This explosive new volume brings together a lively cast of academics,
activists, journalists, artists, and people directly impacted by
asylum regimes to explain how current practices of asylum align with
the neoliberal moment and to present their transformative visions for
alternative systems and processes.
Through essays,
artworks, photographs, infographics, and illustrations, Asylum for
Sale: Profit and Protest in the Migration Industry regards the
global asylum regime as an industry characterized by profit-making
activity: brokers who demand extortionate fees to facilitate border
crossings; contractors and firms that erect walls, fences, and
watchtowers while lobbying governments for bigger “security”
budgets; corporations running private detention centers and
“managing” deportations; private lawyers charging exorbitant
fees; “expert” witnesses building their reputations in
courthouses; and NGO staff establishing careers while placing asylum
seekers into new regimes of monitored vulnerability.
Asylum for Sale
challenges readers to move beyond questions of legal, moral, and
humanitarian obligations that dominate popular debates regarding
asylum seekers. Digging deeper, the authors focus on processes and
actors often overlooked in mainstream analyses and on the trends
increasingly rendering asylum available only to people with financial
and cultural capital. Probing every aspect of the asylum process from
crossings to aftermaths, the book provides an in-depth exploration of
complex, international networks, policies, and norms that impact
people seeking asylum around the world. In highlighting protest as
well as profit, Asylum for Sale presents both critical
analyses and proposed solutions for resisting and reshaping current
and emerging immigration norms.
