Re Cording Lives : Governing Asylum in Switzerland and the Need to Resolve Administrative asylum procedures are permeated by tensions between rationalities of legality efficiency and deterrence in asylum casework and their various effects on cases. Based on ethnographic research in the Swiss asylum administration this book unveils the pragmatics and politics of rendering asylum cases resolvable by re cording the lives of applicants in terms of asylum. With his reading of power and agency in administrations Ephraim Pörtner offers a critical view of the intricate relationship between practices of asylum casework and the governmental need to resolve claims of people seeking protection Frontmatter Contents Figures and Tables Selected Abbreviations and Acronyms Preface Acknowledgments 1. Introduction 2. An Analytic of Governing Asylum 3. Studying Government by (Dis)Association PART I Agentic Formations 4. Knowing Asylum 5. Equipped for Case Making Summary PART I PART II Enactment 6. Case Making Summary PART II PART III (De)Stabilisations 7. States of Conviction 8. Asylums of Reason Summary PART III 9. Conclusion References Legal Sources