Asylum decisions as legal communication of time-space

• The aim of this paper is to present some preliminary thoughts about a forthcoming article about how the machinery of language communication contributes to generating concepts with legal status such as (unaccompanied) children, asylum protection or rejected outcomes, as well as the interconnectedness between them. In the larger article project, asylum decisions concerning the category of so called ‘unaccompanied children’ are used to show how ideas presented in language make legal governance possible. In this paper, one court decision will be in focus, in order to enable a discussion about time-space at the conference. This work draws on the scholarship of criminologist Mariana Valverde, who in turn employ notions developed by literary theorist Michael Bachtin. It therefore ought to be emphasised that the exploration of the dynamic generation of legal concepts is not a “case study” in the sense that the status of the ideas would be perceived to representing norms or reality in a more perfectionised way (such as in conceptual jurisprudence where norms are formalised and systematised into exact definitions). Instead of striving in the direction to develop what Valverde (2015, p. 3) describes as ‘world-scale theory’ (e.g., Niklas Luhmann’s system’s theory), or to present patterns that are described to fit a worlds-scale theory (e.g. ‘this is an example of necropolitics’), the interest of this paper is to explore assemblages of ideas that are collated and oriented in pragmatic ways, which is an alternative style of theoretical discussion that Valverde (2015) offer socio-legal research with an interest in language.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Juridik -- Juridik och samhälle (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Law -- Law and Society (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Asylum procedure; Bachtin; chronotope

Sociologi

Sociology

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)