Journal Articles by Katherine Jensen
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2023
In 2021, there were 4.6 million asylum claims pending globally. How does the state determine that... more In 2021, there were 4.6 million asylum claims pending globally. How does the state determine that someone qualifies for refugee status? To understand refugee status determination, scholarship has focused on the characteristics of asylum seekers, their applications, and adjudicating officials. Relatively less is known about how officials make sense of asylum seekers and their claims. Building from a cognitive sociological approach, this article details frames of perception and evaluation at work in refugee status determination, cognitive prisms through which asylum officials make legible those seeking safe haven before the state. In doing so, it turns analytical focus from "what" to "how" officials interpret. It is based on an ethnography of the asylum-screening process in Brazil, including fieldwork, official interviews, and case files. It delineates four cognitive frames: credibility, gravity, affinity, and novelty. Such frames coexist, and they can also interact through frame configuration or competition. This article contributes to asylum scholarship by turning to the operative cognitive structures through which officials process information and evaluate asylum claims, and their variable development and operations in situated context.
Teaching Sociology, 2023
Despite being intensely sociable, ethnographic research is also deeply isolating. Although fieldw... more Despite being intensely sociable, ethnographic research is also deeply isolating. Although fieldworkers may feel lonely, we contend that they are not (or should not be) alone. At the tenth anniversary of Urban Ethnography Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, we reflect on the ethnographic training cultivated there. We detail objectives, experiences, and lessons learned, while also considering challenges for pedagogical projects of ethnographic collectivity-as well as techniques to address them. We contend that learning and teaching sociology through the ethnographic craft is not limited to the classroom, but combines reading, writing, fieldwork, and dialogue with other ethnographers. These four dimensions are cultivated through various, simultaneous classroom-based and research-development activities. We examine activities conducive to the creation of what we call, borrowing from Norbert Elias (1984), an "ethnographer aperti." Finally, we discuss the replicability of this model, suggesting how universities can expand pedagogical support by pursuing ethnography as more than work in isolation.
American Behavioral Scientist, 2022
What does immigrant racialization look like in a context of legal inclusion? Although scholars ha... more What does immigrant racialization look like in a context of legal inclusion? Although scholars have given notable attention to racialization in the face of illegality and exclusionary immigration regimes, less well understood are dimensions of racialization in inclusive legal contexts. Over the past decade, Brazil has experienced three major influxes of forcibly displaced people—from Haiti, Syria, and Venezuela. For each, Brazil radically expanded its asylum and immigration policies in their favor. At the same time, these groups have been disparately racialized in the public sphere. Using a content analysis of media coverage from 2010 to 2020, this paper examines the varied public racialization of Haitians, Syrians, and Venezuelans. Juxtaposing representations sheds light on the relationality of migrant racialization. It finds autonomy and capacity, belonging, and national ramification as key dimensions through which migrants are variably racialized. By interrogating these racial dimensions in the face of legal incorporation in Brazil, this study complicates the relationship between racialization, Othering, and legal status.
Qualitative Sociology, 2021
Refugee status is often imagined as a holy grail. Yet it can have radically different meanings fo... more Refugee status is often imagined as a holy grail. Yet it can have radically different meanings for refugees, even under inclusive policy regimes replete with legal and symbolic resources. Though Brazil is seen as a model of contemporary refugee protection, asylum seekers and refugees there often feel indifferent about the status they seek and obtain. Why are immigrants sometimes apathetic about a status they pursue, even in the face of favorable policies? To resolve this puzzle, this article introduces a cultural sociological approach to contexts of reception by bringing culturalist accounts of the state to bear on this arena of immigration research. Existing scholarship presents the context of reception as a landscape immigrants traverse, shaping various outcomes and in which their sense of belonging is nested. The perspective espoused here builds on this literature by capturing how contexts of reception are imagined and constituted from below. It interrogates how policy regimes are perceived from the migrant perspective, and it conceptualizes context of reception and political subjectivity as mutually constitutive. Based on an ethnography of the asylum process in Brazil, this article employs that framework to explain the production of refugee status apathy—a measured disinterest and lack of enthusiasm about refugee status amongst those in search of safe haven. Taking seriously how refugees themselves understand the legal status they seek and obtain, and how those perceptions develop in and through their encounters with the state and beyond, illuminates how experiences of the legal and socioeconomic contexts of reception in process and practice affect the salience of migratory status—in ways missed when we pursue immigrant meanings as driven by and embedded in formal policy environments.
Contexts, 2021
The legal processes and social hierarchies that asylum seekers and refugees navigate as they seek... more The legal processes and social hierarchies that asylum seekers and refugees navigate as they seek safe haven shape how they understand that status and their sense of belonging. In Brazil, formal policies of legal inclusion—combined with a lack of protection from economic precarity, social exclusion, and anti-black racism in daily life—lessen the objective impact and subjective weight of asylum.
