ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the immigration office as organisational entity, as workplace. Structural differences between the four case studies that account for the different levels of variation. In order to distribute the caseload of the immigration office as evenly as possible, the groups held responsibility over a rather arbitrary set of state citizens. In order to even out the workload and reduce waiting time, various measures were tried, but few proved effective. In the chapter that wrote rulings and deportation orders in Metrostadt, consultations were based solely on appointments. If immigration offices are thus not stable organisations in which cases are processed in an orderly fashion and instead dynamic but aimless systems that constantly need to stabilise their own inconsistencies and deficiencies, variations such as those found in author fieldwork. In the sense, bureaucracy can thus be seen as dynamic, procedural and defined through practice, and in its effects on clients even 'magic'.
