Becoming a recognized refugee- A matter of privilege?

Looks like the color of the skin, names or religion can already determine the outcome of an asylum claim or if the refugee will be accepted by normative standards in the new society he tries to integrate in.

In her essay "How to Be a Good Loser: A Guide to Being a Refugee", Dragana Kaurin, who calls herself a human rights researcher and ethnographer, writes about her experiences as a refugee from Sarajevo in the 90es and compares it to the struggles of a Syrian refugee in the recent "refugee crisis".

In one part of her essay, Kaurin tells the reader about her arrival as a sudden refugee at the airport outside of Belgrad, together with her mother and her brother. With her mother being a Bosnian muslim and her father a Bosnian serb, Draguana Kaurin's name is a common in Serbia, but her brother’s isn’t. When she tells an officer her name, he believes the whole family is Serbian and gives her chocolate. Kaurin is lucky or has the privilege to seemingly belong to a certain "race".

So looks like the color of the skin, names or religion can already determine the outcome of an asylum claim or if the refugee will be accepted by normative standards in the new society he tries to integrate in.
Dragana Kaurin, in her essay, writes that the most important part of bing a refugee is “being a good loser”. She writes:

You learn to lose your nationality, your home to strangers with bigger guns, your father to mental illness, one aunt to genocide, and another to nationalism and ignorance. You learn to lose your kids, friends, dreams, neighbors, loves, diplomas, careers, photo albums, home movies, schools, museums, histories, landmarks, limbs, teeth, eyesight, sense of safety, sanity, and your sense of belonging in the world.

Not only what one will lose makes them a refugee. It is also what they used to own that often determines whether they even have the chance to become a recognized refugee

Reading the 2nd chapter called “The System” by Carol Bohmer and Amy Shuman in “Rejecting Refugees: Political Asylum in the 21st century”, it becomes clear that not only what one will lose makes them a refugee. It is also what they used to own that often determines whether they even have the chance to become a recognized refugee.
When one is forced to flee their country and becomes a refugee, the mentioned looks, religion or a simple name can make a difference in their experience as a refugee. Such might be their wealth and education, as it seems in Bohmer’s and Schuman’s text.

They describe, comparing the systems of claiming asylum in the UK and the US, how much of a difference a lawyer can make in the process of claiming asylum. While in the UK every refugee has the right to get counseling by a lawyer for a certain amount of hours, in the US, there is no such thing as lawyers paid by the state.
They either have to rely on the “word of the street”, which has shown to not be successful since every case of claiming asylum is different.
They also have the chance of hiring a pro bono lawyer, which can be a matter of chance, depending on in which state of the US the refugee is looking for one- in some states, they might not find one. They can hire a “fixer” of “expert”, often called “notario”, who is not as expensive as a lawyer, but most of the time he or she will also not be as professional.
If the refugee is very educated and speaks good enough English, he could fill out the forms to claim asylum by himself.
But the ideal scenario for a refugee is to have the resources that enable him or her to afford a lawyer.

Even though claiming asylum is a human right, different circumstances or “privileges” like looks, religion, education, origin and money can affect that particular human right

Syrian Refugees with smartphones
 that have often been criticized and associated with wealth

This is when privilege plays another important role: A refugee that has enough money to afford a good education, flee his country, pay smugglers on the way and finally to pay a lawyer that will help him claim asylum will most likely have more chances of becoming a recognized refugee than the one without any financial or educational resources.
So even though claiming asylum is a human right, different circumstances or “privileges” like looks, religion, education, origin and money can affect that particular human right.




It is unfair that a refugee that e.g. arrives in a state in the United States where he cannot find a pro bono lawyer might not get treated with the same human right as a refugee that can claim a lawyer in the UK.

A human right should be a human right, no matter the circumstance or “privilege” of a human being.




Resources:
Dragana Katrin, 2016. "How to be a Good Loser".
Carol Böhmer and Amy Human, 2008. Rejecting Refugees: Political Asylum in the 21st Century, Chapter 2, "The System".