Keeping Numbers Low in the Name of Fairness: Ethos and Ethics in a Swiss Asylum Administration

Author(s) : Laura Affolter, Julia M. Eckert

Source : https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839451045-002

Abstract: This chapter consists of four main parts. Part one describes a field episode in which two SEM officials – a superior and his employee – discuss the rightfulness of a decision. From that point of departure I extract, in part two, what the officials as decision-makers consider their duties to be. Their conceptualisations form the basis for deriving the ethics of the office. In part three I discuss a variety of norms associated with the notion of being professional in the SEM. Particularly through the norm of fairness, we see how procedural ethos is shaped by bureaucratic ethics. Part four shows how the ethics and ethos of the office make one particular decision-making practice, which I call “digging deep”, the normal and desirable thing for decision-makers to do. “Digging deep”, in turn, leads to reaffirmation of the office’s norms and values.

This paper is based on ethnographic material from fieldwork for my PhD, which was conducted in the SEM during various stays between 2014 and 2015. I shadowed decision-makers from various organisational units in their work, observing them as they wrote decisions, prepared and conducted asylum interviews, chatted to colleagues in hallways and during coffee breaks, helped each other with difficult “cases”, performed administrative tasks and Keeping Numbers Low in the Name of Fairness, participated in team meetings. Furthermore, I took part in a three-week training session for new employees, conducted semi-structured interviews with decision-makers and superiors from nine different units in the SEM and analysed case files.