Katherine Jensen is assistant professor of sociology and international studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Brazil’s high rate of granting asylum to Syrians and Congolese superficially suggests that a racial democracy is protecting refugees. Jensen’s ethnographic deep dive shows that underneath the surface of simple statistics and public pronouncements, the asylum process is saturated with racial inequalities.” -- David Scott FitzGerald, coauthor of The Refugee System: A Sociological Approach “The Color of Asylum follows Syrian and Congolese escapees from their countries’ wars to incisively describe how Brazil’s asylum system differentially treats the two groups. This is the latest chapter in Brazil’s long, fascinating, and racialized immigration history.” -- Edward Telles, University of California, Irvine “Grounded on an impressive array of archival data, legal materials, and the keenest of ethnographies, The Color of Asylum renders accessible the complexities of the asylum bureaucracy and is a critical contribution and a must-read.” -- Cecilia Menjívar, University of California, Los Angeles “With clarity and ethnographic rigor, The Color of Asylum documents how Brazil’s seemingly open asylum policy follows the historical racial project of the nation-state. I highly recommend this book to readers interested in race matters in Latin America as well as to race scholars in general.” -- Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Duke University