Entrapping Asylum Seekers

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

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2. Entrapping Asylum Seekers: Introduction

   • Alison Gerard, Francesco Vecchio

   Pages 1-23

3. Unmasking the Cultural Construction of Asylum Screening at the Border

   • Olga Jubany

   Pages 25-55

4. Beyond the Border Spectacle: Migration Across the Mediterranean Sea

   • Pierluigi Musarò

   Pages 57-82

5. Seeking Asylum in Neoliberal Cairo: Refugee Protests and the Securitization of Humanitarianism

   • Elisa Pascucci

   Pages 83-105

6. Contesting Entrapment: Women Asylum Seekers in Hong Kong

   • Alison Gerard

   Pages 107-133

7. ‘This Time I Am Going to Cross!’: Fighting Entrapment Processes Through the Provision of Human Smuggling Services on the US–Mexico Border

   • Gabriella E. Sanchez

   Pages 135-155

8. Asylum Seekers and Strategic Litigation

   • Frances Webber

   Pages 157-185

9. ‘Hostile’ UK Immigration Policy and Asylum Seekers’ Susceptibility to Forced Labour

   • Hannah Lewis, Louise Waite, Stuart Hodkinson

   Pages 187-215

10. Funding Precarity: Non-profit Organization and Refugee Negotiation of Italian and European Asylum Policies

    • Michele Manocchi

    Pages 217-245

11. Asylum Seeker Materiality and Identity-Building: Shapers of Socio-legal Incarceration

    • Francesco Vecchio

    Pages 247-270

12. Back Matter

    Pages 271-276

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This book is an interdisciplinary attempt to understand the contemporaneous human condition of asylum seekers through analysis of their entrapment and the resultant new forms of resistance that have emerged to combat it. Based on qualitative research data, the chapters support the claim that asylum seekers are entrapped in social, legal and economic precariousness amidst the complex relationship between individual agency and social structure. 


By exploring the practices and lived experiences of asylum seekers and other parties involved in their migration and reception, the authors explore the structural and individual agency factors that entrap asylum seekers in precarious livelihoods and lead to marginalization and social exclusion. A bold and timely study, this edited collection will be essential reading for academics and students of criminology, sociology, anthropology, urban studies and social policy.

• asylum
• precarious emplyoment
• security
• policing
• border control
• Mediterranean Sea
• Cairo
• Neoliberalism
• refugee protests
• securitization
• humanitarianism
• Hong Kong
• US–Mexico border
• human smuggling
• entrapment
• litigation
• forced labour
• UK immigration policy
• socio-legal incarceration
• ethnicity, class, gender and crime

“Those of us with an interest in border control are accustomed to reading and writing about the abuse, detention, demonization and deterrence of asylum seekers in the name of border security. But rarely do we hear about their ‘entrapment’. This collection shines a light on the multitude of ways in which asylum seekers experience ongoing precarity and criminalisation, long after they have left behind the conditions of extreme insecurity that prompted their journeys. Vecchio and Gerard have adapted the concept of entrapment in a highly original way, providing a fresh analysis that enhances our understanding of the myriad forms of social, legal and economic incarceration that operate beyond the walls of detention centres.  Entrapping Asylum Seekers makes an invaluable and novel contribution to the field, and, through its meticulous analyses of cycles of entrapment and resistance, engenders hope for a less repressive future.” (Leanne Weber, School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Australia)

• Anthropology, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

  Francesco Vecchio

• Centre for Law and Justice, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia

  Alison Gerard

Francesco Vecchio is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and an Adjunct Research Fellow at Charles Sturt University’s Centre for Law and Justice, Australia.


Alison Gerard is an Associate Professor in Law and Director of the Centre for Law and Justice at Charles Sturt University, Australia. 

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