The Asylum Speaker : Language in the Belgian Asylum Procedure 9781317641711, 9781900650892

Citation preview

The Asylum Speaker Language in the Belgian Asylum Procedure

Katrijn Maryns FWO-Vlaanderen University of Ghent, Belgium

Routledge Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2006 by St. Jerome Publishing Published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © Katrijn Maryns 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notices Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary. Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein.

ISBN 13: 978-1-900650-89-2 (pbk) ISSN 1471-0277 (Encounters)

Typeset by Delta Typesetters, Cairo, Egypt British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Maryns, Katrijn. The asylum speaker : language in the Belgian asylum procedure / Katrijn Maryns. p. cm. -- (Encounters) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-900650-89-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Political refugees--Belgium--Language. 2. Political refugees--Belgium-Interviews. 3. Asylum, Right of--Belgium. 4. Intercultural communication-Belgium. 5. Translating and interpreting--Belgium. 6. Sociolinguistics. 7. Belgium--Emigration and immigration. I. Title. II. Series: Encounters (St. Jerome Publishing) HV640.4.B4M37 2006 362.87’5609493--dc22 2005028866

Encounters A new series on language and diversity Edited by Jan Blommaert, Marco Jacquemet and Ben Rampton Diversity has come to be recognized as one of the central concerns in our thinking about society, culture and politics. At the same time, it has proved one of the most difficult issues to deal with on the basis of established theories and methods, particularly in the social sciences. Studying diversity not only challenges widespread views of who we are and what we do in social life; it also challenges the theories, models and methods by means of which we proceed in studying diversity. Diversity exposes the boundaries and limitations of our theoretical models, in the same way it exposes our social and political organizations. Encounters sets out to explore diversity in language, diversity through language and diversity about language. Diversity in language covers topics such as intercultural, gender, class or age-based variations in language and linguistic behaviour. Diversity through language refers to the way in which language and linguistic behaviour can contribute to the construction or negotiation of such sociocultural and political differences. And diversity about language has to do with the various ways in which language and diversity are being perceived, conceptualized and treated, in professional as well as in lay knowledge – thus including the reflexive and critical study of scientific approaches alongside the study of language politics and language ideologies. In all this, mixedness, creolization, crossover phenomena and heterogeneity are privileged areas of study. The series title, Encounters, is intended to encourage a relatively neutral but interested stance towards diversity, moving away from the all too obvious ‘cultures-collide’ perspective that is dominant within the social sciences. The target public of Encounters includes scholars and advanced students of linguistics, communication studies, anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, as well as students and scholars in neighbouring disciplines such as translation studies, gender studies, gay and lesbian studies, postcolonial studies. Jan Blommaert is former Research Director of the IPRA Research Centre of the University of Antwerp and currently Professor of Languages in Education, Institute of Education, University of London. He is author of Discourse (Cambridge University Press, 2005), co-author of Debating Diversity: Analysing the Discourse of Tolerance (Routledge, 1998),

editor of Language Ideological Debates (Mouton de Gruyter 1999), and co-editor of the Handbook of Pragmatics (John Benjamins 1995-2003) and The Pragmatics of Intercultural and International Communication (John Benjamins 1991). Marco Jacquemet is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the University of San Francisco. His work focuses on the complex interaction of different languages and communicative practices in a globalized world. His current research seeks to assess the communicative mutations resulting from the intersection in the Mediterranean area between mobile people (migrants, local and international aid workers, missionaries, businessmen, etc.) and electronic texts (content distributed by satellites, local television stations, Internet connectivity, cellular telephony). As part of this research, in the early 1990s he studied the communicative practices of criminal networks in Southern Italy and the emerging Italian cyberculture. In 1994 he conducted fieldwork in Morocco and Italy on migratory patterns between the two countries. Since 1998, he has been involved in multi-site ethnographic fieldwork in Albania and Italy, investigating the linguistic and socio-cultural consequences of Albania’s entry into the global system of late-modern capitalism. Marco Jacquemet is author of Credibility in Court: Communicative Practices in the Camorra Trials (Cambridge University Press 1996). Ben Rampton is Professor of Applied and Sociolinguistics at King’s College London. His work involves ethnographic and interactional discourse analysis, frequently also drawing on anthropology, sociology and cultural studies. His publications cover urban multilingualism; language, youth, ethnicities and class; language education; second language learning; and research methodology. Ben Rampton is author of Crossing: Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents (1995/2005), Language and Late Modernity: Interaction in an Urban School (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), co-author of Researching Language: Issues of Power & Method (Routledge 1992), and co-editor of The Language, Ethnicity & Race Reader (Routledge 2003).

Contents Introduction Problem and purpose Seeking asylum in Belgium Theoretical foundations: mobility and performance Method and approach The data Overview of the chapters 1. Text Trajectories 1.1 Introduction 1.2 The investigation of admissibility at the DVZ: The case Koulagna (1) 1.2.1 The bureaucratic questionnaire (questions 1-41) Epistemic contextualization work Affective contextualization work Home narration: the connection between narrative form and function 1.2.2 The motivation of the claim (question 42) Setting and provocation: the hoisting of the flag The applicant’s arrest at his compound The sub-narrative of detention in the cell The event with the boy in the cell The sub-narrative of escape from the Army Camp Hospital 1.2.3 Control questions (questions 43-47) 1.2.4 The interviewer’s report 1.2.5 The decision 1.3 The urgent appeal at the CGVS: The case Koulagna (2) 1.3.1 Identification questions 1.3.2 Knowledge questions 1.3.3 Motivation questions The problem of consistency between the first and the second interview The problem of the required explanatory mode The clash between experiential narration and the demand for accuracy and detail 1.3.4 Control questions 1.3.5 The defence 1.3.6 The interviewer’s report 1.3.7 The decision

1 2 6 8 10 12

14 17 17 18 22 26 33 35 39 53 57 58 62 84 88 92 95 100 110 112 125 127 141 143 145 157

1.4 Recapitulation phase 1: the admissibility of the case 1.5 The investigation of the merit of the application at the CGVS: The case Karifa 1.6 The VBV appeal against non-recognition: the case Ebou and the case Essoh 1.6.1 Speech representation in court 1.6.2 The defence 1.7 Recapitulation phase 2: the investigation of the merit of the application 1.8 Coda 2. Linguistic Diversity 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Language choice as a filter on entextualization 2.2.1 Introduction 2.2.2 Language choice: English? 2.2.3 Experiential narration: displaced resources? 2.2.4 Control and knowledge questions: the problem of resources 2.2.5 Linguistic resources: a filter on entextualization? 2.3 Translation as a filter on entextualization 2.3.1 Introduction 2.3.2 Fragmentary interpretation One speaker, one language Resource control Identity 2.3.3 On-line translation of spoken source language into written target language The interview The written translation 2.3.4 Translation in different phases The English account produced by the translator of Amharic Spoken translation The re-translation of the Dutch report 2.3.5 Translation practices at the VBV Limited knowledge of the applicant’s home situation Breaking metapragmatic rules of court interpretation 2.3.6 Coda

166 169 182 183 195 197 198

200 200 200 201 202 209 214 217 218 225 226 229 230 232 233 238 239 240 242 243 248 249 250

2.4 Identifying the asylum speaker: reflections on the pitfalls of language analysis in the determination of national origin 2.4.1 Introduction 2.4.2 Translation tests in the application interview 2.4.3 Language analysis in the Belgian asylum procedure 2.4.4 Coda 3. Rehearsed Narratives 3.1 Introduction 3.2 The case Fatoumata 3.2.1 The bureaucratic questionnaire 3.2.2 Fatoumata’s narrative of escape 3.2.3 The report 3.3 The case Mariama 3.3.1 The bureaucratic questionnaire 3.3.2 Mariama’s narrative of escape 3.3.3 The report 3.4 The case Namissa 3.4.1 The bureaucratic questionnaire 3.4.2 Namissa’s narrative of escape 3.5 Coda: authentic self versus productive other 4. Discussion 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Code 4.2.1 Repertoires 4.2.2 Linguistic variation 4.2.3 Short excursion into African Englishes 4.2.4 Monolingual ideology 4.2.5 Identity 4.3 Mode 4.3.1 The bureaucratic format 4.3.2 Event perspective 4.3.3 Experiential narration and the contextualization of experience 4.3.4 The importance of shape: links between the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ 4.3.5 Inconsistencies with genre expectations 4.4 View

252 252 254 258 264

268 268 269 272 281 282 283 285 291 292 293 305 313

315 318 318 319 321 322 325 326 328 329 332 333 335 337

4.4.1 Experiential versus professional vision 4.4.2 The circulation of discourse between contexts 4.4.3 Homogeneous identities 4.5 Conclusion

339 339 340 341

References

343

Annexes

350

Index

371

Acknowledgements The research for this study was made possible by a personal research grant from the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research (F.W.O.- Vlaanderen), which is hereby gratefully acknowledged. In Jan Blommaert I found a mentor who stimulated my interest in language and what it can do to people. I want to thank Jan for the comfortable context he produced in which I have been able to do my research, for submerging me in the field of language and society and introducing me to the most interesting people. I am also very grateful to my co-supervisor, Anne-Marie Vandenbergen, for her invaluable support right from the early days of my graduation. I thank Anne-Marie for helping me sharpen and give shape to my ideas. Another person to whom I am most grateful is Chris Bulcaen who helped me in organizing my ideas and who allowed me to drop in any time when I needed a sounding board. This book could not have come about without the support of these three people. I also wish to thank Ben Rampton for the very interesting sessions and seminars at King’s College London. The formulations of many ideas in this book benefited greatly from discussions with members of the FWOV research group on Language, Power and Identity: Stef Slembrouck, Jef Verschueren, Jim Collins, Monica Heller, Jan and Ben. I also gratefully acknowledge the supportive input from Michael Meeuwis, Kay McCormick, Stan Ridge, Cécile Vigouroux and Jürgen Jaspers. Research for this study was made possible by the invaluable support from the different asylum agencies in Brussels: the Dienst Vreemdelingenzaken (DVZ), the Commissariaat Generaal voor de Vluchtelingen en de Staatlozen (CGVS), de Vaste Beroepscommissie voor Vluchtelingen (VBV) and the research desk CEDOCA. In particular, I wish to thank Aldona Van Haesevelde, An Vandeven and Herman Teule (CEDOCA), Annick De Smet (Raad Van State), Bert Jegers (DVZ), Karine Van Huffel, Bart Vandamme, Katrien Van Gelder and the other members of the African section (CGVS), An Van der Beke, Carine de Cooman, Marc Bonte and Gaëtan de Moffarts (VBV), Joachim Detailleur (Vluchtelingenwerk Rijnmond), the Overlegcentrum voor Integratie van Vluchtelingen (OCIV) and Haven. But the greatest debt I owe to the asylum seekers who allowed me to examine their case. Finally, I recognize the support and love I got from my family, and in particular from my husband, my parents, my parents-in-law and above all, my three little rascals, Je, Rietje and Korneel.

Symbols and abbreviations Transcription symbols: dots xxx = *** (kkk) (italics) capitals (…) ((…))

pauses unclear parts of the utterance overlaps and self-corrections the sound of the official touching the keyboard Krio parts of the utterance my translations from Dutch/ French into English high pitch or emphasis reconstruction of unclear parts of the utterance metapragmatic comments

AS I J L T A R

asylum seeker interviewer judge lawyer translator advisor researcher

Abbreviations: UNHCR DVZ CGVS

VBV CEDOCA

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Dienst Vreemdelingenzaken (Alien’s Office) Commissariaat Generaal voor de Vluchtelingen en de Staatlozen (General Commission for Refugees and Stateless Persons) Vaste Beroepscommissie voor Vluchtelingen (Permanent Commission of Appeal for Refugees) ‘Centre de Documentation pour les Différentes Instances d’ Asile belge’ (Documentation Centre for the Different Belgian Asylum Instances)

Introduction Problem and purpose I: you just ran away ……. uhum …… and what happened to . you ran away … so whereto . AS: one man …… one man .. carry me . help me …. I: Karimi AS: yes I: it was a man or a woman……. AS: man …….

This extract has been taken from an interview with an asylum seeker from Sierra Leone. It is represented in the following statement selected from the public official’s report: “A man named Karimi helped me”.

The interviewer interprets the word group ‘carry me’ as the name of the man. These kind of misinterpretations may have serious consequences for the evaluation of the case. Inconsistencies between the information (names, dates, places) provided during successive interviews in the different stages of investigation can – in combination with other criteria – be used as grounds for rejection. A key issue in the Belgian asylum procedure is that far-reaching legal decisions often have to be made on very limited grounds. Many asylum seekers arrive in Belgium seeking asylum without documentation that can prove their case. Moreover, given the fact that the application interviews are not video nor audio-recorded, the written account of the hearing is basically the only ‘evidence’ that enters the legal procedure. The evidence is the product of a tangled network of discursive processes. But what is the actual status of this discursive input in the procedure? Cases such as the one presented above put this question very bluntly. It is the discursive medium itself that forms one of the main obstacles to a successful exchange of information. This raises questions about how applicants and officials understand each other and how their intended meanings are represented in textual files: do the asylum seekers actually get an adequate chance to have their voice heard in the procedure or is it the re-entextualized version of their account that matters in the end? In this book I argue that the legal-administrative procedure cannot be

2

Katrijn Maryns

dissociated from its discursive construction of what counts as evidence in the decision-making process. The issue of language matters in the procedural context in much more fundamental ways than is generally assumed. The Belgian asylum procedure has predominantly been the subject of legal studies and research programmes. Although these approaches often indirectly relate to linguistic matters, the issue of language and communication has so far not been analysed as an issue in its own right. This study aims at filling this gap. Drawing on first-hand ethnographic data, it examines discursive processes in the Belgian asylum procedure and the impact these processes may have on the determination of refugee status. This study explores a number of related questions: first, how the interaction between applicants and public officials proceeds; second, how this interaction becomes the discursive input of long and complicated textual trajectories and third, how the outcome of these discursive processes affects the assessment of asylum applications.

Seeking asylum in Belgium Seeking asylum for fear of persecution is an inviolable right, which has been internationally laid down in the United Nations Geneva Convention of 1951. In the Geneva Convention it is stated that the term ‘refugee’ applies to any person who is outside his or her country of origin and is unable or unwilling to avail himself/ herself of the protection of that country, on the basis of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political affiliation.1 The refugee definition of the convention has marked out the 1

To cite the entire definition contained in the 1951 Convention, a refugee is a person who: “As a result of events occurring before 1 January 1951 and owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to”. In the Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees (1967), the undersigning states undertake to stick to the substantive provisions of the 1951 Convention, but without the 1951 dateline.

