TY - JOUR

T1 - Between morality and the law

T2 - negotiating protection for queer asylum seekers in Niger’s asylum administration

AU - Lambert, Laura

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

PY - 2025

Y1 - 2025

N2 - Moral economies of asylum can be shaped by conflicts between legal norms to protect queer refugees and dominant heteronormativity. Beyond bureaucrats’ own moral subjectivities, this article suggests that organizational designs and procedures importantly shape the way they resolve such moral conflicts. In contrast to the single-agent decision-making familiar in the Global North, many states in the Global South use inter-ministerial eligibility committees composed of multiple (non-)state actors for the asylum decision-making. This article provides the first ethnographic research on such a committee in Niger. I argue that when the first queer migrants sought asylum in Niger, this organizational structure allowed for the active negotiation of procedures with UNHCR, further investigations on an applicant’s sexual orientation and gender identity by laypeople in the ‘morality check,’ and the weighing of normatively loaded evidence in the deliberation. Despite hegemonic heteronormativity, this organizational structure made protecting queer refugees to an object of negotiation and institutional emergence between these diverse actors, rather than precluding it from the outset. This suggests a relational, processual perspective on moral economies that centers procedures as a means of conflict resolution and their effects on the knowledge production of asylum seekers.

AB - Moral economies of asylum can be shaped by conflicts between legal norms to protect queer refugees and dominant heteronormativity. Beyond bureaucrats’ own moral subjectivities, this article suggests that organizational designs and procedures importantly shape the way they resolve such moral conflicts. In contrast to the single-agent decision-making familiar in the Global North, many states in the Global South use inter-ministerial eligibility committees composed of multiple (non-)state actors for the asylum decision-making. This article provides the first ethnographic research on such a committee in Niger. I argue that when the first queer migrants sought asylum in Niger, this organizational structure allowed for the active negotiation of procedures with UNHCR, further investigations on an applicant’s sexual orientation and gender identity by laypeople in the ‘morality check,’ and the weighing of normatively loaded evidence in the deliberation. Despite hegemonic heteronormativity, this organizational structure made protecting queer refugees to an object of negotiation and institutional emergence between these diverse actors, rather than precluding it from the outset. This suggests a relational, processual perspective on moral economies that centers procedures as a means of conflict resolution and their effects on the knowledge production of asylum seekers.

KW - externalization

KW - LGBT refugees

KW - Moral conflict

KW - national eligibility commission

KW - Sociology

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=86000452072&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.48548/pubdata-1703

DO - 10.48548/pubdata-1703

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:86000452072

JO - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

JF - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

SN - 1369-183X

ER -