“New York City has reached its capacity”: Asylum-seekers, housing, and the conjuring of an asylum crisis

From 2022 to 2024, some 239,000 migrants (many of them asylum-seekers) arrived in New York City. The city's municipal government referred to the governance of their arrival as an “asylum crisis.” In this context, this article critically examines the “emergency politics” that concerned housing for asylum-seekers and other migrants during this so-called “crisis.” Building on the migration studies literature, I explain this failure through two “critical diagnostics”—what I call “quasi-Malthusian fiscality” and “intersectionalized emergency politics.” Together, these conjured (“constructed”) and governed the “asylum crisis.” In the empirical part of the article, I demonstrate this toxic admixture through a critical analysis of municipal, private sector, and other nonstate discourses, policies, and practices.