What Is a Social Group in the Eyes of the Law? Knowledge Work in Refugee-Status Determination

This article explores the settling and unsettling of legal concepts in relation to refugee-status determination. To gain admission to the United States, asylum seekers are required to demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of one of five protected grounds: race, religion, nation...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Law & social inquiry 2018-10, Vol.43 (4), p.1257-1278
Main Author: Owens, B. Robert
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Case law
Citizenship
Courts
Disputes
Employment policies
Judges & magistrates
Law
Meaning
Membership
Occupational status
Oppression
Political asylum
Race
Racial identity
Rationality
Refugees
Religion
Social groups
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Summary:This article explores the settling and unsettling of legal concepts in relation to refugee-status determination. To gain admission to the United States, asylum seekers are required to demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of one of five protected grounds: race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. Accordingly, many political asylum claims turn on the interpretation of "particular social group." This article examines case law disputes in the federal courts of appeals over the meaning of that phrase and describes how statutory interpretation by judges has contributed to the persistence of such disputes over several decades since the passage of the 1980 Refugee Act. My analysis reveals the tensions between different forms of rationality at play in judicial statutory interpretation and applies the concept of legal settling to a new empirical domain.
ISSN:0897-6546
1747-4469
1545-696X
DOI:10.1111/lsi.12369