This dissertation stems from research I carried out over ten months in 2008 and 2009 in which I observed the challenges of seeking political asylum in the United States. I trace the emergence of structural forces over asylum-seekers which aim to make political asylum in the US unappealing to frivolous applications, but which also place asylum-seekers in a hazardous condition of being in a foreign country without the means or rights to support themselves. The dissertation concerns the ways that asylum-seekers reject those conditions - they develop relationships with others to make surviving and even thriving possible. Through social practices within NGOs, churches, and communities at large, asylum-seekers develop connections to others that can negotiate their access to food, shelter, clothing, medical attention, psychological assistance, legal council and a host of relationships that improve their ongoing quality of experience. In the processes of continual representation and narration of the past, they transform themselves into idealized asylum-seeking subjects, shoring up their legal defenses against the perpetual threat of asylum denial and deportation, gaining access to crucial services, and finally, hopefully, winning asylum. This shift in status guarantees safety, but it also signals a transition away from a host of valuable social ties that were bound to that status. Asylees rush to attain the benefits owed to refugees and forge life anew, often without the people who helped them survive in the United States.
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