Seeking meaning in US asylum adjudications: aspirations, affect, and morality on the frontlines of the state

Abstract This article examines how US asylum officers reclaim their sense of professional worth when their expectations of cognitively and emotionally meaningful engagement with applicants collide with the reality of routinized and emotionally detached decision-making. Drawing on forty-three in-depth interviews, I show that officers actively seek out elements of applicants’ claims that elicit intellectual stimulation and emotional resonance. This investment not only reinforces their self-image as morally committed professionals—distinguished from colleagues perceived as disengaged—but also reorients their professional mission around intentional, affectively engaged adjudication. Crucially, officers come to treat their aspirational mode of interaction as a moral lens through which they evaluate claims, granting greater worth to those that provoke the desired emotional response—often irrespective of applicants’ demographic characteristics or the formal merits of their cases. This analysis advances sociological theorizing on how aspirations, affect, and morality interact to shape frontline organizational practice.