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Choosing is losing: language policy and language choice acts at the asylum law firm

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Abstract

It seems impossible to explain language choice and practice in the multilingual, understudied context of an asylum law firm by simply referring to official policy texts and linguistic (human) rights. Based on linguistic-ethnographic data (in the form of participant observations, recordings and interviews conducted in the Belgian context), this study integrates a top-down perspective (focusing on the influence of language management) with a bottom-up perspective (by eliciting the research participants’ language attitudes and ideologies and by investigating what actually happens in practice). Approaching these different parameters of language policy from a discourse analytical perspective, shows how a clear framework of linguistic (human) rights to regulate lawyer-client communication is missing. Because of the lack of concrete stipulations on how to make language choice acts, interpretation of linguistic needs is left to the individual assessment of lawyers. This leads to highly situated decision-making practices, where lawyers draw on their own experience as well as the input of others to organise multilingual interaction. Although a top-down policy exists, practice shows a lack of regulation and transparency in the selection of linguistic strategies/support on the ground.

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Notes

  1. See for example, Eades (2008) for a discussion of the neocolonial control exercised in courtroom talk, with a focus on Aborginal people or Angermeyer (2015) on code-switching in court.

  2. Following the EU requirement that all member states should draw up a “National register for sworn Interpreters, Translators and Translator-Interpreters”, a revision of the list with more quality control is in the making.

  3. The literature uses ample terms to refer to interpreters and to distinguish between their level of professionalization (for more information, see Antonini et al., 2017). The dichotomy formal vs. informal interpreter seems to be the best terminology for the purposes of this article. “Formal” is productive as a term in this context because it does not necessarily refer to a level of education—not all of the professionals at work in the law firm were certified or sworn interpreters—but rather indicates the fact that those interpreters were acting in a professional capacity, being strangers to the asylum seekers and having been booked through an external organisation (namely the Bureau of Second Line Assistance).

  4. I use this expression to refer to companions (family members, friends, acquaintances from the reception centre, …), who are more or less proficient in one of the languages of the lawyer’s and of the client’s repertoire and whose interventions during the consultation, function as a way to bridge the lawyer-client language gap. Note that this terminological choice was again one of the many possibilities that the field of interpreting studies has to offer (for more information, see Antonini et al., 2017: 6). I use the term “informal interpreter” as it is the most accurate one in this specific context because—in contrast to “formal interpreters”, they are not booked or paid through the Bureau of Second Line Assistance and do not have a professional status. The term might, however, be slightly misleading in the sense that the context in which the informal interpreter is active (i.e. the lawyer-client consultation in the field of asylum law) is far from informal. The term as used here is also closely related to the concept of “language brokering” (McQuillan & Tse 2009). This label and its related academic tradition highlight the family bond between the person acting as an interpreter and the client, and also emphasises the way in which language brokers do not transmit but rather mediate information.

  5. According to the Dublin III regulation, applicants for international protection have to complete their asylum procedure in the first European country they set foot in. This procedure can be overruled in case that the asylum seeker has a particularly vulnerable profile (and would experience too much harm being sent back).

  6. The remark made towards me (the researcher) by the lawyer (a research participant) foregrounds her metascientific reflexivity (Meeuwis & Jaspers, 2013) and undermines the ethnographic yet unattainable concept of being “ a fly on the wall” during fieldwork.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds (Grant Numbers BOF.PDO.2022.0011.01 and BOF.STG.2018.0037.01.)

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  1. Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Marie Jacobs

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Jacobs, M. Choosing is losing: language policy and language choice acts at the asylum law firm. Lang Policy (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-023-09683-2

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