The Permission to be Cruel: Street-Level Bureaucrats and Harms Against People Seeking Asylum

Immigration and asylum policies and practices in Britain have turned increasingly hostile. People seeking asylum are exposed to a panoply of control measures and rendered vulnerable. The state has exteriorized its controls and drawn-in various actors and agencies who now enact state power in the control of migration. This article moves away from essentialist and simplistic notions of the state-one that views the state as monolithic and coherent with strictly defined social borders-and explores the role of what Lipsky (2010), in his bookStreet-level Bureaucracy, calls "street-level bureaucrats." It shows the ways in which actors and agencies enact state power and inflict cruelty on asylum seekers through their strategic actions and inactions. Drawing on data from ethnographic research, this article demonstrates how bureaucratic practices create and exacerbate psychological distress among asylum seekers and push them into dangerous and potentially life-threatening situations. By doing so, this article makes a contribution to the literature on migration, state racism and violence.