Irrational rationalities and governmentality-effected neglect in immigration practice
Legal migrants' entitlements to services and benefits in the United Kingdom
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5615034 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Chad Oliver (0000-0001-5280-9838, Institute of Education University College London London United Kingdom, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 71 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 96-111 |
| Publication date | 2020-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | British Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-1315 • E-ISSN: 1468-4446 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1468-4446.12720 |
| PMID | 31879944 |
| OpenAlex | W2996785565 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 11 |
| References cited | 36 |
Governments' attempts to manage immigration increasingly restrict immigrants' eligibility to healthcare, education, and welfare benefits. This article examines the operation of these restrictions in the United Kingdom. It draws on qualitative research with civil servants and NGO expert advisors, and applies sociological theories on bureaucracy as a lens to interpret these data. Conceptually, the paper employs a generative synthesis of Ritzer's notion of "irrational rationality" and Foucault's perspective on "governmentality" to explain observed outcomes. Findings show that public service workers struggle with complex and opaque regulations, which grant different entitlements to different categories of migrants. The confusion results in mistakes, arbitrary decisions, and hypercorrection, but also a system-wide indifference to irrational outcomes, supported by human factors in contexts of austerity. I consider this a form of governmentality-effected neglect, where power operates as much through inaction as well as through intention, but which results in exclusions of legal migrants that are harsher in practice than in law
Austerity · Bureaucracy · Duty · Governmentality · Immigration · Irrational number · Political science · Politics · Rationality · Sociology · Employment and Welfare Studies · Law · Migration, Health and Trauma · Migration, Refugees, and Integration
On the forms of borderwork in public institutions
Inclusive rights, exclusive capacities
The Windrush Scandal and the individualization of postcolonial immigration control in Britain
Children and families with no recourse to public funds
Queer Conflicts, Concept Capture and Category Co-Option
Papers of the Paperless
A crisis-induced bricolage policy in Australia
Exclusion as Default
Is it time sociology started researching incompetence
The dark side of onward migration
Rethinking street-level bureaucracy
Immigration Law Beyond Borders
Qualitative Data Analysis
Street-Level Bureaucracy
The McDonaldization of society
The Citizen and the Alien
Welfare States and Immigrant Rights
The “McDonaldization” of Society
Asylum after Empire
The Social Production of Indifference
Go home
Us and Them
Powers of Freedom
New hierarchies of belonging
The pillory, the precipice and the slippery slope
Bordering education
Managing Contradiction
Governing at a Distance
Policing Borders, Producing Boundaries. The Governmentality of Immigration in Dark Times
No Recourse, No Support
Commodifying migration
Coping with the Cuts? The Management of the Worst Financial Settlement in Living Memory
Governmentality
Discipline and Punish
Citizenship and human rights
Another Letter from the Home Office
From Max Weber
Messy bureaucracies
Dead zones of the imagination
The McDonaldization Thesis
Creating Undocumented EU Migrants through Welfare
Everyday Bordering, Belonging and the Reorientation of British Immigration Legislation
With a Heavy Heart
| Citations per year | 2.2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2026 (6) |
| Highly cited | No |