Abstract
The chapter analyses identity work in asylum interviews by investigating the case of a young man from the Ivory Coast who unsuccessfully tries to establish a credible identity in his asylum interview in Norway. The theoretical framework is narrative analysis within a social constructionism framework. The analysis shows how the institutional genres of the asylum interview in Norway are geared to establish a bureaucratically acceptable personal identity for the applicant, together with his or her need for asylum based on personal persecution. In the analysed interview, the applicant tries to build an identity as a young orphaned person, innocent of any wrongdoing, and with little possibility of agency as regards his own situation. To do this, he uses generic home narratives and constructed dialogues in ways that clash with the interviewer’s expectations of personal persecutions stories. The chapter points out the intertextual gaps which appear between the narrative accounts of the asylum seeker who is trying to build a bona fide asylum identity, and the genres and orienting framework of the case officer who is interviewing him.
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Notes
- 1.
The French word “reconnaîs” is translated here as “know” based on the usage Saïdou makes of it elsewhere in the interview. Other translations would be “recognise”, and also “acknowledge”.
- 2.
This problem has also been treated in fictional literature by authors such a M. Shishkin, cf. Bøstein Myhr, this volume.
- 3.
Norwegian text:”Intervjuet skal gjennomføres i tråd med prinsipper for objektiv og pålitelig informasjonsinnsamling. Intervjueren skal gjennom faseinndelt intervjumetode, tilrettelegge for at asylsøkeren får fortelle fritt innenfor fokuserte tema valgt av intervjueren. Informasjonen som framkommer skal følges opp med åpne, ikke ledende spørsmål.”.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the UDI for giving me access to interview recordings, participation in an interviewers course, and decision letters for my research.
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Appendix
Appendix
Speaker labels: Saïdou Interviewee; IntF2 Interviewer; IP Interpreter
Other symbols | ||
|---|---|---|
CAPS | Emphatic stress | |
\0.4\ | Pause measured in seconds | |
. | Sentence final intonation | |
, | Sentence continuing intonation | |
- | Self-interruption | |
! | Animated tone of voice | |
[we] | Overlapping speech | |
= | Latching | |
xx xx | Unclear segment | |
[rapidly-] | Start of divergent speech pattern | |
[-rapidly] | End of divergent speech pattern | |
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Kjelsvik, B. (2022). “I Have no Family”—Identity Constructions in an Asylum Interview. In: Lane, P., Kjelsvik, B., Myhr, A.B. (eds) Negotiating Identities in Nordic Migrant Narratives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89109-1_2
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