"The state needs to protect itself": Acts of Citizenship by Asylum Seekers in Hungary

This chapter derived from interviews made with members of the Hungarian judiciary and the immigration bureaucracy. It examines the governance of asylum policy in Hungary where in recent times, and at the behest of the European Union, it has taken the form of a citizenship regime. The chapter begins with a further account of what is at stake: begins by accounting for the connections between the state and responsibility and rights and how this relates to issues of asylum and protection. Asylum in Hungarian case, a means by which an administrative state asserts its capacities. It move then to describe Hungarian asylum policy and its wider context, European Union directives on common asylum approaches. But the implementation of these directives, as noted, must deal with the contests between institutions that are a part of the field in which asylum policy is conceived and implemented. The chapter focuses on an interview with a member of the immigration bureaucracy.