Introduction

3

juridical space within which the different countries that signed this convention – among which Belgium – have developed their national asylum policies. In Belgium, the Geneva Convention is given actual shape in the Belgian asylum procedure, an application procedure that finds its legal basis in the Belgian Immigration Law of December 1980 concerning the access to the territory, the residence, the settlement and the removal of aliens. In Belgium as in many other European countries, specialized authorities are responsible for the determination of refugee status: The Dienst Vreemdelingenzaken or DVZ (Aliens’ Office) falls within the scope of the Ministry of the Interior and controls the access to the territory, the residence, the settlement and the removal of aliens in general. The DVZ is responsible for the registration of asylum applications and for the (first) investigation of admissibility. The Commissariaat Generaal voor de Vluchtelingen en de Staatlozen or CGVS (General Commission for Refugees and Stateless Persons) is an independent authority that plays a role at both stages of investigation: it examines the urgent appeal against the DVZ decision of inadmissibility and is responsible for the investigation of the merit of the application. The Vaste Beroepscommissie voor Vluchtelingen or VBV (Permanent Commission of Appeal for Refugees) is a judiciary body that examines the appeals against negative CGVS decisions. The Supreme Court is a judiciary body that is competent to control the lawfulness of the decisions made by the DVZ, the CGVS and the VBV. It cannot challenge a decision on the basis of the merit of the application but can only suspend the decisions if the procedure has not developed in conformity with the law. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is allowed to give advice to the asylum agencies and the applicants in the course of their procedure. The Belgian documentation and research centre (CEDOCA) is a governmental organization that consists of a research team (part of the CGVS) and a library (belongs to all three agencies: DVZ, CGVS and VBV) and it refers to itself as an information service for the officials working for the DVZ, the CGVS and the VBV. The research team is subdivided into seven regional desks and it also established an unpartial language analysis desk. The main concern of the language analysis desk is to use language analysis in order to inform the three Belgian immigration agencies about asylum seekers’ origins. CEDOCA is a French acronym for ‘Centre de Documentation pour les Différentes

4

Katrijn Maryns

Instances d’ Asile belge’ (Documentation Centre for the Different Belgian Asylum Instances). The examination of the asylum application proceeds in two phases: the investigation of admissibility and the investigation of the merit of the application. At each of the two stages, interviews between asylum seekers and officials about the applicant’s motivation for seeking asylum in Belgium occupy a central place in the assessment of the case and each stage involves possibilities to appeal. Annex 1 presents a schematic overview of the Belgian asylum procedure. – The first stage of investigation examines the admissibility of the application: at this stage it is decided whether or not the application is admissible for deeper investigation higher up in the procedure. Two asylum agencies are involved in the investigation of admissibility: – The DVZ carries out the investigation of admissibility – The CGVS gets involved as soon as the applicant lodges an appeal against the decision taken by the DVZ – The second stage investigates the merit of the application: this stage involves a thorough investigation of the application on the basis of which the status of refugee is to be adjudged or not. The investigation of the merit of the application can only proceed if the application has been declared admissible by the DVZ/ CGVS. Two asylum agencies are involved here: – The CGVS carries out the investigation on the merit of the application – The VBV examines the appeal against the CGVS decision It is the main task of the asylum agencies (a) to determine whether or not, on the basis of the interview, the applicant fulfils the required criteria of refugee status and (b) to assess the credibility of the applicant’s declarations by investigating the veracity of the claim. Over the last fifteen years, the number of asylum applications has witnessed a remarkable development. Until about 1984, the number of applications was fairly low, totalling about 3000 applications a year. Between 1989 and 1993, the number increased considerably, from about 12,000 applications in the year 1990 up to 25,000 applications in 1993. As a result, the asylum institutions could no longer keep up with the increasing number of applications. It was in this context that public opinion started to ask for a tightening of the asylum regulations, one of the basic adaptations being a thorough reconsideration of the asylum regulations to

Introduction

5

keep economic asylum seekers out of the procedure (Ociv 1997). The number of asylum applications rose to a new high with more than 40,000 applications in the year 2000. As a reaction to this increase, the Belgian government hurriedly decided to modify both its asylum procedure and its system of administration and social integration of refugees. It was felt that, due to its financial support for applicants combined with the long duration of the procedure, Belgium had gained a reputation of being a very attractive country for seeking asylum. This was also one of the reasons why from January 2001 onwards, asylum seekers could no longer look to the government for financial support. Legally speaking, the asylum procedure was not modified; the changes mainly concerned its implementation. In January 2001, the DVZ and the CGVS introduced four new techniques in the handling of applications (BCHV, OCIV and CIRE 2001): (1) The Last In First Out principle: new applications were given priority over applications made before the 3rd of January 2001. In this way, the treatment of applications that were filed before the year 2001 fell behind so that many refugees were kept in a state of suspense or even never gained the recognition they deserve – these files are often ironically referred to as ‘first in never out’. (2) The investigation of admissibility was given absolute priority over the investigation of the merit of the application by the CGVS: all means available were deployed to tighten up the first selection of applications and the number of applications that needed a thorough investigation increased. (3) A radical speeding up of the procedure and an increase in the assessment of the officials’ individual productivity. (4) Quota restrictions, phrased in terms of ‘special attention to particular nationalities or groups’ showing a particularly high increase in the number of applications.

These changes in the asylum procedure were aimed at dissuading refugees from seeking asylum in Belgium. And it worked: in the course of 2001, the number of applications decreased drastically, from 42,000 to 25,000 applications. The question is to what extent the logic of management and efficiency affects the quality of the procedure (cf. BCHV, OCIV and CIRE 2001; Maryns 2004). It is against the background of this turbulent period – which is also the period during which I collected my data – that the practices described in this study need to be seen.

6

Katrijn Maryns

Theoretical foundations: mobility and performance My investigation of language and communication in the Belgian asylum procedure is in the first place a study of how the interlocutors in procedural encounters manage or fail to make themselves understood. Drawing on a long tradition of pragmatic approaches to understanding, I relate my analysis to issues of mobility and performance. This choice is data-based: what is striking in the asylum seekers’ data is the fact that the speakers and their resources are displaced. More often than not, the interaction between applicants and officials proceeds in communicative codes that are not usually associated with the geographical, social or psychological space in which they are used. In this respect, I use the term mobility in a sense that draws on an emerging field of investigation into translocal models of communication which shifts its focus away from territorialized groups, communities and institutions to globalized economies, transnational movements of people and flows of socio-cultural resources (Rampton 1995, 1998, 1999; Jacquemet 2003; Blommaert 2003b, 2004a). 2 My point of departure is that language, like any other form of semiotic behaviour, is intimately involved with functions and values related to its use (Bakhtin 1981, Hymes 1996). When people are having a conversation, they contextualize meaning, i.e. they map function (intended or attributed meaning) onto form (verbal and nonverbal performance). Contextualization is conditioned by the entire set of contexts people have access to before they enter the interaction. I refer to these contexts with the term pretextuality. This pre-existing potential is at the same time essentially variable – it involves the input of individuals with ultimately unique contextual networks – and socially regulated – these individuals orient towards particular normative centres. People enter the interaction with varying degrees of pretextual difference. What something means for one person may have different meanings for someone else, depending on their experiences, the way in which they look at things. Language, in other words, is an important semiotic resource,

2 For an elaborate discussion of the theoretical framework in which I situate my research I refer to Maryns 2004. This concise version of the theoretical frame relies on publications by Hymes (1972a, 1972b, 1974a, 1974b, 1996), Gumperz (1982); Silverstein (1976, 1998); Maryns and Blommaert (2001, 2002); Blommaert (2003a, 2003b, 2004a).

Introduction

7

but not a neutral one: identical forms may have different meanings – both referential and social meanings may be at play – and its functionality is a matter of dialogic uptake and value attribution. The hypothesis is that the greater the pretextual difference between people, the more performance will be required to be on the same wavelength. Pretextual differences have to be compensated in interaction for understanding to be achieved. Understanding, in other words, can be measured in terms of mobility of resources, i.e. their potential to realize intended function across individual spaces of contextualization. Mobility is a matter of anticipating the balance between what is pretextually shared and what needs to be performed in interaction and in this way, of creating the necessary conditions for an intended uptake. It needs to be underscored, however, that these conditions for a desired uptake are not automatically satisfied: in some cases people are not allowed to perform, in other cases they do not have access to the required forms to perform successfully and these are only some of the many reasons why people may fail to achieve understanding. The interaction may be hampered by what I refer to as pretextual gaps, pretextually-conditioned meaning assessments that diverge to such an extent that the meanings produced or sought fall in the gap between what is recognized and what can be produced. In this way, important information may get lost or the produced forms may even be attributed unintended meanings. My research will show how these interactional dynamics are disrupted in institutional practice. In spaces of cross-cultural institutional discourse such as the Belgian asylum procedure, a procedure in which different boundaries need to be transgressed simultaneously, performance plays a crucial role in illuminating intended links between form and meaning. However, it will be argued that the procedure offers little space for performance. Instead, there is a tendency towards an imposition of institutional standards of textuality on the diversity of applications entering the procedure. An issue as fundamental as linguistic diversity is ignored in the Belgian asylum procedure and this will be shown to put many asylum seekers at a disadvantage in expressing themselves and motivating their case. No doubt, the situation of asylum seekers is very hard to get a grip on, but this does not alter the fact that the interlocutors should be able to mobilize everything available to reach the highest possible degree of mobility. If people are supposed to make themselves understood in interaction – and as long as this is one of the basic principles in the determination of refugee status – they should at least be given the opportunity to perform.

8

Katrijn Maryns

Method and approach As could be seen in the previous section, I frame my findings within a larger theory of mobility and performance. The notion of contextualization occupies a central place in this and a key question is how much context is required to make adequate meaning assessments. This question, however, does not only apply to the object of my research but also to my approach because also at this meta-level, the issue of contextualization raises some important questions. I have entered upon a fairly unexplored domain of linguistic research, a particularly broad and sensitive field of investigation in which the required level of context is huge, if not inexhaustible. Research, on the other hand, involves analysis, and analysis inevitably entails a selection of certain bits of reality that are highlighted as relevant. But given the diverse nature of my audience, having to address an academic audience but at the same time wanting to return something to the people in the field, it was really difficult for me as a researcher to anticipate all these expectations. Therefore, being fully aware of the fact that a lot of context inevitably remains open to future research, I have decided to delimit my object of investigation by making some well-considered choices as to method and approach: The questions that are raised in this investigation call for an interdisciplinary perspective. My analysis of what goes on in procedural interaction is not purely linguistic, but focuses on the attribution of social value to linguistic form. It falls within the scope of a general conception of discourse analysis as a confluence of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, two closely related fields of investigation that share a pragmatic perspective on language (Verschueren 1999; Gee 1999). From this perspective, I focus on the meaningful functioning of language in a usage context. My methodological approach equally fits into this multi-faceted field of study which, drawing on the method of linguistic ethnography, analyses discourse as an object of social evaluation. My investigation is based on ethnographic research methods: rather than starting from a set of theoretical assumptions, general features and categories to look at the phenomena, I shall depart from observation and analysis of specific data cases, the findings of which are then interpreted, related and synthesized in more general and theoretical terms. This approach is reflected in the organization of the chapters: whereas in the data chapters (1, 2 and 3), the problems are addressed as they turn up in the data – and therefore not by order of salience or immediate relevance –

Introduction

9

these findings are put in perspective in the discussion (chapter 4). The fieldwork conducted for this study consists of two different phases of data-gathering: a phase of second-hand data collection followed by a phase of first-hand data collection. The first phase extended over a period of one year (October 1999 − September 2000) and involved (a) literature study; (b) interviews with social workers in the field and (c) audio-recordings of the narrative of escape of a Sierra Leonean refugee, data that were collected outside the procedure. Data collection for the second phase was conducted over a period of eight months (November 2000 − June 2001). This phase of first-hand data collection from within the procedure formed the core of my fieldwork: audio-recordings of asylum application interviews and court meetings at the three asylum agencies in Brussels, the Dienst Vreemdelingenzaken or DVZ (Aliens’ Office), the Commissariaat Generaal voor de Vluchtelingen en de Staatlozen or CGVS (General Commission for Refugees and Stateless Persons), and the Vaste Beroepscommissie voor Vluchtelingen or VBV (Permanent Commission of Appeal for Refugees).3 My analysis of the data relies on an assemblage of discourse-analytical methods. In broad terms my analysis can be situated within the domain of institutional discourse. It is influenced by theoretical and field-work based studies of language, bureaucracy and the discursive constitution of reality in bureaucratic encounters (Agar 1985; Drew and Heritage 1992; Philips 1984, 1990; Sarangi and Slembrouck 1996; Coupland and Coupland 1998; Sarangi and Roberts 1999). Three discourse-analytical approaches are particularly relevant to my research: (1) Forensic discourse analysis (Coulthard 1992; Shuy 1993; Sarangi and Coulthard 2000; Gibbons 2003): an investigation of the authenticity of the statements on the basis of analysis in terms of consistency and coherence, repetitions and parallelisms and terms of address. It will be applied to official records of narratives produced by asylum seekers in the course of the procedure whose purpose it is to decide whether or not asylum will be granted. (2) Ethnopoetic analysis (Hymes 1996): a discourse-analytical approach that illuminates narrative structure by focusing on variation in emphasis and shape.

3

For a detailed description of my fieldwork (how I established contacts with the refugee agencies and how the fieldwork proceeded) and the methods of data constitution, I refer to Maryns 2004.

10

Katrijn Maryns

(3) Reflexive discourse analysis (Bucholz 2000): a notion of discourse analysis in a broad sense that encloses practices of data selection, representation and explicitation, each aspect of which implies a recontextualization of selected parts of reality in relation to particular – socially constrained and deeply ideologized – contexts of interpretation.

Let me finish this section by saying something about the representativeness of my study. In the course of my research period, some critical readers wanted my opinion about the limited ethnographic space in which I situate my research. Indeed, my analysis of individual data cases is inevitably limited in scope, but it definitely leaves a trail. Ethnography uncovers systematically recurring patterns within the boundaries of the corpus (cf. chapter 4). It allows for qualitative and constructive analysis that goes beyond the particularities of the concrete individual case. In this respect, I believe my task is that of describing and uncovering important communicative patterns that have become naturalized in the procedure and this is how I hope my study will be constructive within the boundaries of my field of research. Moreover, for reasons of scope, I also had to make a selection of cases and examples within the boundaries of my corpus. My fieldwork period extended over several months and allowed me to collect a corpus of primary data as well as a fairly large amount of secondary information such as field interviews with interpreters, interviewers and decision-makers, observations, off-record comments and information that I picked up in the corridors. Making choices about what to select for the analysis was not always easy. On the other hand, the kind of social reality I was working on helped me to justify my choices. Asylum seekers have their experiential account to motivate their case during one or more interviews, but what matters in the end is the representation of the ‘facts’ in textual files. In this respect, the fact that the evidence is purely discursive not only justifies my selection of the method of discourse analysis to explain the observed phenomena, it also allowed me to give priority to the primary data, i.e. those elements that are immediately consequential for the discursive gatekeeping process.