Research in Urban Sociology, 2019
Ethnography is not only a set of tools with which to collect data, but an epistemological vantage... more Ethnography is not only a set of tools with which to collect data, but an epistemological vantage point from which to apprehend the social world. In this vein, we articulate a model of teaching and learning ethnography that entails focusing on how to construct an ethnographic object. In this chapter, we describe our way of teaching ethnography as not simply a method of data collection, but as a manner of training that pays particular attention – before, during, and after fieldwork – to the theory-driven moments of the construction of sociological objects. How, as ethnographers, do we structure and give structure to the social milieu we investigate? In teaching the ethnographic craft, we focus on a specific series of elements: theory, puzzles, warrants, the relationship between claims and evidence, and the reconstruction of the local point of view. Moreover, we maintain that attention to these components of ethnographic object construction should be coupled with epistemological vigilance throughout the research process.
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2018
The current era demands our thoughtful attention to how states process asylum seeker claims for s... more The current era demands our thoughtful attention to how states process asylum seeker claims for safe haven, yet we know little about the practices through which asylum officials carry out that work. Building from literature on the body and knowledge production, this paper illuminates the workings of (dis)embodiment in the asylum process. I use the term (dis)embodiment to refer to an arrangement of separate yet interdependent practices of disembodying and embodying knowledge. These practices of knowledge production together form an integral part of what I call the “epistemic logic” of asylum – the techniques and processes of reasoning used to produce and analyse information to determine if an asylum seeker qualifies for refugee status. Through an ethnography of the asylum process in Brazil, I document how officials produce and privilege disembodied knowledge, while they contrastingly constrain the knowledge of asylum seekers to their bodies and lived experiences.
Social Currents, 2018
Recent waves of legislation have made it much easier for gun owners to obtain a Concealed Handgun... more Recent waves of legislation have made it much easier for gun owners to obtain a Concealed Handgun License (CHL) and thereby carry their guns in public except when explicitly prohibited. Because data are difficult to access, our understanding of who seeks and obtains such licenses remains limited. Using data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, this article fills this empirical gap by describing demographic trends and characteristics of applicants for CHLs in five states: Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, Texas, and Utah. The results establish that (1) applications for CHLs are growing at fast rates; (2) there are significant gender and racial disparities in terms of who applies for CHLs, with men 2.9 to 5.5 times more likely to apply than women, and whites 1.3 to 2.0 times more likely to apply than blacks; (3) in Florida and Utah, these demographic gaps have widened over time; and (4) there are significant racial disparities in terms of application outcomes, with black applicants being 3.3 to 5.5 times more likely to be denied a license than white applicants. Moreover, we do not find the patterns in Massachusetts, a may-issue state, to be significantly different from the shall-issue states in our sample.
Qualitative Sociology, 2017
What can local public sociology look like, and what does it accomplish? This essay tracks the ori... more What can local public sociology look like, and what does it accomplish? This essay tracks the origins, makings and impacts of the book Invisible in Austin to evaluate its model of public sociology: as a collective enterprise with a local aim. Invisible in Austin: Life and Labor in an American City, the culmination of a three-year collaborative qualitative research project between a professor and twelve graduate students, depicts social suffering as lived for 11 individuals in Austin, Texas—a booming, highly segregated city with one of the country’s highest levels of income inequality. In its design, production, and effects, it envisions public sociology in a two-fold sense—in its joint, horizontal making, and in its intent to intervene in the local public sphere to make visible the daily lived experience of social marginality for those whose labor allows Austin to survive and thrive as a hip, creative technopolis—house cleaners, office machine repairers, cab drivers, restaurant cooks and dish washers, exotic dancers, musicians, and roofers, among them. Reflecting on the origins of the book, its joint assembling, and its outcomes thus far, we take stock of the lessons learned. In so doing, we provide a rubric for evaluating the wide spectrum of possible impacts of a public sociological intervention: through direct and indirect audience engagements, on the project’s subjects, and on local public policy. This reflection concludes with three suggestions: to approach public sociology as collective enterprise, to take narrative seriously, and to seek wide exposure.
City & Community, 2015
Social scientific objects are not found but conquered against “the illusion of immediate knowledg... more Social scientific objects are not found but conquered against “the illusion of immediate knowledge” (Bourdieu et al. 1991:13). Their conquest is a struggle against commonsensical assumptions, presumptions, and preconceptions about the social world. Scientific objects are conquered and constructed. They are constructed, as Desmond (2014) recently reminded us—resurrecting the obscure but essential The Craft of Sociology—with a series of theoretical preoccupations in mind. In that essay, Desmond makes the case for relational ethnography: to move the substantive and analytic focus of ethnography from groups and places to relations, conflicts, boundaries, and processes. And he roots that discussion in the often overlooked yet essential practice of the construction of the scientific object.
