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Working the Dutch Asylum Apparatus: An Ethnography of Suspicious Compassion and State Power

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Volume 56

Forced Migration

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Working the Dutch Asylum Apparatus

An Ethnography of Suspicious Compassion and State Power

Maja Hertoghs

220 pages, bibliog., index

ISBN  978-1-83695-431-6 $135.00/£104.00 / Hb / Not Yet Published (March 2026)

eISBN 978-1-83695-432-3 eBook Not Yet Published


View CartYour country: - edit Recommend to your LibraryAvailable in GOBI®

Reviews

“Maja Hertoghs has made a valuable empirical and conceptual contribution based on extensive and exhaustive fieldwork.” • Jordan Dez, University of Amsterdam

“(This book) proposes the interesting concept of state intensities, which I find quite compelling. It stands to make an important intervention in the anthropology of the state, of bureaucracy, and of borders.” • Anouk de Koning, University of Amsterdam

Description

Since the 1970s, the recurring discourse of a ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe has affected border strategies that create a context of suspicion and criminalise asylum applicants. This book examines how the Netherlands engages with the arrival of certain (often illegalised) travellers and the asylum procedure, a tense liminal space and time that ensures decisions of in- and exclusion. Dutch asylum procedure is a peculiar legal procedure that gathers different people and sensitivities together to make swift, life-altering decisions for those applying for protection. Based on an extensive ethnography, this book reveals the ways in which suspicious compassion in Dutch asylum pervades an objective decision-making practice.  

Maja Hertoghs is Assistant Professor teaching anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. She has worked extensively in critical border and migration studies.

Subject: Political and Economic AnthropologyRefugee and Migration StudiesCultural Studies (General)
Area: Northern Europe


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