Moral double standards in the everyday lives of asylum seekers and refugees / Dobles estándares morales en la vida cotidiana de los solicitantes de asilo y los refugiados

Abstract

This article examines how moral double standards exist within migrant communities as socially embedded responses to structural asymmetries. Interviews conducted with 30 Glasgow-based asylum seekers and refugees saw four participants describe what can be interpreted as moral double standards. Rather than passively enduring exclusion, migrants develop moral distinctions to understand the disparities they observe. These moral double standards arise when similar experiences are judged differently depending on who is involved, reflecting internalized hierarchies based on nationality, legal status, visibility and perceived vulnerability. These judgements function as interpretive strategies shaped by policy signals, bureaucratic procedures and dominant narratives of deservingness, rather than being evidence of interpersonal hostility or individual failure. Migrants engage in competitive victimhood and express deprived group entitlement not to discredit others but to assert their own moral legitimacy in systems that distribute care and recognition unevenly. Foregrounding the moral logic behind comparisons, idealized accounts of migrant solidarity are challenged, and moral double standards as structurally induced responses to the selective allocation of value, legitimacy and care are reframed.