Maja Hertoghs
Erasmus University Rotterdam, Faculteit Sociale Sciences, PhD student, research group Monitoring Modernity
I am currently studying professional (visualizing) practices of the Dutch asylum procedure(s). By following, observing and learning its legal negotiations I explore how specific configurations of (‘bogus’) refugeeness are made visible/legible in that process, forming the grounds for decisions over who may (not) legally enter the Netherlands. My main focus is on how national borders and images of (non) belonging are shaped and enacted via the asylum process. As this is an ethnographic study I understand the procedure as a complex, historically contingent, social situation; this study is an attempt to see –and add– parts of that –to that– complexity.
Abstract of my second thesis (research master): by drawing on observations of asylum hearings, interaction between asylum lawyers and asylum applicants and extensive interviews with an IND officer, this thesis explores the work of emotion in the legal process of asylum. The asylum procedure exists in a historically developed framework of suspicion within which the ‘deserving’ ‘refugee’ is strictly defined against the ‘undeserving’ applicant and/or ‘bogus refugee’. In the legal act of distinguishing applicants as deserving or undeserving of national protection, IND officers are in the work of evaluating and constructing the key legal category in the procedure, which is ‘truth’. In the evaluation of truth in all asylum cases emotion plays an important role. Central aim of this study is to show the intricate affective side of (asylum) law and emphasize that the conventional dichotomy of law as non-emotionally rational is much more complex than that.
My first thesis (MA Gender and Sexuality) is about 'translovers': persons who identify with their love and desire (and much more) for transgender people. The thesis revolves around (their) sexual self-definitions and sexual stories within and without a heteronormative context.
Supervisors: Olga Sezneva, Rachel Spronk, and Willem Schinkel
Abstract of my second thesis (research master): by drawing on observations of asylum hearings, interaction between asylum lawyers and asylum applicants and extensive interviews with an IND officer, this thesis explores the work of emotion in the legal process of asylum. The asylum procedure exists in a historically developed framework of suspicion within which the ‘deserving’ ‘refugee’ is strictly defined against the ‘undeserving’ applicant and/or ‘bogus refugee’. In the legal act of distinguishing applicants as deserving or undeserving of national protection, IND officers are in the work of evaluating and constructing the key legal category in the procedure, which is ‘truth’. In the evaluation of truth in all asylum cases emotion plays an important role. Central aim of this study is to show the intricate affective side of (asylum) law and emphasize that the conventional dichotomy of law as non-emotionally rational is much more complex than that.
My first thesis (MA Gender and Sexuality) is about 'translovers': persons who identify with their love and desire (and much more) for transgender people. The thesis revolves around (their) sexual self-definitions and sexual stories within and without a heteronormative context.
Supervisors: Olga Sezneva, Rachel Spronk, and Willem Schinkel
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