Mediated disclosure in asylum encounters

Abstract 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.