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Information Obstacle Course: Seeking the Right to Asylum at the US–Mexico Border

Libraries and the Global Retreat of Democracy: Confronting Polarization, Misinformation, and Suppression

ISBN: 978-1-83982-597-2, eISBN: 978-1-83982-596-5

Publication date: 4 November 2021

Abstract

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the world is experiencing the greatest refugee crisis in recorded history alongside increasingly restrictive limits on asylum seekers and refugees. In 2020, the US administration established a ceiling for refugees of 18,000 people, the lowest number on record, and only 11,814 refugees were admitted to the United States. The Biden administration has expressed commitments to building a coherent asylum and refugee system and quickly reversing recent detrimental policies. But the administration has cautioned how quickly change might occur, given how “agencies and processes…have been so gutted.”1

2016 to 2020 included an overwhelming series of changes to laws and policies affecting asylum seekers, often with little documented planning or communication, wreaking severe effects on conditions for asylum seekers at the US–Mexico border. These changes had significant consequences for human rights, most notably the linchpin right of access to information. At the US–Mexico border, must the right “to seek, receive and impart information” be fulfilled in order to fulfill the right to asylum?

While information professionals are not expected to be experts in law, they are experts in understanding the link between access to information and the realization of justice and human rights. This chapter investigates the role of the information professional in the fulfillment of the right to asylum, particularly in the context of contemporary asylum seekers at the US–Mexico border, volatile information landscapes, and the legal and historical framework in the United States for seeking asylum.

Keywords

Citation

Dickinson, A. (2021), "Information Obstacle Course: Seeking the Right to Asylum at the US–Mexico Border", Taylor, N.G., Kettnich, K., Gorham, U. and Jaeger, P.T. (Ed.) Libraries and the Global Retreat of Democracy: Confronting Polarization, Misinformation, and Suppression (Advances in Librarianship, Vol. 50), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 133-159. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0065-283020210000050006

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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