Studies on asylum give little explanatory power to the role of categories of worth in how lawmakers formulate asylum law in lack of a clear policy framework for determining eligibility for asylum status. This article contends that during periods of policy upheaval, distinctions of worth shift to forefront lawmaking: lawmakers renegotiate the moral boundaries between categories of deserving and undeserving refugees to give content in ambiguous law. In the United States, lawmakers drew on the concept of immutability—the notion that to be worthy of protection you must be targeted on account of traits beyond your control to change—to distinguish between “undeserving” Central Americans fleeing civil wars and gang violence, and “deserving” women subjected to gender violence. Understanding how categories of worth inform the formulation and implementation of law in periods of policy upheaval advances understandings of asylum policy and expands scholarship on the role of ideas about worth in processes of institutional change.

中文翻译：

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重新配置当之无愧的难民：值得的文化类别和难民政策的制定

在缺乏明确的政策框架来确定庇护资格的情况下，庇护研究对价值类别在议员如何制定庇护法方面的作用几乎没有解释力。本文认为，在政策动荡时期，价值的区分转移到了最前沿的立法上：议员们重新谈判了应得和不应得难民类别之间的道德界限，以使模棱两可的法律得以体现。在美国，立法者借鉴了不变性的概念（为了保护自己，必须以无法控制的特征为目标来加以保护），以区分逃避内战和帮派暴力的“卑鄙的中美洲”，遭受性别暴力的“当之无愧”妇女。