This chapter describes the methodological problems I encountered in studying four groups of people who have a practical interest in the immigration courts: legal practitioners; civil servants; politicians; and appellants. Each of these groups has a public face, so it is possible to learn a great deal about legal proceedings, or appellants, from sitting at the back of courtrooms; about the work of civil servants from the annual reports of government departments; and about immigration as a political issue through attending public meetings or watching debates in parliament. They can also, however, be understood as private social worlds, whose members have a distinctive viewpoint on the appeals process, which is not immediately available to outsiders.

Understanding the private world of the courtroom

There is a large sociological literature about the courtroom, which can be explained by the fact that courts offer a rich source of publicly-available data about most aspects of society. In America, and some European countries, researchers can usually obtain permission to make audio- or video-recordings of courtroom hearings, and important cases, such as the Kennedy Smith rape trial, and the O.J. Simpson murder trial, are publicly available on television. In Britain, it is not normally possible to make audio-or video-recordings of criminal or civil hearings, but anyone can sit at the back of a courtroom and take a full set of notes.

The immigration courts as a public institution

There are immigration courts in a number of cities in Britain, and anyone is entitled to observe appeal hearings. The first court I visited was in Manchester. This is situated on the third floor of an office block in the city centre, which is also used by the Department of Health and Social Security. The hearing rooms in this building have been converted from offices. Tables have been arranged to form a courtroom in which the representatives for the appellant and the Home Office (in court slang, ‘HOPOs’) sit on opposite sides of the room facing the adjudicator. Appellants give their evidence between the two representatives, often accompanied by an interpreter (see Figure 2.1).

I also spent a few days at the hearing centre at Wood Green, a setting already known to sociologists from Paul Rock’s (1993) ethnographic study of the same building when it was a crown court (which is now based in the impressive palais de justice next door).