Reconsidering the Asylum Lottery

Refugee Determination and the Structure of Luck

Bibliographic Data

ID6451756
AuthorsEliot Marshall (0000-0002-5574-060X, University of Exeter, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume34
Issue6
Pages791-813
Publication date2025-02-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial & Legal Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0964-6639 • E-ISSN: 1461-7390
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/09646639241312092
OpenAlexW4407112516
LanguageEN
References cited34

An influential body of legal scholarship suggests that luck plays a role in determining who gets refugee status where legal processes operate as a ‘roulette’ or ‘lottery’. These metaphors act as a powerful way of signalling how systems of justice produce unfair outcomes, but scholarship on refugee law has, to date, paid little attention to date on how luck functions as a concept. Drawing from other disciplinary approaches to conceptualising luck, this article uses empirical research on access to immigration advice in England to develop a more critical approach to luck. The findings demonstrate how experiences of luck within immigration systems are connected to structural inequalities and other factors that are often produced by – and can be addressed through – policy decisions. I argue that, as legal scholars, we need to be cautious about accepting individual narratives of luck at face value, because luck implies a lack of control and can therefore work to obscure these more structural issues. Paying closer attention to how experiences of luck are produced and structured by legal processes can, however, also help to expand the conceptual tools that we use to work towards fairer systems of justice

Criminology · Economics · Epistemology · Lottery · Luck · Political science · Refugee · Sociology · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Philosophy

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