 2011. Torture, Compassion, Doubt. Malinowski Lecture at the London School of Economics, May 12.Google Scholar
Kipnis, Andrew. 2008. Audit Cultures: Neoliberal Governmentality, Socialist Legacy, or Technologies of Governing? American Anthropologist 35 (2): 275–89.Google Scholar
Legal Services Commission. 2011. Transforming Legal Aid. http://www.legalservices.gov.uk/aboutus/transforming_legal_aid.asp (accessed September 16, 2011).Google Scholar
Long, Norman. 2001. Development Sociology: Actor Perspectives. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Long, Norman, and Villareal, Magdalena. 1994. The Interweaving of Knowledge and Power in Development Interfaces. In Beyond Farmer First: Rural People's Knowledge, Agricultural Research and Extension Practice, ed. Scoones, Ian and Thompson, John. London: IT Publications.Google Scholar
Miller, Peter, and Rose, Nicolas. 1990. Governing Economic Life. Economy and Society 19:1–31.Google Scholar
Moyn, Samuel. 2006. Empathy in History, Empathizing with Humanity. History and Theory 45 (3): 397–415.Google Scholar
Navaro‐Yashin, Yael. 2007. Make‐Believe Papers, Legal Forms, and the Counterfeit: Affective Interactions between Documents and People in Britain and Cyprus. Anthropological Theory 7 (1): 79–96.Google Scholar
NEF Consulting. 2009. The Socio‐Economic Value of Law Centres. London: NEF.Google Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. 2003. Buddha is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Pollock, Alison. 2005. NHS PLC: The Privatization of Our Health Care. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Riles, Annelise. 2006. Anthropology, Human Rights, and Legal Knowledge: Culture in the Iron Cage. American Anthropologist 108 (1): 52–65.Google Scholar
Rudrappa, Sharmila. 2004. Ethnic Routes to Becoming American: Indian Immigrants and the Cultures of Citizenship. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin, and Sheingold, Stuart. 1998. Cause Lawyering: Political Commitments and Professional Responsibilities. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. London: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
UK Ministry of Justice. 2009. Study of Legal Advice at the Local Level. London: Ministry of Justice.Google Scholar

Cases Cited

HJ (Iran) & HT (Cameroon) v Secretary of State for Home Dep't 2010 UKSC 31.Google Scholar