The data The primary data for this study comprises a corpus of 39 administrative files collected at the different asylum agencies (annex 2). For each file I

Introduction

11

witnessed and recorded at least one of the interviews between a public official and the asylum seeker concerned. I was very lucky with the data: while previous researchers had been forced either to rely on field notes, as they were not given the permission to make recordings, or to analyse the narratives of asylum seekers outside the procedure, I was given the unique opportunity to collect a corpus of first-hand data. This permission to make recordings enabled me to investigate the hearings from a micro-analytical perspective, to scrutinize the textual files of the applicants and to explore the interplay between the different stages of investigation that make up the asylum procedure. Pseudonyms are used to conceal the identity of the applicants. The data is predominantly African and English: it contains asylum cases of African asylum seekers from Sudan, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia and Nigeria. In each of these countries, English serves a wide range of functions in society: it has gained (un)official recognition as a lingua franca and it is generally used for communication across frontiers, as an intranational as well as an international language. Two core features of African English are particularly relevant to the data. First, English as an exogenous language in Africa displays an enormous range of language variation when measured against ‘normative standard English’: local varieties with differing degrees of mother-tongue interference, second or third language varieties, pidginized and creolized varieties (Hymes 1971; Wells 1982a, 1982b; Bobda 1997; Meeuwis and Blommaert 1998; Maryns and Blommaert 2001). Second, although it serves important functions in society, English cannot be considered the language of the majority of the population. Therefore, in each of the files of the corpus, English occupies a central place, yet in different ways: (a) it is used for the direct interaction between the applicant (African English) and the official (Flemish English); and (b) in case of interpretation (the applicant cannot express him/herself in English, Dutch or French), it is used as a target language, which again involves a confrontation between African and Flemish nonnative speaker varieties of English. I have a final word of warning about the brutal nature of the data. The data concern a harrowing reality: both the refugee accounts and the way in which the accounts are dealt with in the procedure are very disconcerting. Yet, I want to emphasize that it was never my intention to single out the ‘bad examples’ for analysis. As mentioned before, for reasons of scope, I had to make a selection of cases and examples, but this selection should be seen as an accurate representation of the entire corpus. Also, this study should not be regarded as a criticism of the officials working in the procedure. I respect many institutional representatives for their perseverance

12

Katrijn Maryns

and hard work in the sometimes very difficult conditions (time pressure, lack of interpreters). If anything, this study addresses the bureaucratic system and the unrealistic demands it makes on those involved in it (asylum seekers, institutional representatives, interpreters).

Overview of the chapters This book is organized in four chapters. Chapters one, two and three are data-based.4 Chapter four synthesizes and discusses the issues raised in the data-based chapters. Chapter one focuses on text trajectories. In this chapter, it is my intention to lay bare the entire trajectory asylum seekers have to cover in the procedure as their file moves from one stage of investigation to the next. As the data for this chapter cover the different stages of investigation in the asylum procedure, this chapter is considerably longer than the following chapters. The organization of the chapter is based on the procedural framework that has been sketched in the introduction. My discussion proceeds according to the different stages of investigation making up the procedure and throws light on the approach (method and policy) of the different asylum agencies involved: the DVZ and the CGVS (phase 1) and the CGVS and the VBV (phase 2). The chapter, therefore, consists of four sections: first, the investigation of admissibility at the DVZ (the case Koulagna (1)); second, the urgent appeal at the CGVS (the case Koulagna (2)); third, the investigation of the merit of the application at the CGVS (the case Karifa) and finally, the urgent appeal at the VBV (the case Ebou and the case Essoh). By way of recapitulation, I present some of the main features characterizing each of the different procedural stages of investigation side by side. The data discussed in chapter two relates to language ideological issues. It illustrates the effects of displacement on code variation, perception and identification and intends to show how a denial of linguistic diversity and multilingualism turns into a problem where it serves important performative functions. The chapter is organized in three sections. The first section focuses on the issue of language choice in the procedure (the case Isata). Section two deals with translation practices. It is structured into four sub-sections each of which deals with a different method of translation: (a) fragmentary translation; (b) online translation of spoken 4

These chapters present a selection of data extracts. For more examples I refer to Maryns 2004.

Introduction

13

discourse into written text; (c) translation in different phases and (d) translation practices at the VBV. Section three focuses on the pitfalls of language analysis in two frequently applied techniques of linguistic identification: (a) the determination of nationality on the basis of translation tests and (b) linguistic analysis conducted at the language analysis desk of the Belgian migration agencies. Finally, I identify a number of parameters that qualify the relation between speaker, language and identity. The main focus in chapter three is on the effects of co-narration and rehearsed narratives in the procedure. Drawing on data-based evidence, it is my intention to show how particular elements in the asylum seeker’s account lead the interviewing official to suspect that the asylum seeker is producing a rehearsed narrative and this assumption will be shown to inform instances of textual production and interpretation. It is my aim to clarify and illustrate these textual dynamics on the basis of three data cases (the case Fatoumata, the case Mariama and the case Namissa). The data is taken from a set of interviews conducted at the DVZ and concerns a group of young African girls who have chosen English to do their interview. Detailed analysis of what appear to be three identical cases at first sight, reveals narrative patterns that are less transparent and predictable than presumed by the officials. The officials’ prejudice will be shown to affect their treatment of the cases: not only does it inform their narrative co-production – adding ‘standard’ elements to the account – it also keeps the applicants from supporting and substantiating their case. In the fourth and final chapter, the findings of the data analysis are put into perspective. Moving beyond the analysis of concrete individual cases it is my intention to uncover systematically recurring discursive patterns in the data, to situate these patterns within the broader field of research into language and mobility and to address some of the implications for the evaluation of asylum seekers’ cases. This chapter analyses the decontextualizing effects of textuality in three interrelated dimensions of the exchange creating unfavourable conditions for successful communication: code (standard and monolingual), mode (consistent, coherent and detailed), and view (matching professional categories of refugeeness). It is argued that the said is very often not made into a sayable because it does not match the institutionally inscribed codes, modes and views.

1. Text Trajectories 1.1 Introduction In this chapter, I focus on the assimilation of asylum seekers’ accounts to institutional standards of textuality in the information processing procedure. It is my intention to lay bare the entire trajectory asylum seekers have to cover in the procedure as their file moves from one stage of investigation to the next. As this chapter is therefore necessarily long, I shall first sketch its general structure. The organization of the chapter follows the framework sketched in the introduction covering the different stages of investigation in the asylum procedure (annex 1). My discussion proceeds according to the two main phases of investigation making up the procedure viz. the investigation of admissibility and the investigation of the merit of the application. As could be seen in the introduction, each of these phases comprises two stages of investigation in which different asylum agencies are involved: the DVZ and the CGVS (phase 1) and the CGVS and the VBV (phase 2). In the course of my fieldwork period, I was given the opportunity to follow three asylum seekers in their trajectory from the DVZ investigation of admissibility to their urgent appeal at the CGVS (phase 1) and I have selected one of these cases for analysis (the case Koulagna). Each of the three cases however, were declared inadmissible for further investigation at the CGVS. Within the boundaries of my fieldwork period I did not get the chance to follow the trajectory of an asylum seeker who moved from the first to the second phase of investigation (several reasons for this are discussed in my introduction to section 1.5). Therefore, for my analysis of the second phase of investigation, I introduce three more cases: the investigation of the merit of the application at the CGVS (the case Karifa) and the urgent appeal against non-recognition at the VBV (the case Ebou and the case Essoh). Thus, the chapter is organized in the following way: Phase one: the investigation of the admissibility of the application 1.2 The investigation of admissibility at the DVZ: The case Koulagna (1) 1.3 The urgent appeal at the CGVS: The case Koulagna (2) 1.4 Recapitulation phase 1: The admissibility of the case Phase two: the investigation of the merit of the application 1.5 The investigation of the merit at the CGVS: The case Karifa 1.6 The urgent appeal at the VBV: The case Ebou/ The case Essoh 1.7 Recapitulation phase 2: the investigation of the merit of the application

Text Trajectories

15

By way of general recapitulation, I shall present some of the main features characterizing each of the different procedural stages of investigation side by side. As mentioned before, this data section is necessarily long as it covers the different stages of investigation. It will be seen that at each of these stages, applicants are faced with the same problems over and over again (their inability to meet institutional requirements of factual detail, to stick to a temporal order of the events or to explain contextually dense passages of their account). I have chosen for an exhaustive representation of these problems as they turn up in the data. The recurring patterns in the analysis are in this way indexical of the applicant experience.

PHASE 1: The investigation of admissibility For my analysis of the admissibility stage at the DVZ and the CGVS, I shall investigate the application of an asylum seeker who comes from the English-speaking part of Cameroon (the case Koulagna). The main reason why I have selected this case for detailed analysis is the fact it is one of the three cases for which I had the opportunity to follow the applicant as he moved from the first to the second stage in the procedure. The analysis of the case sheds a light on the tension between the first and the second interview and more particularly on the way in which this tension is perceived by the participants in the interaction. Let me sketch an overview of the applicant’s procedural trajectory (annex 4). The applicant applies for asylum at the DVZ. On the basis of the first interview at the DVZ, the application is declared inadmissible. The applicant then lodges an urgent appeal against the DVZ decision at the CGVS. The CGVS rules against the appeal, i.e. the applicant gets a ‘confirming decision’ that agrees with the DVZ’s first decision. This means that the application for asylum cannot be investigated on its merit. The applicant then contests his CGVS decision at the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court does not suspend the CGVS decision and the procedure is closed. The applicant is a middle-aged man from the English-speaking part of Cameroon who has decided to do his interviews in English. His language choice gives rise to direct interaction with the official, without the intervention of an interpreter. In many African cases, English is used as a code for direct interaction between officials and applicants at the DVZ and the CGVS. There is an unwritten agreement between the DVZ/ CGVS and the Supreme Court according to which the officials themselves can function as interpreters for English, unless the lawyer and/ or the applicant

16

Katrijn Maryns

argue that the official is not sufficiently proficient in English (such statements are rarely made in practice). Although English is not an official language in Belgium, many Belgians are able to express themselves fairly well in English – they are exposed to English at school and in the media (radio, television, films). The question is to what extent this non-native speaker variety of English suffices for an accurate understanding and representation of an account as complex as that of the asylum seeker. Moreover, the officials’ nonnative speaker variety is confronted with the African English variety of the applicant. In other words, although the applicant and the official both identify their code as ‘English’, this is for both a non-native variety that has become subject to interference from the other codes making up their repertoires. Therefore, as the analysis will show, English as a ‘standard language’ does not satisfy as lingua franca for the exchange of information. The interference of elements from the interlocutors’ highly different repertoires causes important information to be misinterpreted or to get lost. Moreover, it will be illustrated that although both varieties, the African and the European variety, are nonnative varieties of English, they do not equally count as competence in the institutional environment (Blommaert, Collins and Slembrouck 2004, cf. discussion of code in chapter 4). The officials in both interviews are young men in their mid-twenties. The setting in both interviews is comparable: – – – – –

the interview is conducted in the official’s office the official shares his office with a colleague the official sits behind his desk, the applicant in front of his desk the tape recorder is put on the desk I sit diagonally opposite the interviewer and next to/ slightly behind the applicant

The two officials, however, do differ in means and method: –

–

Whereas the interviewer at the DVZ does not have a computer and therefore has to write everything down with pen and paper, the interviewer at the CGVS makes use of a computer and types in the relevant information as he is conducting the interview. This however is coincidence: some interviewers at the DVZ work on a computer just like there are interviewers at the CGVS who prefer to write everything down. Whereas the interviewer at the DVZ makes use of a standard questionnaire, the interviewer at the CGVS relies on a combination of routine, prepared and on-the-spot questions that he considers relevant to the asylum seeker’s case.

Text Trajectories

17

1.2 The investigation of admissibility at the DVZ: The case Koulagna (1) The length of the interview: about 4 hours Before he starts with the interview, the official first gives the floor to me so that I can explain my position as a researcher and ask the applicant whether he is willing to co-operate. The applicant immediately agrees. I put the small tape recorder on the table, sit down and the interview starts. It is a fairly long interview, the organization of which is based on the structure of a standard questionnaire that is generally used at the DVZ. When completed, the questionnaire serves as the official’s report of the interview. In annex 3, I provide an overview of this list of standard questions. Basically, the questionnaire comprises three main sections: (1) bureaucratic questionnaire: questions 1- 41 (2) the motivation of the claim (narrative of escape): question 42 (3) control questions: questions 43- 47

This subdivision of the standard list of questions into three sections will be used as a frame of reference throughout the analysis.

1.2.1 The bureaucratic questionnaire (questions 1-41) The official begins the interview by asking some general questions about the applicant such as name, address, age, number of children. He treats the applicant with a lot of respect: he has a very polite and serene way of formulating his questions, he addresses the applicant with ‘Sir’ or ‘Mister Koulagna’ and he apologizes when his questioning turns out to be confusing. It immediately becomes clear that the displacement of the applicant has an enormous impact on the information exchange: what are normally considered the most straightforward identification questions in bureaucratic encounters – name, profession, number of children, place and date of birth – often require more than a simple ‘one-word-answer’ in asylum application interviews. Due to the pretextual differences between the interlocutors, short, decontextualized answers often do not work. Too many aspects of the account require clarification and this makes the interlocutors lapse into all sorts of contextualization work. In the analysis I shall distinguish between two types of interactional contextualization: epistemic and affective contextualization. Both types of interactional contextualization will be related to issues of place and displacement.

18

Katrijn Maryns

Epistemic contextualization work Probably one of the most confusing bureaucratic questions is the question about place. The displacement of the applicant in a literal ‘spatial’ sense of the term affects the exchange of factual information. Many elements of the account that can be taken for granted in a local context need to be explained in the translocal context of the application interview. Pretextual differences in conceptions of place are clearly shown in the following fragments: Extract 1 (1) I: can you tell me your address in Cameroon please …………… (2) AS: ((sighs)) where where x in Cameroon (3) I: yes where you where you were living in Cameroon (4) AS: aha .. Bamenda .. North West Province (5) I: pardon (6) AS: Bamenda North West Province ……… (7) I: Bamenda (8) AS: Bamenda . North West Province (9) I: uhum ………North .. West … Province ((writes down)) uhum.. (10) AS: urm Corner Street ……… (11) I: Corna (12) AS: /korna korna/ (13) I/ AS: /korna/ …… (14) AS: you have pronounce urm /k/ urm /korna/ (15) I: yes …. it’s a bit of a guess for me .. the Corna Street (16) AS: yeah … Kwe (17) I: Kwe (18) AS: Kwe ………. (19) I: what is Kwe (20) AS: Kwe … like this ……………………. ((papers)) (21) I: yeah (22) AS: yes ….. (23) I: it’s urm it’s the name of the house or the name of the street or or (24) AS: Corner Street in Kwe .. the village is Kwe (25) I: ah it’ s the village (26) AS: yes . then the the the street is Corner Street (27) I:= Corner Street hen .. and Bamen Bamenda is (28) AS:= Ba is a whole big town a big town (29) I: ah a big town yes (30) AS: the province is the whole area (31) I: yeah (32) AS: but Bamenda is a big town

Text Trajectories

(33) (34) (35) (36)

19

I: aha AS: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx so Cameroon is the country I: yes ……… urm so … Kw Kwen is the village hen AS: uhum

This extract shows how the official’s lack of familiarity with the geographic situation of the applicant’s homeland considerably complicates the information exchange. It illustrates the difficulty in exchanging placenames. The applicant situates the street where he lives within the larger ‘units’ making up his country: Corner Street < Kwe (district or neighbourhood) < Bamenda (city) < North West Province < Cameroon

