Changing the Administration from within: Criticism and Compliance by Junior Bureaucrats in Niger’s Refugee Directorate

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Research has rarely investigated the actions bureaucrats take to challenge the status quo of their organisation from within. Proposing a power-analytical approach to voice, exit and everyday resistance as political strategies of challenging the bureaucratic status quo, I study the difficulties of achieving organisational change in a context of structural constraints on junior bureaucrats' reformative power. During field research in Niger's Refugee Directorate, I found that despite the associated risks, junior bureaucrats criticised their working conditions and, in confidential conversations, the administration. As precarious staff, they often combined criticism with compliance. In frequent acts of semi-private criticism amongst peers and with external actors, they problematised their working conditions and the state, but performed symbolic conformity in the everyday to avoid sanctions. This strategy nevertheless created autonomy for themselves and mobilised external actors for change-making. In rarer acts of direct criticism voiced to their superiors, the junior staff often complied with the same informal solidarities they vocally criticised.

Original languageEnglish
JournalInternational Journal of Law in Context
Volume18
Issue number3
Pages (from-to)333-346
Number of pages14
ISSN1744-5523
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.09.2022
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
I thank all research participants in Niger's asylum administration, Prof. Marie-Claire Foblets at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Prof. Olaf Zenker at the Martin Luther University and Dr Hamani Oumarou at the Laboratoire des Etudes et de Recherche sur les Dynamiques Sociales et le Développement Local (LASDEL) in Niamey for supporting my research. This research was funded by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology.

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press.

    Research areas

  • anthropology of the state, asylum administration, everyday resistance, organisational change, refugee law, street-level bureaucracy
  • Cultural studies
  • History

    ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

  • Law

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