Doctoral Dissertation Research: Alternative Models of Care for Refugees Seeking Political Asylum

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

The project explores how refugees and caregivers negotiate institutions that are severely strained administratively during emergency contexts. As the arrival of a record-breaking number of African and Middle Eastern migrants in Europe demonstrates, refugee crises seriously strain political asylum systems. Many nations that receive refugees frequently rely on the humanitarian efforts of non-state actors that provide care and assistance to these communities. Religious institutions have increasingly played such a role, provisioning medical and other forms of assistance to asylum seekers. Such institutions relieve some of the strain on state facilities, but create new challenges for the governance and administrative management of asylum claims as asylum seekers move between state and non-state systems of care. This project, which trains a graduate student in the methods of conducting empirically-grounded scientific research, investigates how asylum seekers navigate between these two institutions of care and draws from their experience to think about alternative models of care for asylum seekers. Duke University doctoral student Carla Hung, supervised by Prof. Engseng Ho, will undertake 12 months of ethnographic field research to investigate the impact of church-state negotiations on the lives of refugees seeking political asylum in Rome, Italy. Italy is one of the main receiving countries in Europe and the Italian state deals with this emergency situation by letting Catholic charities help with the asylum and refugee care process. The inclusion of Catholic charities into Italy's political asylum system requires church and state actors to negotiate their different care practices and muddies the separation between church and state in Italy. Hung will focus on the experience of asylum seekers and care providers at two sites in Rome: 1) the San Gallicano Hospital - where both a state-run medical clinic (INMP) and a Catholic aid organization (Community of Sant'Egidio) collaborate to care for asylum seekers and 2) Salaam Palace - an autonomous migrant housing occupation where Catholic charity workers assist new asylum seekers. Research methods will include participant observation of political asylum care practices, supplemented with content analyses of policy and activist materials; and extensive interviewing of the medical and social work staff at the San Gallicano Hospital, the clergy and volunteers of the Community of Sant'Egidio, and asylum seekers who live or seek services at these sites. Analysis of this information will seek to answer the following research questions: 1) How does access to Catholic aid affect whether migrants decide to seek asylum in Italy? 2) How do church and state actors negotiate to define the kinds of care available to asylum seekers and how do they determine who is responsible to provide that care? 3) What does studying the way that asylum seekers navigate the care practices of these two institutions reveal about how asylum seekers experience and conceptualize care, asylum, trauma, and charity? This project will shed light on the impact of Catholic aid in Italy's political asylum system as experienced by asylum seekers in Italy today. The findings from this research could contribute to policy considerations on alternative models of care for asylum seekers in Europe.