Who belongs where and why? Connecting the 'right' body to the 'right' place

Successful resettlement requires a safe place for refugees. Besides the preferences of refugees of certain spaces and available facilities, municipalities are also interested in a successful match of refugees and space; so much that they prefer certain categories of refugees over others. Families and highly educated refugees are at the top of this hierarchy. This research focusses on the allocation process and understandings of a 'right fit' of person and space during the matching of refugees to a place of residence within the Netherlands. Bureaucrats that are trusted with the task of selection and matching operate behind a screen basing their judgement on limited information. Therefore, we call them screen-level bureaucrats. Building on the work of Lipsky (1980) this study will show that screen-level bureaucrats use their policy discretion in almost all their cases. Moreover, it will show that stereotyping lies at the basis of the very elaborate stories about persons and places where screen-level bureaucrats rely their judgements on (e.g. ideas on were gay, families and high or low skilled newcomers belong). Through extended interviews (46) and observations (34) over a two-year period on a national, regional and local level, this study sheds light on the practices of screen-level bureaucrats and the construction of belonging in the first phase of refugee resettlement in the Netherlands. This study emphasizes the complexity of interaction in digital space: even without physical contact, imaginaries are constructed, enacted and inflected that have consequences for the distribution of rights and facilities where social categorisation, stereotyping and principles of deservingness play an important role. Three dominant imaginaries are distinguishes that enact the ideas of the fitness of person and place in these policy practices; namely imaginaries of deservingness, risk and integrability.