ABSTRACT
In recent decades, the European Union has built up an asylum regime that prevents the physical and administrative mobility of refugees. Refugees can hardly reach the EU territory and change their legal status. Thus, the asylum procedure becomes a contested social good to which refugees no longer have free and democratic access. However, the EU’s de-democratization of the asylum procedure has triggered counterstrategies by non-state actors. The churches in Germany demand access to the asylum procedure for refugees. The article therefore looks at the exclusion strategies of the EU and the related counterstrategy of the churches. The church asylum, therefore, is understood as an usurpationary action through which access to the denied asylum procedure is enforced.