As the official is not familiar with the geographic division of the country in provinces and with ‘Bamenda’, one of the country’s most important cities, he is not able to immediately pick up the relations between what the applicant refers to as the street, village, town and province he comes from. Although the applicant is able to provide exact place reference (‘Bamenda, North West Province, Corner Street, Kwe’), it is the official who, due to his lack of familiarity with the geographic landscape of Cameroon, incites repetition (turns 5-8) and explicit contextual framing (turns 11-15, 19-20, 23-36). Differences in contextualizing directions between the interlocutors call for extra performance – explicitly contextualizing accounts – on the part of the applicant. In order to get things right, the applicant decides to recapitulate, all of which can be analysed as a passage of epistemic contextualization work, i.e. the applicant who is ‘teaching’ the official about his country of origin: ‘the village is Kwe’ (turn 24), ‘the street is Corner Street’ (turn 26), ‘Bamenda is a whole big town’ (turns 27-28), ‘the province is the whole area’ (turn 30). At this point the applicant becomes really instructive as he emphasizes the difference between ‘province’ and ‘town’. Implicit contextual information that usually remains unexplained – the way in which a particular location relates to larger geographic-administrative units – requires explicit contextualization. The way in which the applicant ends his explanation with ‘Cameroon is the country’ (turn 34) illustrates how difficult it is to assess levels of preknowledge in these kind of encounters. In the following extract the applicant has to give the names of his brothers and sisters: Extract 2 (1) I: so can you tell me the name of your brothers and sisters …

20

Katrijn Maryns

(2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (19) (20) (21) (22) (23) (24) (25) (26) (27) (28) (29) (30) (31) (32) (33) (34)

AS: yah yes I: uhum ………… AS: I Koulagna I: Goula AS: urm no urm Victor Victor I: Victor AS: Victor x… Victor I: yes AS: then the girl .. Kai Rachel I: Karash AS: Ka ka then Rachel I: Kaderaché AS: Ka …. then . Rachel is the English name .. Kai is the country name I: is the country name AS: yes that’s my own name is Koulagna Austin I: yes AS: then Kai Rachel…… I: I don’t understand . is this is it tha that’s a brother of yours .. AS: a sister I: a sister .. AS: yah I: ok …………… Ka AS: uhum …… I: Just K (/kay/) AS: yeah I: K. A. AS: yeah K.A. I I: aha AS: hum … (et) Rachel … Rachel .. Rachel Rachel .. /ra’chel/ ((French pronunciation)) I: ah Rachel /’reitchel/ (( English pronunciation)) AS: yes the English name I: yes AS: ok ………………

The bureaucratic format allows for no more than a list of names and addresses. A name is treated as something fixed, not negotiable. What is at stake here, however, is the whole package of cultural information that needs to be conveyed. Names may contain much more negotiable information than is assumed in a bureaucratic context and the exchange of names may require more effort from the participants in interaction than is normally

Text Trajectories

21

allowed for. In other words, what should be dealt with very quickly according to the bureaucratic format, actually calls for a complicated process of information exchange. The main source of confusion here is the fact that in Cameroon people are often given two names, the first being an endogenous name from Cameroon (what the applicant refers to as ‘the country name’) and the second being an exogenous English or French name (the ‘English name’). Moreover, the official’s lack of familiarity with African English further complicates the exchange. The applicant therefore uses different strategies to make himself clear, yet his contextualization work is not being picked up by the official: in turn 12 he divides the name explicitly into two parts ‘ka, then rachel’. Yet, because he speaks so fast, the official does not pick up the pauses between the words and instead of a word group he interprets the stretch of sounds as one single word ‘Kaderaché’. In a second attempt to get his sister’s name right, the applicant explains that her name consists of a ‘country name’ and an ‘English name’ to which he adds his own name as an example, ‘Koulagna Austin’. What turns out to be so confusing about his sister’s name is that the ‘English name’ is pronounced in the French way (turn 30). This is probably why the official fails to pick up the applicant’s explanation. In this way, it takes them more than twenty interactional turns to get things right. In the next fragment, the applicant is asked about his wife’s place of birth. The interviewer wants to know whether she still lives in the place where she was born. What follows is an interesting piece of discourse about place: Extract 3 (1) I: uhum … yes . she’s still living there … (2) AS: no she’s my wife (3) I: she’s your wife she’s there (4) AS:= yeah but . I don’t know where she is (5) I: you don’t know where she is (6) AS: x I don’t know xx … all with my children I don’t know hen (7) I: no (8) AS: I don’t know (9) I: no …………….. urm do you spe do you spect do you suspect they’re still in Cameroon . or . the the ‘re somewhere else or (10) AS: mmmmm I just call . when I have change . I don’t have money I’ve got to phone ….. to Dorothy in South Africa .. e will tell me whether…. yeah because .. I have the house I built my house in Corner Street (11) I: uhum

22

Katrijn Maryns

The applicant’s first answer to the question is based on pure logic: the woman now lives with him as they are married (turn 2). Yet, he immediately needs to qualify this answer, adding that although she normally lives with him, he does not know where she is at the moment of speaking (turns 4-6-8). This brings me to the second type of contextualization work.

Affective contextualization work In extract 3, it can be seen how the interviewer’s request for factual information (such as the address of the applicant and that of his relatives) clashes with the applicant’s uncertainty and confusion about place. The question for his wife’s address triggers off a fragmented and emotionally loaded answer (turns 4-11): what should be a short and straightforward answer turns into an expression of uncertainty about where his wife and his children are. As the interviewer repeatedly asks whether they are still in Cameroon, the applicant starts a very complicated and confused explanation of how he might probably get in touch with his relatives (turn 10). This passage is so fragmented and confusing, in the first place because it is loaded with emotions and concerns about his relatives but also because the point he wants to make requires a lot of contextualization work that might appear irrelevant at this point in the interview and that is only secondary to the important information he wants to provide next. The passage could be rephrased as: I need some change → so I can phone a woman called Dorothy (the connection with South Africa is unclear) → she can probably tell me more about my relatives and where they are, about what is going on at my place there

The applicant apparently needs to provide this information but at the same time seems to realize that it is not an answer to the question itself, but rather an explanation of how he might probably get an answer to the question. The applicant does provide the information but his contextualization work is so limited that it becomes very confusing and difficult to understand. Moreover, given the fact that the interview is not recorded, it can be argued that procedural replicability conditions further affect the official’s uptake. His explanation of how he could probably get to know something more about the current condition of his relatives, brings him to the place where he saw his relatives for the last time, viz. his compound: Extract 4 (1) AS: my own compound … they were staying there lived WHEN

Text Trajectories

(2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (19) (20) (21) (22)

(23) (24)

(25) (26) (27) (28)

23

they come and CAUGHT me in the house that was there they were staying I: uhum AS: urm I went theee . operation uuurm urm secret urm the gendarmerie urm urm corps I: uhum AS: and there ‘s urm camp in Cameroon that urm … the president present president is there with a party I: yeah AS: so . they notice you I: uhum AS: in the night . or very early in the morning … they just come and take you off I: yes …. AS: they now go and execute you … but if you have lucky .. they don’t do I: they don’t do it AS: if yee you have none you don’t have lucky they do I: they do AS: so they exeCUTE so many people because .. I: yeah AS: they don’t care about the big opposition leader now they care about the followers now I: yeah AS: they go and they they chase the followers I: uhum .. AS: then now the b the big opposition leader will don’t have any I: no …. yes ok .. I’ll urm but .. we’re coming to that later hen . first I will I’m having the impression you’re alrea already telling your story . hen .. but first I want I want to have some informa more information . AS: hum I: and then you can tell your story ok ………………. so .. f urm I’m going to write to Cameroon . for your wife where she is staying at the moment .. AS: I don’t xxx I don’t know where xx I: you don’t know AS: (till) when I will get the information I will tell you .. where I think she is I: I just write you don’t know . ok

The question about his wife’s address in extract 3 – in which the notion of ‘place’ asked for is in fact a decontextualized notion of place, i.e. the

24

Katrijn Maryns

permanent and normal state of affairs – triggers off a very dense narrative about the applicant’s place, his compound, which, as the ethnopoetic analysis below will show, is very important to him. In his answer to the question about place, the applicant develops an explanation for the core of his problems and the reasons why he had to leave his country. This contextualized account is apparently not in place here. The applicant gets interrupted in the middle of his narration with a quite awkward ‘yes ok’ (turn 22). For the asylum seeker, place and displacement are very difficult to manage within the boundaries of a bureaucratic format. The fact that his current state of being a refugee makes him lead a life of moving across places, causes his conception of place to be an undetermined rather than a certain and fixed one. The irrelevance of the narrative information is in fact institutional irrelevance, it simply does not fit the bureaucratic structure of the interview. Throughout the interaction it becomes clear that the official and the applicant apparently have different conceptions and expectations of the interview. The textual processing of the interview data can be said to have a retroactive effect on the structure of the interview itself: in order to arrive at standard written reports, each interview at the DVZ has to be conducted according to a standard interview format, i.e. a list of standard questions that needs to be dealt with chronologically. The question about the motivation of the applicant to apply for asylum in Belgium is question number 42 in a total list of 47 questions. In other words, the official needs a lot of information about the applicant before he can turn to the actual narrative of escape. The official here clearly wants to stick to the standard order of questioning. He explicitly identifies the applicant’s turn as a first attempt to tell ‘his story’ and makes clear that this information does not belong here but further in the interview. The applicant is apparently not cognisant of the expected interview structure. Rather, he appears to consider the interview as an opportunity to explain what has happened to him and to do this in a conversational-narrative style based on association rather than bureaucratic structuring: the bureaucratic question for his wife’s address makes him express his uncertainty about the current location of his relatives, which brings him to the place where he saw his relatives for the last time, which in turn leads him to his arrest and his personal political problems and eventually makes him turn to the general political crisis in his country. The official’s backchannelling interventions – interjections such as ‘uhum’ and ‘yeah’ and repetitions of the last bit of the applicant’s previous turn (turns 12 and 14) – encourage the applicant to continue with his account and at the same time signal that the official is ‘with the speaker’.

Text Trajectories

25

The function served by the official’s backchannelling work, however, is dubious: although it initially serves as a cue for showing interest and understanding, it actually turns out to be no more than a politeness marker. As soon as the official interrupts the applicant in his account, it becomes clear that he did not have the intention to listen carefully and try to understand what the applicant was saying. On the other hand, the official was searching for appropriate ways to interrupt the applicant and bring him back to the structure of the interview. The official’s hesitant style, his hedging and self-corrections clearly show that he is uncomfortable about the fact that the interview does not proceed in the ‘normal’ or ‘normative’ way. Yet, rather than arguing why this information should be provided later in the interview, the official ties up again with his ‘bureaucratic questioning’: he explicitly recapitulates what will go on record, and repeats the for him still unanswered question on his list: ‘for your wife, where is she staying at the moment?’ (turn 24). The same interactional pattern appears to repeat itself; the applicant fails to answer the question and wants to explain why. This time, however, the interviewer immediately interrupts the applicant by making clear that even general and vague answers are acceptable at this stage in the interview. Despite the fact that the applicant feels the need to talk about his experiences at this point in the interaction, the interview structure is given priority. Although he remains rather vague about the actual organization of the whole event – the purpose of and the relation between the interview, the report and the decision – the official frequently refers to the written record of the interaction. By means of metapragmatic comments such as ‘I’m going to write “to Cameroon”’ (turn 24) and ‘I just write you don’t know, ok?’ (turn 28), the official implicitly gives shape to his interpretation of the application interview, viz. a bureaucratic encounter in which the official serves the role of intermediary between asylum seeker and decision-maker. Again we see different pretextualities at play, yet this time it is not the applicant, but the interviewer who has to provide explicit contextualizing information to illuminate particular pretextualities – the context of textual trajectories – that dominate his production and interpretation of language facts. In his report, the official aims at a compromise between experiential narrative and bureaucratic structure. The report has to guarantee a truthful and complete account of the asylum seeker’s experiences and motivations but at the same time it has to meet institutional standards of textual production and interpretation. It is the official’s task not merely to understand the relation between the words and meanings produced by the asylum seeker, but also to reflect upon his interpretation in such a way as to anticipate the interpretation of word-meaning relations at one stage higher

26

Katrijn Maryns

up in the procedure. Instead of just answering the list of questions he has in front of him, basically writing down what the applicant says, or at least what can be picked up from the account, the official checks whether he has got it right, whether his interpretation reflects the applicant’s intentions, and whether his written version of the events actually represents what the applicant wants to get across. The official is cognisant of the kind of institutional format that is expected in the procedure, and therefore, for the sake of the applicant, the official rephrases the applicant’s account in the direction of institutional standards. As he is aware of the transformative implications of this rewriting practice, the official looks for approval for his own reformulations. In this respect, despite the fact that it has to be based on bureaucratic textuality criteria in order to be institutionally acceptable, the interview comes across as a ‘joint-venture’ rather than a strictly formal interrogation. So far, I have focused on the tension between applicant performance and institutional irrelevance, an irrelevance that is informed by the particular bureaucratic format dominating the interview. Before I move on with the next section on motivation questions, I want to demonstrate that, although his epistemic-affective contextualization work does not fit the interview structure, it serves important functions for the asylum seeker. I shall do this on the basis of an ethnographic re-transcription of extract 4. It will be argued that short instances of narration occurring early in the interview can turn out to be crucial sources of all sorts of cultural, epistemic and affective information that may serve an elementary function in the applicant’s attempt to make his claim.

Home narration: the connection between narrative form and function The field transcript (extract 4) shows that the applicant has difficulties expressing himself: hesitations (turns 3-21), mid-sentence changes of topic (turn 5), repetitions (turns 17-19). Unlike some of the cases analysed below, however, this is not merely a matter of problematic language proficiency. Apart from a few unusual grammatical constructions (article deletion in turn 5, turns 11-13: ‘if you have lucky, they don’t do’), the applicant is able to make himself fairly well understood in English. Rather, we see a meaningful connection between narrative style and narrative content, between the confused and fragmented means of expression and the narration of home experience. A particular mixture of linguisticnarrative features almost systematically turns up as soon as the applicant starts to talk about his home situation and the reasons why he had to leave

Text Trajectories

27

his country: (a) fastness of speech, (b) fluctuating event perspective and (c) dense contextualization work. First, it is striking that throughout the interview, the applicant speeds up his narration as soon as he has to convey crucial and sensitive information. That this often turns out to be a source of confusion and uncertainty becomes clear throughout the interview. At a certain point in the interaction the official even explicitly reflects upon the applicant’s speed of narration in a metapragmatic comment. Let me just for a moment jump forward in the analysis and turn to a short extract in which the official interrupts the applicant after a long and contextually dense narrative passage: Extract 5 (1) I: yes but you gonna have to repeat the last thing again because ((laughs)) … (2) R: it’s becoming too much (3) I: I’m becoming a bit tired and urm it’s really really not .. is it possible for you .. to talk a little bit slower .. a little bit slower hen .. cause it’s very difficult for me to . (4) AS: my English is not good enough (5) I: your English is very very good. but . just talk a little bit slower. if it’s possible hen a li a little bit more the. you English it is very good no there there’s no doubt about it but you you talk very fast. that’s the problem (6) AS: because urm you know my head when I talk (7) I: yeah This extract is taken from the last hour of the four-hour interview. The interviewer is really exhausted and admits that he has problems concentrating on the story because the applicant talks so fast. This metapragmatic comment however at the same time reveals something of the problematic issue of linguistic ownership rights that I will elaborately discuss in section 2.3.5. The applicant interprets this metapragmatic comment as a question about his proficiency in English (turn 4: ‘my English is not good enough’), which indirectly puts the official in the position of assessing the applicant’s linguistic competence. The applicant moreover points to his headaches as an excuse for his confused narration. In this respect, his fastness of speech could also be interpreted as a marker of affect and emotional involvement, as if he does not know what to tell first when it comes to issues that are very sensitive and important to him. It is mainly the combination of his African English pronunciation and the speed of his narration that makes him difficult to understand for a

28

Katrijn Maryns

Flemish non-native speaker of English. However, the linguistic gap between African and Flemish varieties of English does not appear to be the only source of confusion here. What equally seems to be at issue is the applicant’s perspective on the experiences and his struggle to order the events and get across his complex set of experiences in a structured way. First, the experiences the applicant wants to get across are so complex and contextually dense that almost every word in his narration requires further explanation in order to be picked up. What initially might have served as a general sketch of his problems brings him deeper and deeper into the tangled personal and political network he functioned in at the time before he got arrested. His account shares many characteristics with what Jan Blommaert (2001:428) identifies as asylum seekers’ ‘home narratives’ : detailed contextual accounts of their lives, local circumstances, politics and conflicts in their home society formulated in the shape of sub-narratives of he larger narrative … Often these narratives are triggered by an awareness that the story cannot be fully understood unless other people know some details about the society they come from, the particular events that caused their flight, and so on.

