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Discursive input functions as the core decisive element in answering the legal dilemma of whether someone is eligible for international protection. This pleads in favour of strengthening the narrative-discursive component in migration studies by offering a micro-sociolinguistic analysis of interactional data from diverse legal encounters with applicants for international protection. This article adopts a case study approach, bringing together two different data sets collected in a Belgian context. In focusing on asylum claims based on reasons of sexual orientation and gender identity, the article foregrounds discursive tensions emblematic for the treatment of disclosure in and around the asylum procedure. The first part of our article draws on data from the guidance and counselling side of the asylum procedure in examining legal consultations which took place in the lawyer's office. The second part of our article turns to the communication that takes place during asylum interviews between applicants and asylum officers. Juxtaposing both analyses, reveals how disclosure is complicated by the different stakeholders that mediate the situated interaction as well as by the legal-administrative categories that govern the asylum procedure. The way in which institutional actors and assumptions are deeply implicated in the creation of asylum narratives, is not only at odds with the government's evaluation premises about how stories come into being in isolation, it also entails a certain level of vulnerability as mediation holds the potential to obscure the indexical load of the asylum seeker's testimony.

In institutional settings of globalization, labelled languages are generally preferred over multilingual repertoires and mobile language resources. Drawing on linguistic-ethnographic analysis of the way English is treated as an invariable "ad hoc" idiom in the Belgian asylum interview, this article demonstrates how institutional measures and routines relating to multilingualism fail to address the communicative needs and practices of the participants involved. I argue that by privileging the variety of the host institution as a means to monitor all incoming Englishes, the institution perpetuates traditional--though academically contested--centre-periphery categorizations of global Englishes. I proceed by discussing how the divergent potentialities of the speakers' linguistic repertoires reflect a remarkable inversion of client-gatekeeper resources in the way the participants with the least linguistic resources in the interview process eventually have the power to act as arbiters of what is or is not institutionally relevant for the case.

Discursive input functions as the core decisive element in answering the legal dilemma of whether someone is eligible for international protection. This pleads in favour of strengthening the narrative-discursive component in migration studies by offering a micro-sociolinguistic analysis of interactional data from diverse legal encounters with applicants for international protection. This article adopts a case study approach, bringing together two different data sets collected in a Belgian context. In focusing on asylum claims based on reasons of sexual orientation and gender identity, the article foregrounds discursive tensions emblematic for the treatment of disclosure in and around the asylum procedure. The first part of our article draws on data from the guidance and counselling side of the asylum procedure in examining legal consultations which took place in the lawyer's office. The second part of our article turns to the communication that takes place during asylum interviews between applicants and asylum officers. Juxtaposing both analyses, reveals how disclosure is complicated by the different stakeholders that mediate the situated interaction as well as by the legal-administrative categories that govern the asylum procedure. The way in which institutional actors and assumptions are deeply implicated in the creation of asylum narratives, is not only at odds with the government's evaluation premises about how stories come into being in isolation, it also entails a certain level of vulnerability as mediation holds the potential to obscure the indexical load of the asylum seeker's testimony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines interactional management practices and narrative co-construction in lawyer-asylum seeker consultations in Flanders, Belgium. Drawing upon linguistic-ethnographic fieldwork, it presents a case study of a consultation between an Afghan applicant for international protection, his adviser, and his lawyer. The purpose of the consultation is to prepare the applicant for testifying at the upcoming asylum hearing. Data analysis focuses on (i) the reorientation of the asylum narrative from an authentic-experiential towards a more objectified formal-institutional account; (ii) the participants' positioning work that indexes this reorientation process; and (iii) their fluctuating alignment of local-interactional and translocal-gatekeeping perspectives. In the discussion, we analyse the consultation in terms of competing legal and experiential voices and views on participant roles/responsibilities. We reflect on how this ambiguity of roles and ideologies relates to the constructed character of credibility, which reveals the importance of adequate legal assistance in this linguistically challenging context. (Legal consultations, asylum procedure, linguistic ethnography, narrative performance, credibility assessment) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2005.03.009 Byline: Katrijn Maryns Keywords: Asylum seekers; Linguistic resources; Performance; Code choice; Monolingual standard; Interactional uptake Abstract: When refugee claimants enter the Belgian asylum procedure, they have to motivate their application during one or more interviews with public officials. This paper examines the limitations of the procedural imposition of a monolingual standard code for a clear understanding of narrative accounts. Drawing on the case of a West African asylum seeker, it is shown how the applicant is forced to assimilate to English and how the imposition of this code acts as: (a) a catalyst to widen the gap between intended meanings and interactional uptake and (b) a filter on the subsequent entextualisation of the case. Author Affiliation: G. Van Gervenstraat 23, 9120 Beveren, Belgium

In institutional settings of globalization, labelled languages are generally preferred over multilingual repertoires and mobile language resources. Drawing on linguistic-ethnographic analysis of the way English is treated as an invariable 'ad hoc' idiom in the Belgian asylum interview, this article demonstrates how institutional measures and routines relating to multilingualism fail to address the communicative needs and practices of the participants involved. I argue that by privileging the variety of the host institution as a means to monitor all incoming Englishes, the institution perpetuates traditional--though academically contested--centre-periphery categorizations of global Englishes. I proceed by discussing how the divergent potentialities of the speakers' linguistic repertoires reflect a remarkable inversion of client-gatekeeper resources in the way the participants with the least linguistic resources in the interview process eventually have the power to act as arbiters of what is or is not institutionally relevant for the case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]