A Sociology of Discordance: Negotiating Schemas of Deservingness and Codified Law in U.S. Asylum Status Determinations

Abstract

Asylum is one of the most significant global issues of our time. Asylum status determinations are thus a topic of great political and practical importance. This article analyzes asylum status determinations to better understand and theorize organizational legal decision-making processes. It draws on 30 interviews with U.S. asylum officers as well as case law and policy documents to develop a conceptual framework for understanding what happens, in particular, when officers’ understandings of deservingness for asylum do not match codified definitions of eligibility for asylum. The article identifies the processes through which such moments of perceived discordance between codified law and moral schemas shape frontline officials’ evaluation, advances current approaches in cultural and organizational sociology concerning the effects of moral schemas on law in action, and illuminates when and why decision makers are more or less likely to rely on preexisting biases and stereotypes, with implications for the study of inequality.