Investigating the “guarded fortress”: bureaucratic opacity in UK asylum administration

Hodgkinson Lahiff, Connie (2025) Investigating the “guarded fortress”: bureaucratic opacity in UK asylum administration. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

In 2021, chronic delays across the asylum system left the UK Home Office in administrative and political turmoil. The following year, a promise to ‘clear the backlog’ spurred a period of rapid legislative and administrative change. Obscured from view, an assemblage of public and private actors worked to streamline casework, increase the productivity of decision-makers, and ensure the ‘effective’ functioning of the asylum system. However, a veil of secrecy concealed the nature and extent of these administrative developments. Notwithstanding increased scrutiny, the Home Office remained opaque, appearing to all as “a guarded fortress”.

In this thesis, I use the production of opacity as the point of analytical departure from which to develop a multi-perspectival critique of asylum determination in the UK. I use Freedom of Information requests, qualitative interviews, and analyses of Parliamentary committee hearings, to probe the tactics and consequences of institutional opacity with regards to administrative design, the role of frontline asylum caseworkers, and the experience of immigration practitioners supporting asylum applications.

The contributions I present in this thesis are threefold: methodological, empirical, and theoretical. Studying an opaque institution with the tools of critical security studies – tracing opacity’s effects, practices, and dynamics – I explore alternative methodologies for manoeuvring through hard-to-access institutions. The empirical findings presented detail the nature and extent of management consultancy involvement in UK asylum administration, problematise the drive for efficiency gains, and highlight the experiences of immigration practitioners in a time of increased hostility towards so-called ‘lefty lawyers’. Finally, I develop a theorisation of bureaucratic opacity which is comprised of structural, epistemic, and relational dimensions. I demonstrate how opacity is produced through both contemporary bureaucratic structures and bureaucratic knowledge practices, and argue that the production of opacity structures power relations between the Home Office and those with whom it interacts.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Law
Depositing User:	Kitty Laine
Date Deposited:	30 May 2025 13:55
Last Modified:	30 May 2025 13:55
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/99340
DOI:

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