Autorentext

Maja Hertoghs is Assistant Professor teaching anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. She has worked extensively in critical border and migration studies.

Klappentext

Since the 1970s, the recurring discourse of a 'refugee crisis' in Europe has affected border strategies that create a context of suspicion and criminalise asylum applicants. This book examines how the Netherlands engages with the arrival of certain (often illegalised) travellers and the asylum procedure, a tense liminal space and time that ensures decisions of in- and exclusion. Dutch asylum procedure is a peculiar legal procedure that gathers different people and sensitivities together to make swift, life-altering decisions for those applying for protection. Based on an extensive ethnography, this book reveals the ways in which suspicious compassion in Dutch asylum pervades an objective decision-making practice.