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What happens when international human rights norms confront the practical realities of asylum decision-making?
This book offers a bold examination of how institutional dynamics and human rights oversight shape the intricate mechanisms behind asylum adjudication. By framing asylum law as an ‘entangled regime’, the author uncovers how national decision-makers interpret, apply, and contest norms of national, international, and institutional origin, offering invaluable insights into the evolving landscape of migrants’ rights.
Through this socio-legal lens, it focuses on the Nordic countries – a region with a long history of compliance but increasingly marked by anti-immigrant politics and policy experimentation. As political pressures bear down against decades of rights-focused legal consolidation, a critical testing ground emerges where international law faces some of its most rigorous challenges.
“Studies of asylum law and politics too often focus on just one country, one decision-making body or just look at legal opinions. In contrast, Sarah Scott Ford’s excellent book gives us a truly comparative and holistic study of asylum law in the Nordic region, explaining in rich detail how domestic actors translate and co-produce international law within their institutional contexts. While the Nordic states are unique in certain ways, Ford’s concept of entanglement gives scholars of asylum law and politics a powerful comparative tool which can be applied in other jurisdictions and will enable further much-needed comparative work in the field. This work is an important contribution and a must-read.” Rebecca Hamlin, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
“A profound socio-legal analysis, unraveling the complexities of asylum law and human rights in the Nordic region.” Maja Janmyr, University of Oslo
1. Entangled Asylum
2. Human Rights Law in Asylum Adjudication
Part 1: International Legal Regimes
3. A Genealogy of Entangled Asylum
4. The Emergence of a Legal Battlefield
Part 2: Nordic States
5. Why the Nordics?
6. The Nordic Migration Cases
7. Under the Radar: The Broader Effects of International Oversight
Part 3: Institutional Sites
8. Balancing Law and Politics in the Asylum Architecture
9. Brokering Human Rights Law in Asylum Appeals
10. Conclusion