At different points in his argumentation, the applicant clearly needs to contextualize his utterances explicitly in order to make his point. The stress on ‘my own compound’ in turn 1 implies particular contextual information. It sketches an important aspect of the social-cultural background in which the events need to be framed: the applicant was the owner, not only of a house but of a compound in which he sheltered many of his relatives. As further analysis will show this compound is very important to him as this is where he established his business. And it is the success of his business that argues against him being an economic refugee. In other words, the contextual information here implicitly serves as a crucial element in the argumentation of his claim. His compound is the place where he saw his relatives for the last time and where he got arrested by ‘the secret gendarmerie corps’. The applicant, however, seems to realize that he is providing crucial information that will probably not be picked up by the interviewer: his reference to the Gendarmerie Corps rather than the Federal Police Force leads him to what he considers the core of the political crisis in his country, viz. the struggle between the Anglophone and the Francophone part of Cameroon. Therefore at this point, he decides to contextualize his personal experiences against the wider political background of his country.

Text Trajectories

29

However, it should be emphasized that although the narrative shares many characteristics with what Blommaert identifies as home narratives, it is embedded in a different interview genre: whereas Blommaert analysed interviews conducted by his students with asylum seekers outside the procedure (Blommaert 2001; Maryns and Blommaert 2001), this is an interview with a public official conducted at the DVZ in Brussels. Although in both cases the complexity of the political situation and the difficult task of anticipating the preknowledge of the hearer, make it very difficult for the applicant to develop a narrative strategy, there is a difference in setting and perspective: because the interviews at the DVZ are conducted almost immediately after the people have arrived in Belgium, their explanatory strategy is often less lucid than it turns out to be in situations where asylum seekers are asked to tell their story outside the procedural context and often long after their arrival in Belgium. It could be argued that the shorter the time span between narrated events and the narration of the events, the more will be remembered. However, what is equally at play is the narrator’s perspective on the events and his/ her capacity to grasp the experienced and transform it into tellable experiences. In the case of the applicant from Cameroon, there is very little time between narrated and narrating time and this might explain the quite confused impression that he makes: apart from the physical problems (headaches), the applicant suffers psychologically and struggles with the formulation of his perspective on the events, a perspective that still has to take shape for himself and that might be fluctuating as he tells his story. This probably explains why it takes the applicant several turns to develop his narrative strategy. The applicant is at pains trying to structure his argument as he is talking, yet this does not mean that he fails to make an argument (cf. chapter 4). An ethnopoetic re-transcription of the extract (Hymes 1998) has to bring to the surface some particular features of the narrative ordering of events and the argumentative structure of the account. Ethnopoetics deals with the genre of narrative as a structural-functional kind of verbal organization and focuses on the structure of the story and the functions this structure serves for the language user. It attempts at explicitating some of the deeper knowledge contained in the data by highlighting and reconstructing internal features of narrative patterning. In the ethnopoetic transcript I just for the moment leave out the official’s backchannelling interventions. The ethnopoetic representation of the discourse serves the function of highlighting particular prosodic details and adding narrative patterning to the transcript by dividing it in a number of narrative units. The exploration of narrative structuring is based upon the identification

30

Katrijn Maryns

of linguistic and pragmatic markers of narrative structure (ibid.): discourse markers such as ‘and’, ‘so’ and ‘because’, prosody and pitch, repetitions and parallelisms and speed of narration. On the basis of these formal characteristics, the following narrative parts can be observed: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (19) (20) (21) (22) (23) (24) (25) (26) (27) (28) (29) (30) (31)

1. Setting: my *own *compound … they were *staying there . *lived 2. Personal event narrative: *WHEN they come and *CAUGHT me in the house that was there they were staying urm when theee . opera*tion uuurm urm *secret urm the gendarme*rie urm urm corps 3. Bridge from personal to generic perpective: and *there ‘s urm *camp in Came*roon that urm …. The *president present *president is there with a PARTY 4. Generic event narrative so . they NOTICE you … in the *night . or *very early in the morning . they just come and TAKE you off .. they now go and exe*cute you … ←−−−−− but if you have lucky .. they don’t do } first pitch rise if yee you have none you don’t have lucky they do pitch fall 5. commentary and argumentation: so they exe*cute so many people ←−−−−− } second pitch rise because ..they don’t care about the big opposition leader now←pitch fall

they care about the followers now ← they go and they they chase the followers ← then now the b the big opposition leader will don’t have any …

The division of the extract into narrative units is based on the occurrence of particular formal characteristics: initial discourse markers (lines 13, 17, 22, 26, 27, in bold), pitch rise (lines 22-23 and 26-27), parallelisms

Text Trajectories

31

(lines 21-26 and 27-28-29). Five thematic units (and the opening of a sixth unit) can be distinguished: (1) Setting: the applicant links up with the question about place by sketching the compound where his relatives (used to) live and where he saw them for the last time; it is also the setting of his event narrative. (2) Personal event narrative: the applicant explains how he got arrested at his place. This unit begins with a very explicit ‘when’ and can be characterized by higher pitch and prominence and more variation in the intonation pattern. At this point the applicant links up the question about the location of his wife with the place where his problems started. The applicant provides more information about his arrest by saying that it was an operation organized by the Secret Gendarmerie Corps. At the same time however he appears to realize that this event requires further contextualization as it is a crucial element of his narrative of escape. (3) Bridge from personal to generic perspective: the hypothesis is that the applicant’s hesitant style in this unit can be attributed to the fact that he is still developing his explanatory strategy. At this point in his account, the applicant appears to realize that before he can continue with his personal account, he first has to provide the larger political background against which his experiences need to be framed. His intention to move from a personal to a generic perspective is reflected in the mid-sentence change of footing in lines 13-14: the applicant is at pains trying to establish a link between his personal situation (he was brought to a camp) and the general political terror raging the country (the power exerted by the president and his party who make life impossible for the opposition). In addition, he has to face the difficult task of transferring a contextually dense account to a hearer with presumably very little preknowledge. (4) Generic event narrative: the applicant eventually decides to start his political account by putting his experiences of arrest and detention on a par with the experiences of fellow-sufferers, which makes him sketch the potential danger and destiny of all those who sympathize with the opposition in his country (use of generic ‘you’). The description of how people get arrested and executed is inserted as a contextualizing sub-narrative. The prominence of the initial discourse marker ‘so’ (line 17), the structure of the account, the pauses between the utterances, the functional use of intonation and pitch level when he wants to make a point and the fluency of the narration (no self-corrections or hesitations in this passage), make clear that at this point, the applicant knows

32

Katrijn Maryns

what narrative strategy to use and he expresses confidence rather than uncertainty in stating his argument. (5) Commentary and argumentation: in this unit, the applicant reflects upon his ‘sub-narrative’ (conclusive ‘so’), and further generalizes these practices as routines of violent and arbitrary rule in his home situation, arbitrary power that finds an easy target in the followers rather than the leader of the oppositional party. Both his event perspective and his urge to contextualize turn his narration into a complex blend of personal and general political and cultural information. Ethnopoetic analysis highlights the enormous amount of cultural, epistemic and affective information that is squeezed into a very short piece of narration. Detailed analysis of what may seem a rather fragmented and confused piece of discourse at first sight, reveals a narrative structure that clearly sustains the applicant’s argument. The applicant’s argument is topically well-structured: what starts off as experiential narration (the account of his arrest), turns into a contextualized home narrative by means of which he links up his personal experiences with those of fellow-sufferers, all of which reaches a higher level of generalization about the arbitrary, nondemocratic and dictatorial regime ruling his home country. However, whereas during the interviews conducted outside the procedural context (Blommaert 2001; Maryns and Blommaert 2001), the asylum seekers did get the chance to develop their narrative, the smooth flow of the narrative is frequently disrupted in procedural settings. So far, I have focused on the first section of the interview, a section that has been referred to as ‘bureaucratic questionnaire’ for it deals with the set of short, decontextualized answers that generally characterizes bureaucratic encounters (name, place and date of birth, number of children, profession). My analysis of the bureaucratic questionnaire has shown that the bureaucratic format poses considerable anticipation problems for the asylum seeker: what is purely a matter of routine and formality for the official often requires much more than a simple ‘one-word-answer’ for the applicant. Questions that call for short and general answers ‘just for the record’ trigger off complex explanatory narratives. The hypothesis is that this functional mismatch is rooted in the fact that: (1) the applicant is not familiar with this kind of bureaucratic interviewing + the purpose of the questionnaire is not sufficiently clarified and explained by the official ↓ the applicant misjudges the interactional purpose of the bureaucratic

Text Trajectories

33

questionnaire and (2) the applicant’s complex reality is not suitable to be caught in a standard questionnaire of closed questions + the interviewer lacks familiarity with the cultural, political and social situation of the applicant. ↓ the applicant has to provide elaborate contextual expatiations to his answers In short, the interaction between the applicant and the official can be characterized by a tension between narrative subject and bureaucratic style or format. The observed pattern of interaction also characterizes the next section of the interview dealing with the applicant’s narrative of escape. To this I will now turn.

1.2.2 The motivation of the claim (question 42) Now that he has finished the standard questionnaire, the official explains what the applicant is supposed to do during the interview. With this metapragmatic information, the official not only wants to make clear what the subject of the information exchange should be but also, he addresses the required mode of narration. The interviewer instructs the applicant about the kind of narrative style that is institutionally required and he almost literally refers to the UNHCR guidelines, emphasizing the importance of coherence and chronological order in the presentation of the events: Extract 6 (1) I: uuuuuuurm ……. so .. what I would like you to do during the interview . is tell me as as coherent and urm in a chronological order hen as much as possible . what happened in your country …which made you decide decide to leave your country and to go somewhere else to ask for a asylum .. you understand (2) AS: urm a bit hen The official explicitly focuses on the context of genre, the required bureaucratic format. However, his explicit contextualization work fails to accomplish its illuminating function: the applicant apparently fails to pick up the meaning of the terms ‘coherent’ and ‘chronological’ (turn 2: ‘a bit hen’). The official then rephrases his request for coherent and chronological narration and explains what is meant by this: “in the right order that

34

Katrijn Maryns

the things happened”. What follows is a long and complicated narrative. The applicant clearly follows the official’s instructions and aims at presenting a well-structured, chronological account. This however will turn out to be much more difficult than suggested by the simple request ‘you can tell me your story now’. The applicant is given the chance to elucidate facts and events, to such an extent that he is asked to provide further contextual information even at points where he himself would not have considered it necessary. The official’s interventions are mostly requests for clarification and recapitulations for confirmation. In this respect, the applicant’s narrative of escape lends itself to being analysed as a complex blend of statements building up the argument on the one hand and contextual information on the other. I shall argue that the enormous contextual demand of the asylum account interferes with and in some cases even precludes smooth narration and clarity of argumentative structure and in this way tends to be at odds with the genre expectations. Even for me as a researcher – given the replicability conditions – it was not easy to abstract the applicant’s line of reasoning from the complex network of contextual information. Place serves as the main organizing tool of the account and in this way clashes with the time frames induced by the official. The applicant’s narrative of escape revolves around moving across different places, each of them connoted to particular events, people and experiences and hence crucial indexical and referential spaces. Still, as the analysis will show, despite its important function as an organizing tool, the applicant often has to manage with a rather undetermined notion of place. His argument can be outlined as follows: December 1999: Main problem that made him leave Cameroon: → Setting and provocation: the hoisting of the flag → Arrest at his compound → The cell → Event with boy → Army Camp Hospital Bamenda → Escape from the Army Camp Hospital → Arrest on the road → The cell → Event with politician → Bamenda General Hospital → Escape from Bamenda General Hospital → The boy who helped him contact his uncle in Tiko

Text Trajectories

35

→ Belgium

October 1992: Demonstration at the time of presidential elections (arrest) May 1994: Signature referendum (arrest) According to my schematic representation, the applicant’s account can be subdivided into a set of narrative events or episodes. This outline allows me to situate the selected extracts for analysis within the larger narrative of escape (the extracts are taken from the sections in italics).