When we shift our focus to the process of constructing our scientific objects of inquiry, it becomes clear that relational ethnographies construct radically different objects than the (much more common) substantialist approaches. Here, we make a few suggestions about potential relational objects of investigation that, having not been at the center of U.S. urban ethnography, could enrich the conversation and help construct better, more interesting, less parochial objects. We draw examples from inside and outside the United States to both deprovincialize the conversation and elucidate particular voids that result, not from social facts on the ground, but from our ethnographic lenses—and what they allow us to see and not see. A few objects in particular—relationally approached—merit more frequent consideration in urban ethnography: the lived experience of inequalities, including that of the urban environment itself, and the political in urban milieu—both state practice in its manifold forms, including its informal and clandestine aspects, and collective action.
Contexts, 2014
Analyzing the media coverage of the 2013 Brazil protests, sociologist Katherine Jensen uncovers t... more Analyzing the media coverage of the 2013 Brazil protests, sociologist Katherine Jensen uncovers that violence against white women became the rallying cry for popular political action, while black mobilization was depoliticized as violent chaos and violence against blacks was ignored.
Book Chapters by Katherine Jensen
Invisible in Austin: Life and Labor in an American City, 2015
Pierre Bourdieu en la sociología latinoamericana: El uso de campo y habitus en la investigación, 2018
This article is about the pedagogical challenges we face within the SIT Study Abroad program “Arg... more This article is about the pedagogical challenges we face within the SIT Study Abroad program “Argentina Social Movements and Human Rights”, while trying to teach about this obscure period in history. While examining the impacts that the different types of memorials visited by our students have on their understanding of our history, we try to take students to different levels of analysis which can be summarized under the following four main ideas: 1. From Oversimplification to Thick Comprehension 2. From Horror to Hope, 3. From Particular to Global 4. From Foreign to Personal.
Other Writings by Katherine Jensen
Perspectives: Newsletter of the ASA Theory Section, 2022
In this brief essay, we suggest that even from the heart of empire one can make judicious use of ... more In this brief essay, we suggest that even from the heart of empire one can make judicious use of "Global South'' through sustained comparative and historical approximations to matters of sociological interest and in dialogue with knowledge producers outside core contexts. We distinguish revelatory or reflexive uses of Global South from obfuscating or irreflexive ones - those that confound understanding by hiding or leveling out meaningful differences. Our argument is informed by an analysis of refuge and migration in the Americas, but with comparative references to Europe, the Middle East, and Australasia. Drawing on research in and across these regions, we probe how an irreflexive Global South perspective misses significant differences, obfuscates similarities, or cannot readily explain aspects of migration policies, movements, and lived experiences.
States, Power, & Societies: ASA Political Sociology Section Newsletter, 2018
Book Reviews by Katherine Jensen
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2018
This book critiques existing literature on the response of Western states to asylum seeking ‘othe... more This book critiques existing literature on the response of Western states to asylum seeking ‘others’ and outlines an alternative perspective to acknowledge the colonial histories that have shaped the contemporary response of states to movements of refugees.
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Journal Articles by Katherine Jensen
When we shift our focus to the process of constructing our scientific objects of inquiry, it becomes clear that relational ethnographies construct radically different objects than the (much more common) substantialist approaches. Here, we make a few suggestions about potential relational objects of investigation that, having not been at the center of U.S. urban ethnography, could enrich the conversation and help construct better, more interesting, less parochial objects. We draw examples from inside and outside the United States to both deprovincialize the conversation and elucidate particular voids that result, not from social facts on the ground, but from our ethnographic lenses—and what they allow us to see and not see. A few objects in particular—relationally approached—merit more frequent consideration in urban ethnography: the lived experience of inequalities, including that of the urban environment itself, and the political in urban milieu—both state practice in its manifold forms, including its informal and clandestine aspects, and collective action.
Book Chapters by Katherine Jensen
Other Writings by Katherine Jensen
Book Reviews by Katherine Jensen
When we shift our focus to the process of constructing our scientific objects of inquiry, it becomes clear that relational ethnographies construct radically different objects than the (much more common) substantialist approaches. Here, we make a few suggestions about potential relational objects of investigation that, having not been at the center of U.S. urban ethnography, could enrich the conversation and help construct better, more interesting, less parochial objects. We draw examples from inside and outside the United States to both deprovincialize the conversation and elucidate particular voids that result, not from social facts on the ground, but from our ethnographic lenses—and what they allow us to see and not see. A few objects in particular—relationally approached—merit more frequent consideration in urban ethnography: the lived experience of inequalities, including that of the urban environment itself, and the political in urban milieu—both state practice in its manifold forms, including its informal and clandestine aspects, and collective action.