Between legal void and racisms: reflections on the asylum seekers' banking experiences and access to justice in São Paulo

Abstract:

Based on the ethnography and interviews carried out in the authors' master's research, we propose here to reflect on issues related to the asylum seekers’ access to justice in Brazil, considering the banking experience of the Nigerian John and interviews with eligibility officers of the National Committee for Refugees (CONARE). We believe that both the empirical experience and the interviews of our interlocutors shed light on the difficulties and non-compliance or rights violations faced by racialized people like John when they possess the “protocol”, a regular document for these migrants in the country. We discourse about the social experience of these individuals who are always assisted from the perspective of a provisional being, according to Sayad (1998). In this analysis, we apprehend the arbitrariness that involve the daily dimensions experienced by asylum seekers and conclude that they are adrift of institutional processes, in which legal void and racism become commonplace.

Keywords:
asylum seekers; migrants banking process; access to justice; racism; legal void