Setting and provocation: the hoisting of the flag The applicant starts his narrative of escape with a clear setting of the events, i.e. exact reference to time (December 30, 1999) and place (Southern Cameroon). However, what starts off as the setting of his narration gets almost immediately interrupted by the official who – probably because of the difference between the applicant’s African English accent and his own Dutch English – picks up ‘Southern’ (pronounced as /suden/) in ‘Southern Cameroon’ as ‘sergeant’ (often pronounced as /s3:rgent/ in Dutch English, and this explains the similarity). This is the first of a long list of interruptions and requests for clarification and detail. On the basis of narrative analysis I will show how the applicant hardly gets the opportunity to proceed with his experiential account and how the official’s interventions considerably disturb the sequential order of the account, the gist of the applicant’s argument and his answer to the main question of the interview (turn 1): Extract 7 (1) I: so uurm Mr. Koulagna .. urm .. what happened in your country that make you leave it . can you tell me (2) AS: in uurm .. ninety urm ninety ninety nine .. December 30 ………..the Southern Cameroon (3) I: sergeant (4) AS: the southern Cameroon .. south south Cameroon (5) I: ah South Cameroon . yah (6) AS: they want to we want to hoist a flag …. in the Southern Cameroon region that is not urm urm not urm urm Bamenda and Biya (7) I: they wanted the the (8) AS: to hoist the flag .. (9) I: they wanted to become independent ..or (10) AS: yeah yeah we were struggling for that (11) I: yes (12) AS: yes so but that is the thing SCNC

36

Katrijn Maryns

(13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (19) (20) (21) (22) (23) (24) (25) (26) (27) (28) (29) (30) (31) (32) (33) (34) (35) (36) (37) (38) (39) (40)

I: ACNC AS: uhum … Southern Cameroon National Congress . I: A.. AS: S I: S CNC AS: uhum I: aha … so Southern AS: S I: Congress ……. AS: C .N.C .. Southern Cameroon National Congress I: Southern Cameroon National Congress …. so this is a party .. which …. oh AS: that is tha that is the organization which is fighting for … the interest of urm Anglophones .. I: the I interest of AS: Anglophones I: Anglophones .. AS: yah I: so people who talk English in Cameroon AS: in Cameroon .. is bilingual I: bilingual … French and urm English AS: English … I: so this is for the the the English speaking part of the population AS: yes I: uhum … at the south of Cameroon …………….. yes . so and the 30th of December 1999 this that’s CNC .. AS: yeah we want to hoist . we hoist a flag . the Southern Cameroon flag I: yes yes uhum AS: so we hoist it in the Anglophone zones I: uhum AS: that is Biya and Bamenda

The applicant starts his narrative of escape with the political event leading up to his arrest. With this account, instead of sketching the general political situation of Southern Cameroon, he talks about his personal involvement in the political life of his area. His emerging account displays some of the basic ingredients of event narration: the setting (time and place) and the stating of the core of the event (the hoisting of the Southern Cameroonian flag by the SCNC). Yet, the applicant cannot proceed with his account because the official interrupts him for clarification: the official apparently lacks linguistic resources (English and more particularly

Text Trajectories

37

African English proficiency) and epistemic resources (background knowledge of the social, cultural and political situation of Cameroon). Although the applicant has decided to start with a political event to explain his personal involvement, the official’s interventions for clarification push him in the direction of a more general account of the political situation in his country. In other words, whatever he intends to tell, the applicant first needs to explore what and how he can tell it, then on the spot has to adjust his explanatory strategy, all of which makes him change footing and disturbs the set-up of his narration. What starts off as an intervention for linguistic clarification soon requires an explanation of some basic aspects of the political landscape of Cameroon. The second intervention by the official for instance is initially also a matter of linguistic resources: the official is not familiar with the expression ‘to hoist a flag’ and therefore checks with the AS (turn 9: ‘they wanted to become independent, or…’). With this intervention, however, the official displays his lack of familiarity with the political situation of Cameroon and at the same time makes the applicant jump forward in his account: what started off as a well-organized account of an event now becomes a fragmented accumulation of facts (e.g. the confusion expressed in the piling-up of discourse markers in turn 12: “yes so but that is the thing SCNC”). A schematic representation of this short extract highlights the asymmetry between narrative statements (italics) and explanatory statements (roman): I: so uurm Mr. Koulagna .. urm .. what happened in your country that make you leave it .. can you tell me …. AS: in uurm .. ninety urm ninety ninety nine .. December 30 ………..the Southern Cameroon I: sergeant AS: the southern Cameroon .. South South Cameroon I: ah South Cameroon . yah AS: they want to we want to hoist a flag …. In the Southern Cameroon region that is not urm urm not urm urm Bamenda and Biya I: they wanted the the AS: to hoist the flag .. I: they wanted to become independent ..or As: yeah yeah we were struggling for that I: yes AS: yes so but that is the thing SCNC I: ACNC AS: uhum … Southern Cameroon National Congress .

38

Katrijn Maryns

I: A.. AS: S I: S CNC AS: uhum I: aha … so Southern AS: S I: Congress ……. AS: C .N.C .. Southern Cameroon National Congress I: Southern Cameroon National Congress …. so this is a party .. which…. oh As: that is tha that is the organization which is fighting for … the interest of urm Anglophones .. I: the I interest of AS: Anglophones I: Anglophones .. AS: yah I: so people who talk English in Cameroon AS: in Cameroon .. is bilingual I: bilingual … French and urm English AS: English … I: so this is for the the the English speaking part of the population AS: yes I: uhum … at the south of Cameroon …………….. yes . so and the 30th of December 1999 this that’s CNC .. AS: yeah we want to hoist . we hoist a flag . the Southern Cameroon flag I: yes yes uhum AS: so we hoist it in the Anglophone zones I: uhum AS: that is Biya and Bamenda

In this entire passage, the applicant gets the opportunity to make no more than two narrative statements. The 39 remaining lines represent the negotiation of contextual information. Both statements indeed imply a lot of contextual information. However, the applicant assumes a particular proficiency in English and a particular preknowledge of the political situation in Cameroon that apparently clashes with the official’s actual linguistic and epistemic resources. Apart from the fact that the official has problems with particular English words and expressions, also the rudiments of sociopolitical life in Cameroon need to be made explicit: an important political party such as the SCNC, the fact that Cameroon is bilingual FrenchEnglish and that it has an English minority. Being granted the opportunity to perform is a fundamental condition for successful narration. What the

Text Trajectories

39

analysis of this extract makes clear, however, is that although this basic condition is satisfied here, the pretextual clash of linguistic, genre-related and epistemic contexts grows to such an extent that interactional remedy inevitably affects narrative and explanatory structure.

The applicant’s arrest at his compound The next transcript represents the applicant’s detailed account of how he got arrested for the first time. The particular pattern of information exchange that can be observed within the boundaries of this sub-narrative in fact serves as a model for the entire narrative of escape. It again clearly displays the above described tension between experiential and institutional contextualization demands: whereas the applicant needs to provide particular contextual information in order to fill the pretextual gap between his socio-culturally and politically ‘placed’ experiences on the one hand and the official’s contextual background on the other, the official needs to live up to particular institutional criteria of textuality. The entire subnarrative can be subdivided into episodes of narration on the one hand and interventions for clarification and bureaucratic framing on the other. For the sake of the analysis, I have split up the transcript into separate passages reflecting this pattern of narration and intervention. Analysis of the interventions is embedded in the transcript itself, the narrative episodes will be analysed under heading (b) dealing with the applicant’s experiential narration. Extract 8 1. Experiential narration: (1) AS: soo in the morning around urm .. 4. 30 early in the morning am .. early in the morning .. so …. my dog start barking …. (2) I: yes (3) AS: my dog .. (4) I: uhum (5) AS: the name of the dog is Jack (6) I: Jack (7) AS: yes … (8) I: ok (9) AS: he start barking . so . when the dog start barking . (10) I: uhum (11) AS: I hear a voice of a burglar coming 2. Multi-tasking: (12) I: uhum ……((I is writing down))…………………… uhum and

40

Katrijn Maryns

At this point in the interaction, the official is trying to write down the information as he is listening. As the applicant notices this, he interrupts his narration, probably to give the official the chance to concentrate on the narrative. Despite the official’s backchannelling intervention (‘uhum’) – showing that he keeps pace with the narrative – the applicant waits for an explicit metapragmatic instruction to continue with the narration (‘uhum and’). The applicant here apparently realizes that this interjection needs to be interpreted as a politeness marker rather than an assent to continue. 3. Resuming experiential narration: (13) AS: xx I hear the dog make another ‘wang’ and then dog stop . I don’t know urm what happened (14) I: no (15) AS: I don’t 4. Intervention for recapitulation/ confirmation (16) I: so the the dog stopped with making noise (17) AS: yes .. those ma the last noise I heard the dog make ‘wang’ (18) I: ‘wang’ (19) AS: yes … just crying . and then stopped (20) I: yes …………… 5. Resuming experiential narration (21) AS: then later on I hear on the door .. boom boom boom (22) I: uhum ……………. yes . and then … (23) AS: then urm my wife my wife get up … (24) I: uhum (25) AS: I get I get up first … so then . finally my wife get on I said maybe xx then I go down .. go down like this ((shows)) (26) I: uhum (27) AS: it happened that they’re shooting bullet . they (should not get in our house) (28) I: uhum (29) AS: uhum .. then as .urm my wife go down like that .. then they say that xxxxx .. then I (30) I: and then they (31) AS: they say that if they no open the door (32) I: yes (33) AS: they would (broke me down) (34) I: they will break it yeah (35) AS: I aks is who .. they say let me open (36) I: yes

Text Trajectories

(37) (38) (39) (40) (41)

41

AS: I aks is who .. don’t want to hear paang … it is the owner of the gun.. I: uhum AS: as it hit the door .. the door come out ..out xxxxx I: yeah … AS: as this door coming out I was really inside the parlour

6. Intervention for clarification: (42) I: yeah … inside the .. (43) AS: I’ve really left the room . I’ve come inside the parlour now … (44) I: urm the the (45) AS: I left the room .. (46) I: de gang yes yes (47) AS: I’ve left the room . there (48) I: yeah yeah yeah ok The official again displays a lack of linguistic resources: he is not familiar with the meaning of the word ‘parlour’. Particularly in an African context, the ‘parlour’ serves not merely as a sitting-room to host or receive people, but is used as a ‘living-room’ in a more general sense: as there are many relatives living together in the same house, they have separate rooms, but actually ‘live’ in the parlour. The official however erroneously interprets the word as ‘corridor’. Within the boundaries of this interview, such a misunderstanding is quite unproblematic. Given the importance of detail, and the possibility to be confronted with this ‘inconsistency’ in the following interviews however, small mistakes like these may take on different dimensions in the entextualization process. 7. Resuming experiential narration: (49) AS: and then come inside the parlour (50) I: yes (51) AS: immediately I come inside I wanted to reach inside the parlour .. they ‘ve already rehit the door baang (52) I: yes (53) AS: as they hit the door . I don’t see xx because I’m xxx I tell my wife that she not come she should not come out 8. Intervention for bureaucratic framing: (54) I: no .. one moment I’m going to write it down ok (55) AS: ok (56) I: uuuuurm ………………………. so and then . you went like this .. to avoid any

42

Katrijn Maryns

(57) (58) (59) (60) (61) (62) (63) (64) (65) (66) (67) (68) (69) (70)

AS: no it’s my wife that . I told her to went like that I: ah yes AS: I was coming off .. because they said that if we did not open .. they will broke in I: yeah AS: so as I (want to) I had asked . whether is who… I: so AS: if I: you heard the people saying who were banging the door if you don’t open the door AS: no open . yes I: we will break it AS: broke it . yes … I: uhum AS: yes … ……………………………………………………… I: yes so they broke the door

In order to avoid multi-tasking, the official wishes to interrupt the narration for written record-taking. Yet before he actually starts to write down the relevant information, the official decides to recapitulate what the applicant has said so far. The applicant confirms and qualifies when necessary. The official then takes his time to fill in his report and moves on with a conclusive ‘so they broke the door’, indicating that the applicant may continue with the narration. 9. Resuming experiential narration (71) AS: immediately I was coming inside the parlour . I thus heard the door paang (72) I: yes (73) AS: the door just cut bang (74) I: yes (75) AS: as the door cut I say I see I saw a gun I go like this ((puts arms in the air, very theatrical)) (76) I: yes (77) AS: as I tell xxxxx had so many of the xxx (78) I: uhum (79) AS: then I discovered that I’m really shaking 10. Intervention for clarification (80) I: military people (81) AS: yeah yeah that is the gendarm and thee gendarm the gendarmes the gendarmes

Text Trajectories

(82)

(83) (84)

43

I: yes . one moment please hen …. urm ..................................... ..………………………………uhum .. so they broke the door you saw this gun you saw it were . it were military people AS: urm gendarmes gendarmes I: uhum …. ok .. what happened then ……

The problem here is that the official interprets ‘that I’m really shaking’ as ‘that are military people’. The similarity may not be obvious in this written transcription, yet it is in actual speech: because the applicant speaks so fast, he stresses the word ‘really’ and almost swallows the word ‘shaking’. Word boundaries are therefore very difficult to draw so that ‘’m really’ is easily interpreted as ‘military’. This misunderstanding gives rise to a recurring point of discussion, viz. the socio-political relevance of the distinction between ‘military’, ‘police’ and ‘gendarmes’ for the applicant versus the generalization of these notions by the official. The applicant reacts against the official’s generalization of the facts: particular distinctions need to be made as they are socio-politically relevant in his home country. 11. Resuming experiential narration (85) AS: so and then when they when they came in now they fell on me in ah they fell on me ah the first one kick me .. I say what is wrong.. (86) I: uhum … (87) AS: then I take my own my wife asked me what what . I say is gendarmes (88) I: uhum (89) AS: and my wife just started cry and I tell her no not that I no come uuurm inside the parlour .. she come urm inside the parlour they slap her . (90) I: yes (91) AS: I tell her to keep quiet because she was ill with urm the last child the small child on her three months of due xxx (92) I: yes (93) AS: the child has been delivered the . twentyy twenty twenty seventh 1999 (94) I: yes (95) AS: she was three (96) ((SIDE B: )) (97) AS: doubt (98) I: yes (99) AS: I don’t know whether my SDF card is there my SCNC card . or what I don I don’t know … even with my medical documents I was xxx I don’t know what xxx

44

Katrijn Maryns

12. Intervention for recapitulation/ confirmation (100) I: yes so . uuurm . those military m men came in …. they beat you .. they also beat your wife (101) AS: they have . give her a slap (102) I: and they urm searched = After a long narrative passage such as the one in episode 9, the official needs to intervene in order to recapitulate. It is striking that, despite the applicant’s attempts to explain that he was arrested by gendarmes, the official still talks about ‘military men’. 13. Resuming experiential narration (103) AS: yeah very fast very fast .. they don’t waste time very fast they did it very fast . very fast …. 14. Intervention for recapitulation (104) I: so they searched the house and wrecked it at the same time .. (105) AS: yes (106) I: the the they did it very urm very violently (107) AS: fast ……… very fast (108) I: and violently ……. (109) AS: violently . because my children up . there’s no even hear … my neighbours no even hear .. xxxx (110) I: ah yeah they did (111) AS: after the dining room .. you get the my my children the upper room (112) I: aha (113) AS: they not even hear (114) I: no (115) AS: no (116) I: so it was very quick (117) AS: very very fast ……………………………………….. (118) I: ok so . they searched the house very quickly and what’s what happened then This passage again illustrates the importance of detail and the amount of performance this gives rise to. 15. Resuming experiential narration (119) AS: then they took me along 16. Intervention for more information (120) I: uhum ……….. did you know why or did they tell you why

Text Trajectories

45

(121) AS: no no . I by that I don’t I don’t even know wha what is taking place (122) I: uhum (123) AS: I don’t know what is taking place by then (124) I: yes (125) AS: uhum ………………. (126) I: ok they took you . with them .. and then

It is striking that the applicant here needs to make a distinction between narrated and narrative time. The applicant’s displacement in time and space considerably complicates the relation between narrated and narrative perspective in his experiential narration. Yet, because the official clearly formulates his question in the past tense, there is no need to reflect explicitly upon the contrast between narrated time (by then he did not know) and narrative time (by now he does know). The applicant literally sticks to the question and adopts the perspective of the narrated time: at the time when he got arrested, he did not know what was happening and why it was happening. Although he does not have the required linguistic resources to express past tense here, the time indication ‘by then’ clarifies his position. The applicant just provides the information literally asked for and therefore keeps silent about what he knows at the moment of speaking. The question is, however, whether the official realizes that the perspective of narrated versus narrative time makes a difference here. 17. Resuming experiential narration (127) AS: when they sent me inside a vehicle .. (128) I: yes (129) AS: (one part) of the vehicle looks like a container (130) I: yes (131) AS: behind us (132) I: uhum (133) AS: yeah when I was going inside I quite remember that the very xxxx and caught me in my x urm my job site .. at my business place .. they call it a urm urm secret urm gendarmerie corps (134) I: yes (135) AS: that ‘s urm that is a sec secret gendarmerie corps (136) I: so so . while you were getting into their car (137) AS: yes. then I know that it’s a secret gendarmerie corps corps urm vehicle … 18. Intervention for clarification (138) I: urm one moment hen I don’t . understand very well … so they

