Exceeding categories: Law, bureaucracy and acts of citizenship by asylum seekers in Hungary

Research output: Contribution to Book/Report typesChapterpeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Based on interviews with officials from the Hungarian Office of Immigration and Nationality and the judiciary, together with reviews of court cases, this chapter examines the governance of asylum policy and asylum seekers in Hungary. It does so in the context of practices aimed at constructing Europe as a shared project and of attempts to conceive of European citizenship as equivalent to European Union (EU) citizenship. The chapter suggests that EU asylum directives as they are translated by the Hungarian government focus on establishing a chiefly administrative, and thus depoliticising, procedure for dealing with asylum applicants. However, politics and questions of justice and citizenship rights enter the picture when would-be technical and administrative asylum law interacts with institutions and agents that interpret or contest this ‘technicalisation’. The EU is a project of territorial integration premised on the management of migration. This means that the space of mobility that is at the core of the EU depends on the policing of the right of mobility of third-country nationals (TCNs). The Schengen Agreement which came into force in 1995 created a borderless zone in the EU where sanctioned goods and people had freedom of mobility. Schengen does not apply to refugees or asylum seekers. Refugees and asylum seekers who have been granted status under the terms of the Geneva Convention do not have the right to mobility within the EU in the same way that migrants from third countries with appropriate visas or family connections do. Asylum seekers are restricted by the Dublin Regulations, which determine the EU member state in which they must make their claims. Guild (2006) writes. Among the most telling aspects of the treatment of asylum seekers in these two conventions [Schengen and Dublin] is that they are the objects of state acts. They have no effective rights, nor is either instrument designed to give voice to their protection. They are the passive bodies on whom is visited the will of the member states.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationEnacting European Citizenship
EditorsEngin F. Isin, Michael Saward
PublisherCambridge University Press
Pages195-219
Number of pages25
ISBN (Electronic)9781139524025
ISBN (Print)9781107033962
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2011

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Exceeding categories: Law, bureaucracy and acts of citizenship by asylum seekers in Hungary'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this