Who is doing asylum in Niger? State bureaucrats’ perspectives and strategies on the externalization of refugee protection

Bibliographic Data

ID15720643
AuthorsL Lambert (0000-0002-7601-0745, UCLouvain, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume51
Pages85-101
Publication date2020-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropologie & développement (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2276-2019 • E-ISSN: 2553-1719
PublisherOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/anthropodev.976
OpenAlexW3113327973
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited22

In line with the policies fighting irregular migration to Europe, the asylum procedure in Niger was recently reinforced as a complementary mechanism of protection and fixation, with support from the European Union and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The article investigates from an ethnographic perspective what some of these reconfigurations meant to the affected bureaucrats in the National Eligibility Commission (CNE) and relevant asylum institutions and how they coped with these changes. Based on the Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM) and the Sudanese in Agadez as two recent and politicized southbound refugee movements from Libya, I argue that the Nigerien bureaucrats experienced a reduced discretionary power in the asylum adjudication and in the question of who enters and remains in the country, due mostly to a power shift up to its government and the UNHCR, but also down to local interests and norms in Agadez. As a reaction to their reduced discretion or practical decision-making power, some voiced criticism or searched for creative solutions. Others slowed down the asylum procedures in order to reconcile the local anti-refugee stance and global refugee protection norms

Commission · Criticism · Discretion · Political science · Power (physics · Refugee · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Peacebuilding and International Security · Public Administration

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