Surviving the Sanctuary City: Asylum-Seeking Work in Nepali New York

The documentary Surviving the Sanctuary City explores the struggles of Nepali migrants seeking asylum in New York City. It follows them through the bureaucratic process and documents the labor of seeking asylum. Anthropologist Tina Shrestha witnesses how migrants must perform a particular kind of suffering that is legible to immigration judges and asylum officers. She demonstrates how they try to overcome these contradictions through Nepali notions of kaagaz banaune and dukkha. The documentary offers a rethinking of asylum seeking as a form of precarious labor and immigration enforcement in a rapidly changing US society.

Format: Hardback
Length: 242 pages
Publication date: 09 May 2023
Publisher: University of Washington Press

Over the past several decades, the vibrant, multiethnic borough of Queens has experienced a significant influx of Nepali migrants, many of whom are navigating the challenging bureaucratic process of asylum legalization. Surviving the Sanctuary City follows these individuals through the institutional spaces of asylum offices, law firms, and human rights agencies, documenting the labor of seeking asylum. As an interpreter and volunteer at a grassroots community center, anthropologist Tina Shrestha has observed firsthand how migrants must perform a specific kind of suffering that is legible to immigration judges and asylum officers. She demonstrates the lived contradictions asylum seekers face while producing their suffering testimonials and traces their attempts to overcome these contradictions through the Nepali notions of kaagaz banaune (making paper) and dukkha (suffering).

Surviving the Sanctuary City poses the question: What can everyday survival among migrants and asylum seekers tell us about the cultural logic of suffering within the confines of US borders? Through rich ethnographic detail and careful nuanced narratives, the film centers the lives and perspectives of the Nepali migrant community, offering a fundamental rethinking of asylum seeking as a form of precarious labor and immigration enforcement in a rapidly changing US society.

Weight: 528g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780295751511