TY - JOUR

T1 - Changing the Administration from within:

T2 - Criticism and Compliance by Junior Bureaucrats in Niger’s Refugee Directorate

AU - Lambert, Laura

N1 - 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.

PY - 2022/9/1

Y1 - 2022/9/1

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - anthropology of the state

KW - asylum administration

KW - everyday resistance

KW - organisational change

KW - refugee law

KW - street-level bureaucracy

KW - Cultural studies

KW - History

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85139773908&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/d0ad38db-d7a4-3c7f-ad20-8370de2fb123/

U2 - 10.1017/S1744552322000271

DO - 10.1017/S1744552322000271

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 18

SP - 333

EP - 346

JO - International Journal of Law in Context

JF - International Journal of Law in Context

SN - 1744-5523

IS - 3

ER -