46

Katrijn Maryns

(139) (140) (141) (142) (143) (144) (145) (146) (147) (148) (149) (150) (151) (152) (153)

were …. urm getting you int into their vehicle hen .. and then you saw .. a secret agent AS: no I: no? AS: I saw the vehicle that is the vehicle of that urm secret gendarmerie corps I: ah you saw that . on the vehicle was written that it was from the sec secret AS: no it’s not written I: ah AS: the vehicle .. I saw then that that vehicle is the vehicle of the secret gendarmerie I: aah yeah AS: corps .. so this people they come and take me the secret gendarmerie corps I: yeah ok you recognized the vehicle as a vehicle AS: the secret I: from from the secret gendarmerie AS: gendarmerie corps . yeah I: ok …… AS: secret gendarmerie corps ………………………….. ok

At this point in the narrated time, the applicant starts to realize that it is an operation organized by the secret gendarmerie corps (‘then I know that it is a secret gendarmerie corps vehicle’). He knows this because he recognizes the vehicle as a vehicle of the secret gendarmerie. The interviewer, however, does not understand what makes him identify the incident as such (‘then you saw a secret agent’). He even guesses that it was because ‘secret gendarmerie’ was written on the vehicle. The applicant again and again argues that he saw their vehicle, yet without providing any detail about what it was exactly that made him identify the vehicle as such. Eventually, the interviewer has to content himself with this information. 19. Resuming experiential narration (154) AS: urm they they don’t ask me to go inside gently tho those push me with force (155) I: uhum ……….. ok ……… (156) AS: so I want to ask them what they beat me with this urm urm this type of urm poli gendarmes (gun) which is rubber (157) I: yes (158) AS: which a stick like this I don’t know the one here the one here that have it too

Text Trajectories

47

(159) I: yes urm they have it over here yes that’s a .. (160) AS: and the do the wo the man whip me on my back I don’t rush and I I’ll go inside very fast ..not to x to to (161) I: so you were hit with those . sticks on your back

20. Multi-tasking: (162) AS: yes ………………………………….. ((coughs)) ……… (163) I: ok . yes Cf. part 2. 21. Resuming experiential narration (164) AS: when I enter I saw different people sleeping on thee the on the floor (165) I: there were. different people in the vehicle (166) AS: inside yeah on the on the floor .. x in the vehicle it’s dark the one I was going inside (167) I: uhum (168) AS: urm because .. my security light was off … 22. Intervention for clarification (169) I: security light? (170) AS: security xx .. urm not not from my from (171) I: from your house (172) AS: not broken .. it was off .. so .. that’s why I saw the vehicle . so when I enter the vehicle the vehicle is dark now inside 23. Resuming experiential narration (173) so everybody was lying down flat (174) I: uhum (175) AS: they tell me to lie down flat (176) I: uhum (177) AS: I also do what they said xx I lie down flat .. they take their legs and legs and keep it on top of my head .. 24. Intervention for clarification (178) I: pardon (179) AS: they take their LEGS. (180) I: yes (181) AS: put it on top of my head .. (182) I: you legs (183) AS: their leg (184) I: top of your head

48

Katrijn Maryns

(185) AS: yes (186) I: yes?

25. Resuming experiential narration (187) AS: uum . I just put it down I no shake I just put my head down (188) I: yes (189) AS: quietly .. there’s no shout …. xxx that the neighbour should hear (190) I: aha (191) AS: we drop off (192) I: yes (193) AS: to unknown uurm unknown destination I don’t know whether we were going xx I never x ……….. ……. (194) I: yes so (195) AS: so there in the cell ….. In this last piece of experiential narration making up the sub-narrative of his arrest, the applicant explains how he got transported to an unknown destination. The event of being displaced in the narrated time marks off the next episode of his narration, it marks off the changeover between the sub-narrative of arrest and the sub-narrative of detention in the cell. In other words, the narrated experience of displacement turns into an organizing element of the narration itself. If we now turn to the discussion of the applicant’s share in the subnarrative of his arrest, it becomes clear that there are a number of recurring and highly significant linguistic-narrative features that shape the account. I shall analyse these features by means of a detailed analysis of the opening of his sub-narrative (i.e. episode 1-3, leaving out the instance of multi-tasking).5 First, it should be noted once more that, unlike some of the interviews that will be discussed in the chapters to follow, this is one of the few interviews in which the applicant is at least given the chance to narrate. Although he gets interrupted several times throughout the entire sub-narrative, the applicant is given the opportunity to produce fairly long pieces of uninterrupted experiential narration. What is so important about these passages is that they show how, despite the fact that the applicant has to express himself in his second language (his first language being

5

The analysis in this section is based on a paper that I have written together with Jan Blommaert on the issue of narrative shifting and mixing within an intrinsically mixed speaker’s repertoire (Maryns and Blommaert 2001).

Text Trajectories

49

‘Meta’), he succeeds in activating an enormous wealth of linguistic, narrative and paralinguistic resources in meaningful ways. Micro-analysis of this piece of narration illustrates the applicant’s “unpredictably mobile potential for identity work” (Rampton 1999:501): his sophisticated repertoire of linguistic, narrative and paralinguistic variables, combined with his ability to shift between these variables in functional ways, all of which indexes important moves at the level of narrative structuring, and all of which is indexical of the claim he wants to make as a refugee. What follows is an ethnopoetic re-transcription of the extract (cf. retranscription of extract 4). In the ethnopoetic transcript I try to structure the account into a number of narrative units – once more leaving out the official’s backchannelling interventions – on the basis of and highlighting particular formal characteristics. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (19) (20) (21) (22) (23) (24) (25) (26) (27) (28)

1. Setting: *so in the *morning a*round urm .. *four thirty *early in the *morning *am .. *early in the *morning .. 2. Event narrative: *so …. my *dog start *barking …. my *dog .. the *name of the *dog is *Jack *Jack he *start *barking . *so . when the *dog start *barking . I *hear a *voice of a *burglar *coming xx I hear the *dog make another *wang and *then *dog *stop . 3. Aside: I *don’t know whether *what happened I don’t .. 4. Event narrative: *then *later on I *hear on the *door .. *boom boom boom *then urm my *wife my *wife get up … I get I get up *first … *finally my *wife get *out I said *maybe (they are ten) and then I then I *go down .. *go down like *this ((shows)) 5. Aside: it happened that they ‘re shooting bullet .

50

Katrijn Maryns

(29) (30) (31) (32) (33) (34) (35) (36) (37) (38) (39) (40) (41) (42) (43) (44) (45) (46) (47) (48) (49) (50) (51) (52)

they should not get any of us 6. Event narrative: *then as .urm my *wife *go down like *that .. *then they *said I xxxxx.. *then I they *said that if they *no open the *door they would *broke me down …. I *aks is *who .. they *say *let me *open I *aks is *who.. 7. Aside: *don’t *want to *hear *paang … I *think he ‘s the *owner of the *gun.. 8. Event narrative: *as it *hit the *door .. the *door come *out ..out xxxxx 9. Setting: as this *door (come) *out I was *really *inside the *parlour

A first step in the analysis is to identify instances of microshifting across a repertoire of linguistic, narrative and paralinguistic variables. As will be shown, various forms of fusion and micro-shifting at different levels are interwoven in the narrative, generating complex patterns of discursive shaping of experience. All of this happens in ‘packages’ which can be identified as forms of ‘fusion’. First, I shall have a closer look at different aspects of fusion in the extract: the grammatical repertoire, the prosodic repertoire, and the paralinguistic repertoire of the applicant. Then I will systematically correlate instances of shifting and switching with thematic patterning in the narrative. Syntactic fusion On the basis of grammatical features, the repertoire used by the applicant can be described as a continuum of ‘African Englishes’, ranging from less to more ‘Africanized’ varieties of English. What can be distinguished as a general pattern of distribution and ‘outspokenness’ of particular varieties however, appears not to be at random here. The extract displays a

Text Trajectories

51

clear correlation between the distribution of grammatical markers and particular units in the narrative: (a) event narration: the applicant uses a more Africanized variety of English, i.e. uninflected verb forms (line 8: ‘my dog start barking’, line 21: ‘my wife get up’); (b) asides: the applicant uses a more ‘standard’ variety of African English and expresses grammatical function through verb inflection (line 17: ‘I don’t know what happened’; line 44: ‘I think he’s the owner of a gun’). Even within the event narration itself, the applicant switches from inflected verb forms for reporting speech (line 24 ‘I said’, line 34 ‘they said’) to uninflected pidginized forms (line 35: ‘they said that if they no open the door’). This pattern of grammatical distribution contributes to the structuring of the narrative: it marks off passages of event narration told in the historic present (indexed through the more ‘Africanized’ variety of English, using the stem of the verbs) from passages of personal reflection (indexed through inflected verb forms). A bit further in the narration however, the applicant gives up the distinction between more and less ‘Africanized’ varieties on his continuum of African Englishes and breaks through into full performance: the more deeply he enters into the narrated events, the more he orients himself to the narrated place and this orientation is also linguistically marked. Instances of total immersion in the event correlate with switches to what is probably the applicant’s local variety of English, viz. a local deeply ‘Africanized’ English that he uses in the home context. The utterance ‘I aks is who’ (line 40) displays phonetic as well as grammatical features of African English: (a) metathesis in the word ‘aks’ and (b) deletion of ‘it’ as well as a change of word order in ‘is who’ (‘it is who’/ ‘who is it’). So we see a kind of grammatical iconicity of speech variety, place and perspective, all of which reveals crucial information about the applicant’s refugee identity: –

–

for passages dealing with the narration of the events, the applicant literally ‘speaks from’ the narrated place, using a more Africanized variety of English and narrating in the historic present, all of which iconisizes the active presence of the events in the applicant’s mind; the use of inflected forms marks the expression of what was going on in his mind at the time when he got arrested, i.e. the expression of a part of his experience that he apparently becomes totally conscious of in retrospect. It indexes the persistence of his personal involvement and fear at the time of narrating.

Performance is indispensable for expressing the core of his problem: it reveals his persistent fear of personal persecution in the home country

52

Katrijn Maryns

and at the same time underscores the concrete reality and the veracity of the events. Prosodic fusion The grammatical features of fusion can be corroborated with prosodic ones. According to Roach (1991: 86) prominence is determined by four different factors: loudness, length of syllables, pitch movement or tone (cf. low- and high- pitched notes), and quality of sounds (i.e. contrasts with background sounds). On the basis of stress placement and intonation, the speaker can be identified as a prototypical African English user, one of the characteristic features being shifting of primary stress to the last syllable and shifting tonic stress to the final syllable of the utterance. But prominence also serves crucial stylistic and explanatory functions in the narrative. First, it can mark narrative units. The transition between the first unit (setting) and the second one (event narration) is marked by a strongly high-pitched discourse marker ‘SO’, following a pause and contrasting with the relatively low-pitched previous utterances. However, even within the boundaries of this first passage, prosody serves the important function of emphasizing particular details. With respect to content, the narrator produces a statement on time. This statement however is rephrased three times adding accuracy (‘around four thirty’, ‘am’) and emphasis (‘early in the morning’). In each of the reformulations, the topical information is clearly marked by high pitch, all of which suggests the importance of this particular detail in the narration. Prosody not merely underscores the importance of detail in the applicant’s narrative − cf. also line 9: the applicant becomes really funny in his attempt to anticipate the requirement of detail (names and dates), providing the name of his dog ‘Jack’! − it also gives shape to various degrees of performance. A relatively lowpitched pattern can be observed in the ‘aside’-parts of the sub-narrative. The event narration on the other hand is marked by some outspoken performance elements: – – – –

onomatopoeia (‘wang’, ‘pang’, ‘boom boom boom’) direct speech (‘let me open’, ‘is who?’) parallelisms: (‘the name of the dog is Jack . Jack’, ‘I aks is who… I aks is who’) highly detailed description of the action (‘the dog start barking’ → ‘I hear a voice of a burglar coming’ → ‘I hear the dog make another wang’ → ‘then the dog stop’ / ‘my wife get up’ → ‘I get up first’ → ‘then my wife get out’)

The applicant’s prosodic repertoire appears to be part of a particular

Text Trajectories

53

pattern. It displays correlations between the distribution of prosodic features and narrative units. Intonational and metrical fusion Again, and corroborating earlier patterns, we see that the distribution of intonational and metrical features across narrative units is not random. Just like prosody, also metre and intonation give shape to particular modes of performance. As to the intonation, the first half of the episode can be characterized by a quite regular pattern of shifting between relatively unmarked intonation contours for the asides and intonational variation for the event narration. Line 38, however, marks a break into performance, viz. at the point in the narrative where the applicant immediately addresses the gendarmes. The entire passage, up to the setting of the next episode, is narrated with strongly marked intonation contours that even extend to the ‘asides’ (onomatopoeia in the asides). A comparable pattern can be seen in the metrical repertoire of the applicant. As mentioned before, the applicant often speaks very fast and is therefore hard to understand. In this episode, however, the applicant speaks remarkably more slowly in the detailed passages of event narration. It is as if he really takes his time to narrate this crucial passage in his account. Still, there is a noticeable contrast in pace between his description of thoughts and experience (asides) on the one hand and his description of the event on the other: speed increases considerably when the applicant shifts into commentary. In short, the applicant mobilizes particular syntactic, prosodic, intonational and metrical variables in functional ways. Micro-shifting allows him to mark passages as instances of event narration or as affectively loaded asides, all of which provides important epistemic and affective information. The syntactic, prosodic, intonational and metrical features appear to be part of general shifting patterns in the narrative, in which thematic transitions (between setting and event, between event and aside) go hand in hand with shifts in preference for or dominance of linguistic codes (more and less ‘Africanized’ English forms) and with prosodic, intonational and metrical features or modes. Taken together, these packages of deeply ‘fused’ features shape the story and provide crucial contextual information.

