Managing Multiple Identities: Discourse, Legitimacy and Resources in the UK Refugee System

Abstract

In this article, we examine how the concept of a `refugee' is discursively constituted within the UK refugee system. We examine the actions and interactions of four organizations in particular: the British government, the Refugee Legal Centre, the British Refugee Council and the Refugee Forum, as they struggle to establish an understanding of `refugee' conducive to their goals and interests. Within this institutional field, the social construction of refugees takes place at two different levels: at the broadest level, the idea of a refugee is defined through an ongoing discursive process involving a wide range of actors; while at a more micro level, individual cases are processed by a limited subset of organizations based on this broad definition. We show that while the government controls the processing of individual cases through its formal authority and control of resources, all four organizations participate in the definition of a refugee and they all, therefore, play a role in refugee determination. Understanding the dynamics of an institutional field requires a consideration of discursive as well as traditional sources of power. While formal authority and resource dependency may provide some organizations with a measure of control within an existing institutional frame, discursive processes enable other organizations to modify or maintain the institutional frame within which traditional power is exercised.