The dominant UN conception of asylum as the protection of persecuted people has been challenged by recent changes in international affairs, e.g. wars, the break-down of states, famine, extreme poverty and climate changes. The aim of the paper is a critical conceptual analysis of some languages of justification articulated in asylum policy processes and applied in asylum policy. Taking the point of departure in a Danish case where a group of rejected Iraqi asylum seekers were deported back to Iraq, the paper reflects the complexity of norms articulated and regulating asylum, national and international, and the conflict of interpreting these norms in the concrete policy process. In the Danish case two languages of justification were articulated giving priority to three normative concepts: rule of law, civil disobedience and cynicism. On the one hand, one could point at people defending the rule of law and the necessary use of sovereign power in isolation and deportation of the denied asylum seekers with reference to the incorporation of UN Conventions in national law and judicial procedures. On the other hand, one could point at people defending their break of the law by helping and hiding denied asylum seekers with reference to the idea of civil disobedience and their critique of what is labelled the cynicism of the official asylum policy and its implementation. From the point of view of a critical conceptual analysis, then, the paper will analyse the languages of justification authorising and legitimising the use of power, i.e. rule of law, and the contestation of the language of power from the languages of resistance constituting civil disobedience and cynicism as normative concepts and criteria for a critique of power. This analysis includes the implied power relationships between judicial expertise, politicians, citizens and asylum seekers.
