Conference contribution 2014
Selection of the Fittest? Selection Criteria as Governmental Techniques for Calculating and Managing the Risk of Resettled Refugees
Authors:
- Katrine Syppli Kohl
One of the challenges of contemporary refugee resettlement is discriminatory selection criteria of resettlement countries. One possible example is Denmark’s 2005 introduction of integration potential criteria for the selection of refugees for resettlement and the simultaneous declaration of self-reliance as the program’s main objective.
Although third country resettlement has been used as a tool in refugee management throughout the 20th century most studies focus on the integration phase and take the criteria at face value. Thus, we have little knowledge of how selection criteria are first established and then interpreted by interviewing officers. On the basis of a 2009 study of the Danish selection reform and its practical application (Kohl, 2009) the paper seeks to begin to remedy this gap.
The paper draws on a governmentality approach and views the programme as an example of ‘casework-risk’ management by the welfare state. As the analysis will show, the new selection combines a range of sovereign, disciplinary and pastoral techniques of power allowing for the exclusion of some refugees from resettlement and the attempted shaping of the rest in the image of a self-reliant, responsible, liberal subject. In practice, the prediction and calculation of the refugee’s risk level is done by establishing a local norm on the basis of about an hour’s interview with the applicants. Thus, contrary to what might be expected, refugees are not selected on the basis of immediate employability. Additionally, future productivity is not the main focus of the selection, and criteria for exclusion are negotiable, if the person is part of a family. However, the refugees singled out for exclusion by the integration objective are among the most vulnerable. Paradoxically, the very factors (exile, trauma, low resources) that make them refugees and resettlement candidates, may cause rejection. However, the new selection’s main problem is that it is discriminatory, as factors such as nationality, marital status and age are among the features imagined to be significant for a refugee’s integration potential.
Although third country resettlement has been used as a tool in refugee management throughout the 20th century most studies focus on the integration phase and take the criteria at face value. Thus, we have little knowledge of how selection criteria are first established and then interpreted by interviewing officers. On the basis of a 2009 study of the Danish selection reform and its practical application (Kohl, 2009) the paper seeks to begin to remedy this gap.
The paper draws on a governmentality approach and views the programme as an example of ‘casework-risk’ management by the welfare state. As the analysis will show, the new selection combines a range of sovereign, disciplinary and pastoral techniques of power allowing for the exclusion of some refugees from resettlement and the attempted shaping of the rest in the image of a self-reliant, responsible, liberal subject. In practice, the prediction and calculation of the refugee’s risk level is done by establishing a local norm on the basis of about an hour’s interview with the applicants. Thus, contrary to what might be expected, refugees are not selected on the basis of immediate employability. Additionally, future productivity is not the main focus of the selection, and criteria for exclusion are negotiable, if the person is part of a family. However, the refugees singled out for exclusion by the integration objective are among the most vulnerable. Paradoxically, the very factors (exile, trauma, low resources) that make them refugees and resettlement candidates, may cause rejection. However, the new selection’s main problem is that it is discriminatory, as factors such as nationality, marital status and age are among the features imagined to be significant for a refugee’s integration potential.
Authors
- Katrine Syppli Kohl
