Between protection and harm : negotiated vulnerabilities in asylum laws and bureaucracies / Luc Leboeuf, Cathrine Brun, Hilde Lidén, Sabrina Marchetti, Delphine Nakache, Sylvie Sarolea, editors

INTRODUCTION. Between Protection and Harm. Negotiated Vulnerabilities in Asylum Laws and Bureaucracies -- Part 1. 'Vulnerability' Between Legal and Empirical Conceptualisations -- 1. The Travels and Transformations of 'Vulnerability': From an Ethical and Analytical Concept to a Legal and Bureaucratic Label -- 2. Positionalities in Research and the Question of Migrants' Vulnerability -- Part 2.Vulnerability and Refugee Protection in First Countries of Asylum -- 3. Negotiating Multiple Meanings of Vulnerabilities in Lebanon's Compounded Crises: Refugees' Encounters with Frameworks and Institutions -- 4. A Whole-of-Society Approach to Vulnerabilities: Contestations and Unintended Effects -- 5. Selecting Refugees for Resettlement to Norway and Canada: Vulnerability, Integration and Discretion -- Part 3. Vulnerability and Asylum Processes in Europe and Canada -- 6. A Place to Live: Views from Protection Seekers and Social Workers on Accommodation Issues in the Italian System -- 7. Time(s), Space(s) and Shapes of vulnerabilities in the Belgian Asylum System -- 7. Accommodating Vulnerable Claimants in the Refugee Hearing: The Canadian Example -- 9. Interdependencies of Vulnerability and Asylum Law within the German Federal System -- 10. Reinforcing or Obscuring Refugee Rights? The Roles of Vulnerability in Norwegian Asylum Practices

This open access book dissects the current narratives of 'vulnerability' in asylum laws and policies, by unpacking the meanings, productions, and performances, of 'vulnerability' in different contexts, from countries of first asylum in the Global South to Europe and Canada. It discusses how the increased reliance on 'vulnerability' to guide states' replies to refugee movements improves refugee protection, while also generating contestations and exclusionary effects that may cause harm. Based on data collected as part of the EU Horizon 2020 VULNER project, the book examines existing legal and bureaucratic approaches to refugees' vulnerabilities, which it confronts with the refugees' experiences and understandings of their own life challenges. It analyses the perspectives from state actors, humanitarian organisations, and social and aid workers, as well as the refugees themselves. By emphasizing how these perspectives relate and feed into each other, the book unpacks the humanitarian replies from states and the international community to refugee movements -- including in their implied exclusionary dimensions that generate contestations and implementation difficulties which, if not tackled and understood properly, risk exacerbating and/or producing vulnerabilities among refugees