Suchergebnisse

This thesis deals with "country of origin information" (or COI), a type of expert knowledge and a field of professional practices that has emerged since the late 1980s in the framework of West European and North American asylum administrations in order to support refugee status determination. This information is used to evaluate the credibility of asylum seekers and to assess their eligibility to international protection. Rather than focusing on this instrumental role of COI in asylum procedures, this research explores the norms and values that govern the works of COI units in several European asylum administrations. It also analyses the legitimation work involved in the production of COI, with reference to knowledge production, bureaucratic practices and state authority. The format of the thesis is a PhD by published work comprising three articles. This collection of articles is eclectic both from a disciplinary and methodological perspective. Published respectively in history, political science and social anthropology journals, the three articles are integrated in an accompanying text, which offers a common contextual, thematic and theoretical introduction, as well as a methodological discussion and an articulation of the main results of the thesis. The first article – the "history article" – adopts a diachronic approach and analyses the creation and development of the French COI unit within the Office français de protection des réfugiés et des apatrides, Ofpra. Based primarily on archival data collected at the French asylum administration, it examines the institutionalisation of the "documentation" on countries of origin in the French asylum administration between 1988 and 2008 and shows how this history reflects that of the bureaucratisation of asylum procedures. It also uncovers the role and dynamics of formal and informal cooperation with European COI units in the vertical and horizontal processes of Europeanisation of asylum policies. The second article – the "distance article" – looks at the separation ...

This article examines the failure of regional integration in post-Soviet Central Asia. It proposes a narrative of the rise and fall of Central Asian regionalism between 1991 and 2004 centered on the perceptions and expectations of the region's republics. The argument is that these states did not emerge from the USSR in an ideational vacuum, where their construction of self at the international level was to be defined from scratch. Rather, the Central Asian elites inherited pre-existing understandings of the role and place of their respective state in the new international system. At the regional level, an actual and a perceived set of power relations led to incompatible preferences and strategies, thus making it impossible to find common ground for Central Asian regionalism.

La question de l'asile polarise l'opinion publique en Suisse depuis quarante ans. Depuis son entrée en vigueur en 1981, la Loi sur l'asile a été révisée à de nombreuses reprises, notamment en vue de durcir l'accès à la procédure d'asile ainsi que les conditions d'accueil. Parmi les discours légitimant cette inflation normative, celui de la « lutte contre les abus » bénéficie d'un large consensus dans l'espace public. Pourtant, ce discours n'a encore jamais fait l'objet d'une -analyse approfondie. Le présent ouvrage – collectif et pluridisciplinaire comble cette lacune. Seit vier Jahrzehnten wird die Asylthematik in der Schweiz kontrovers diskutiert. Die zahlreichen Anpassungen des Asylgesetzes seit seiner Einführung im Jahr 1981, sind durch eine Verschärfung der Zugangskriterien zum Asylverfahren und erschwerte Aufnahmebedingungen gekennzeichnet. Unter den zahlreichen Debatten geniesst der Diskurs der «Missbrauchsbekämpfung» im Asylbereich breiten Konsens in der Öffentlichkeit. Trotz dieser Omnipräsenz in der politischen und medialen Diskussion fehlt eine eingehende Analyse des Missbrauchsdiskurs im Asylbereich. Das vorliegende Buch schliesst diese Lücke.

The issue of asylum has polarised Swiss public opinion for the last four decades. Since its
entry into force in 1981, the Asylum Law has been revised on numerous occasions, following
a general trend toward more restrictiveness. Among the many discourses that have
accompanied the politicisation of asylum, the rhetoric of the "fight against abuse" has
emerged as a dominant framework of public debate, gathering a broad consensus. With few
exceptions, existing scholarship on the Swiss context has remained silent on the issue. This
collective and multidisciplinary book fills this gap in the literature by exploring the various
forms and expressions of the discourse of abuse, as well as its impact on the production and
implementation of asylum law.