The sub-narrative of detention in the cell The next extract is taken from the applicant’s first sub-narrative of detention in the cell. The applicant describes the terrible conditions of his imprisonment. He explains how isolation in the cell blurs the perception of time and space, all of which again highlights the enormous gap between

54

Katrijn Maryns

the institutional requirement of exactness and detail on the one hand and the vagueness and indeterminateness of the refugee experience on the other. Extract 9 (1) AS: so there in the cell ….. it’s not the cell that you are seeing light it is no .. it is no the cell that I know whether today is Monday or Tuesday . it is not the cell where I .. there is no light no ventilation xx only inside sleep on the bare floor .. so that had d . (2) I: yes .. (3) AS: serious torture (4) I: torture yes (5) AS: I I remove my dress and you see xx (6) I: yeah yah .. but they brought you somewhere . first (7) AS: hen (8) I: they brought you somewhere (9) AS: no (10) I: no (11) AS: from my house (12) I: yes . (13) AS: straight (14) I: yes . but from your house . you were pushed into the thiss vehicle (15) AS: ye yes .. (16) I: and this vehicle drove off (17) AS: (it quit) .. to unknown dest (18) I: unknown destination (19) AS: yes (20) I: there you got off …. (21) AS: to the unknown destination find myself xxxxxxxx of theee the the the the cell .. you are coming . from the vehicle and xx (22) I: yes yes so you were put into a cell (23) AS: yes (24) I: uhum ……. and there you were … tortured (25) AS: what well seriously .. (26) I: yes (27) AS: seriously (28) I: ho . I know it must I know it it must be difficult for you but can you can you give an example of of what they did to you (29) AS: they torture ….. you see my (life) like this hen is good so . maybe don’t xxxx but I want to tell the fact because … I was x like this .. and if this is my x.. you take urm this one .. this chair is too high .. there ‘s a chair which is . shorter than this . they will take it

Text Trajectories

(30) (31)

(32)

55

… … ….xxxx …………… …………… can I put it here I: yeah yeah no problem .. AS: ok they will put their leg . your leg you will sit like this … this …. they will push the chair like this that is xxxxxxx fast like this ..xx down like this.. then laying on that leg you are crying .. beating you anyhow … (your) body or they beat who they don’t care .. beat you very well ……..can I move my belt and show it I: pardon

In extract 8 it could be seen that the applicant finishes the sub-narrative of his arrest by stating that he was brought to an unknown destination. He then continues his account with his experiences in the cell. The official, however, interrupts the applicant because he cannot establish the link between the ‘unknown destination’ and the ‘cell’ and suggests that he was brought to yet another (unknown) place first before he entered the cell (known). The tension between knowing and not knowing, however, is a matter of time rather than place, and more particularly of the tension between narrated and narrative time. The applicant tries to provide a chronological account. In his attempt to do so however, he not only aims to stick to a chronological presentation of the events but also to the chronological construction of his line of thought: no matter what his actual knowledge is at the time of narrating, the applicant decides to stick to his narrated state of mind. In Gricean terms, clarity of mode (chronology) is given priority over the quantity maxim: although he is supposed to tell everything he knows in the narrative time, the applicant here adopts his state of knowledge in the narrated time. The applicant flouts a maxim (quantity) in order to live up to another one (mode). It should be noted, however, that this tension between the Gricean maxims may as well affect the veracity of the account: clarity of expression may be at the expense not only of the quantity but also of the quality of the information provided. After all, a motivated selection of information by the applicant may as well be interpreted as an attempt to withhold information, all of which may have serious consequences for the assessment of the case. The official then continues to ask for some more details about the torture. What follows is a confused account of the torture he became victim of. The applicant is at pains trying to provide details about the maltreatment and asks the official permission to simply act out what had been done to him rather than explaining it with words. The applicant eventually asks permission to show his scars, the ultimate proof of the maltreatment. At this point however, probably because of the sensitive subject of narration, the applicant leaves behind the chronological organization of his

56

Katrijn Maryns

account and loses himself in a description of the tortures he became victim of. The demand for detail about the torture accumulates into a description of different instances of maltreatment that are topically rather than chronologically related: Extract 10 (1) I: yes ok.. uhum .. ((coughs)) …………………… the torture was urm .. mostly beating (2) AS: beat or. xx yeah in my back ((high intonation)) .. things like that (3) I: uhum (4) AS: xxxxxxxx (5) I: yes ok you can .. put ((laughs)) your trousers back on............. ……………….. (6) AS: ((very difficult to understand)) they have small xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx is unbearable …. there they use urm what I xxx hit my head so the head was xxxxx . that one happened xx when the one happened .. that one no happen at . December it happened . with the first presidential election at SDF . but I xx this one (7) I: this will this will will this happened later (8) AS: that this that x this one (9) I: yeah ok ok … (10) AS: because this is the one that made me xxx (11) I: yes (12) AS: they had first tortured (13) I: ah du so they were uuurm . something happened previously x to to all this (14) AS: yes …. xxx yes that’s I (15) I: but first we’ll we’ll finish this ok that’s ok……………… ………………………… …………………… ((coughs)) ……… …………….. ((papers)) so you were in the cell you were being tortured you were . handcupped uurm on your ankles (16) AS: no … the handcuff happened … I will tell you this the the trace of the handcuff (17) I: yeah but first we ‘re gonna finish this (18) AS: yes we first finish the torture (19) I: yeah (20) AS: the handcuff happened when I I I run .. (21) I: so afterwards (22) AS: they . catch me . (23) I: yes .. (24) AS: brought me back

Text Trajectories

(25) (26) (27) (28) (29)

57

I: yes .. but … now you are here you are in the cell hen AS: yes I: you are they have tied you they torture you AS: no by then in the cell not not tied not tied then I: oh yeah ok .. ok

As soon as the official starts to realize that the applicant no longer sticks to the chronological presentation of the events (turn 13: ‘something happened previously to all this’), he interrupts in order to structure the information (turn 15: ‘first we will finish this’). The official, however, in his attempt to recapitulate the first incident of torture in the cell, mixes up with an incident that comes later in the account, all of which again leads the applicant to jump forward in his experiential narrative. Over and over again, the official interrupts the applicant and asks him to stick to what happened in the cell (turn 17: ‘yeah but first we’re gonna finish this’, turn 25: ‘yes, but now you are here in the cell hen’), and over and over again, the official ‘s recapitulations require yet new elaborations that are topically relevant but chronologically out of order.

The event with the boy in the cell In the following fragment, the applicant’s general reference to time (‘turn 2: ‘for all that time’) triggers off a question about exact time reference (turn 3: how long were you inside the cell’). Extract 11 (1) I: yes and then what happened .. (2) AS: so for all that time .. (3) I: wh how long . were you in the inside the cell .. (4) AS: I’ve been there for … from uurm July seven that is (5) I: January (6) AS: urm January …….. January urm urm seven 2000 till the th till around July July that I was sick so much .. one body one boy died .. (7) I: July 2000 (8) AS: hu yeah . July 2000…. (9) I: so you were in inside the cell until July 2000 (10) AS: 2000 yes .. (11) I: uuurm (12) AS: one boy died (13) I: because of . sickness (14) AS: it was terrible … one boy died so … xxx and remove the cuffs ….. (15) I: so and you were also very sick at that time

58

Katrijn Maryns

(16) (17) (18)

AS: it was terrible I: and what kind of disease AS: urm uuurm what happened is . I had a problem with my head then they torture …. these these are medicine …

Time is very hard to define for the applicant and therefore he has to reconstruct the identifiable events marking off his period of detention. Where the condition of being a refugee blurs exact notions of time and place, the applicant has to fall back on explicit contextualization of the facts. In other words, interactional contextualization serves as the only tool available to provide an answer to the question. A crucial event that took place in the cell suddenly changed his seemingly immutable condition of isolation and suffering: because of the terrible living conditions in the cell, many prisoners got ill. Still, nothing was done about this, until a boy died in the cell. This event led to the transfer of many of the diseased prisoners to a military hospital. On the basis of this crucial event, the applicant is able to reconstruct the period during which he was kept a prisoner in the cell. The applicant however is not supposed to provide the entire contextual network on the basis of which he can reconstruct his period of detention. It is also striking that the official does not respond to the shocking event that a boy died in the cell, but links up with his previous turn, viz. his request for exact timing. What seems to count for the official is the practical use of the event as a point of reference, nothing more. The applicant hesitantly repeats the official but then a few turns later comes back to the fact that a boy died, probably suggesting that this is a crucial event that needs to be addressed.

The sub-narrative of escape from the Army Camp Hospital The applicant tries to reconstruct the trajectory of his escape. The entire passage revolves around place and displacement, the transfer from one place to another. What occupies a central place in the trajectory is what the applicant refers to as the ‘park’, i.e. one of the places where a basic form of local (national) transport is being organized. Public transport in many African countries is the business of privately run car, bus and taxi services: each town or city has a particular location – often central, close to the marketplace – where taxis for local passenger traffic – in Frenchspeaking countries called ‘taxi brousse’ (bush taxi) – are ‘stationed’. Whenever one wants to travel to a particular place in the country, one can go to the ‘vehicle park’ and try to find a car, bus or taxi that goes in that direction. The ‘vehicle park’ – let me just use this term here – is a typically African concept that has no equivalent with exactly the same function in

Text Trajectories

59

Europe. It is a socio-culturally anchored and therefore deeply contextualized notion that needs a lot of explicitation in bureaucratic encounters such as asylum application interviews. At first, however, the applicant is apparently not aware of the complex package of culturally anchored information embedded in this notion. Extract 12 (1) I: you . .. escaped from (2) AS: yes (3) I: from the hospital (4) AS: yeah from the hospital … (5) I: and you got caught .. (6) AS: hen? (7) I: you got caught again (8) AS: go the (9) I: they they they caught you (10) AS: well yes no when I escaped like that . they no caught me by then .. I went (directly) becau when I was going I going down you are going down you enter into the park . park where there are a lot of vehicles park park (11) I: park (12) AS: yeah where they are carrying people passengers (13) I: yes (14) AS: they are run in Bamenda in the night going to to to Allay Yaoundé Cumba (15) I: uhum (16) AS: so I wanted to go and meet my uncle in Cumba (17) I: yes . so you wanted to go to your uncle (18) AS: yes .. so most of that drivers they know me they xxx they know my store ..I’m dealing with tyres I’m dealing with urm motor vehicle so I met them (19) I: yes (20) AS: so by then I was xx (21) I: yes (22) AS: I was xxx (23) I: uhum (24) AS: cause urm in the hospital they they the military people they want to bring they would give me one trouser (25) I: yes (26) AS: and white shirt (27) I: yes (28) AS: xxxxxxxxxx

60

Katrijn Maryns

(29) (30) (31) (32) (33) (34) (35) (36) (37) (38) (39) (40) (41) (42) (43) (44) (45) (46) (47) (48) (49) (50) (51) (52) (53) (54) (55)

I: yes so so you escaped from the hospital and AS: go to the park Aquin park Aquin park … I: the park yes AS: the park Anquin …because that’s where my business is . Aquin park I: yes AS: Aquin Park I: so .. you went to your business AS: no no I: no AS: it’s in the night .. Aquin Park .. I: it’s night AS: the park is xxxx I: but I don’t understand Kwen park . what what is AS: they park .. they park … xxxx vehicle park there and then carry passengers I: a bus a bus stop AS: bus stop good bus stop .. but we call it park I: you call it park AS: yeah I: but there were a lot of buses there AS: yeah so many I: who drive to all of the country AS: all of the country all of xx I: so and that is the place where you went AS: I go well I reached there I: yes AS: I hide myself and I call one driver that was going to Douala I: yes

As soon as the applicant starts to realize that there is a lot that needs to be explained before he can move on with his account, bits of context gradually come to the fore: – – – – –

when you are going down from the hospital you enter into the park (turn 10) the park where all the vehicles are (turn 10) the park where they are carrying people passengers (turn 12) the park where they leave Bamenda in the night to different places in the country (turn 14) this is where I was looking for transport to go to my uncle in Cumba (turn 16)

Text Trajectories

– – –

61

most of the drivers there know me (my store): I’m dealing with tyres so I met them before (turn 18) it was Aquin park (turn 30) that’s is where my business is (turn 32)

If we now bring all this information together, his account turns into a very logical and consistent one: the fact that the park was near the hospital, the fact that he was familiar with the car business and that this was the most obvious means for local (national) transport. Yet, the information is presented in this fragmentary way, probably due to the fact that it is directed towards a hearer who is not familiar with the local organization of public transport in Cameroon. The official suggests the word ‘bus stop’, a notion the applicant has to content himself with in the absence of any better equivalent. Yet by using this term in the report, a great deal of the culturally relevant connotation and detail gets lost. Consistency is considered one of the basic qualities of an institutionally acceptable account. The question is, however, to what extent the institutional method thwarts its proper objectives. Institutional reports and hearings are permeated by intrinsic and formal inconsistencies and one of the main sources of inconsistency is the problematic tension between produced and required detail. The successful exchange of detail is not merely conditioned by the communicative code selected for the exchange – the problem here being the often high degree of language variation which almost a priori rules out the potential for detailed information exchange – but it is also a matter of institutional appropriateness: it is not the importance of detail in itself which is at issue here, but the requirement of a particular kind of detail. Some kind of detail that is crucial for the applicant is not being picked up as such, or simply not considered relevant by the official, and vice versa. Recapitulating, the analysis of the applicant’s narrative of escape has demonstrated how the interaction between the applicant and the official is constrained by a huge pretextual difference between what can be produced and what can be picked up in the interaction. In order to understand each other, the interlocutors keep on flagging their intentions through performance. Yet at the same time it has been argued that their contextual interventions tend to be at odds with the genre expectations. The applicant and the official therefore have to make an extra effort to structure their argument, for which all sorts of discursive strategies need to be addressed (intonation, repetition, stress). Accessibility to and feasibility of the required strategies however – given the often limited set of linguistic resources both applicants and officials have at their disposal and given

62

Katrijn Maryns

the inquisitory and restricting nature of the application interview – cannot be taken for granted. Therefore, even after three hours of narrating, explaining and negotiating, the official’s interpretative account is still permeated by inconsistencies and misunderstandings, as will be seen in the following section dealing with control questions.

1.2.3 Control questions (questions 43-47) When the applicant has finished his narrative of escape, the official decides to read out his version of the account for confirmation by the applicant. Analysis of this piece of discourse uncovers one of the initial stages of the entextualization process operating on the produced discourse. This entextualization process is multi-layered: the information provided by the applicant not only has to be transferred to the official’s contextual frame of reference, it also has to be translated on-line from English to Dutch on the one hand and from the spoken conversational style of the interview to the formal written style of the report on the other. In this way, the official consciously or unconsciously filters out particular information from the initially produced discourse. As the analysis will show however, this filtering process is often pursued at the expense of narrative consistency and detail. Still, in most of the interviews I recorded at the DVZ, this practice of reading out the written report for the applicant was left undone, in some cases because it was considered time-consuming, in other cases because it was considered useless as the applicants were supposed not to understand a word of it anyway. Analysis of the official’s representation of the account, however, shows how useful and important this control function can be. The interaction represented in extract 13 displays a particular pattern of information exchange: (a) the official makes an on-line re-translation from his written Dutch version of the account into spoken English; (b) the applicant interrupts the official to qualify, underscore, illuminate or correct particular elements of the account that turn out to be wrong or incomplete in the official’s draft version of the report. The amendments are numbered and highlighted in italics: Extract 13 (1) I: … story to you … if I made a mistake you just tell me . and I will correct it .. ok .. if you have . something to add . you also tell me .. ok ….. you understand …. so . I am married. I have I’ve got 4 children. I was politically active as a sympathiser of the SCNC …

Text Trajectories

(2) (3)

(4) (5)

(6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)

63

AS: uhum I: and I ask the Belgian government to urmm take care of my asylum procedure .. in December 1999 .. the 30th the SCNC the Southern Cameroon National Congress .. held a meeting .. the SCNC is an organization which uuurm defends thee AS: rights I: interests and the rights of the English people in urm Cameroon …… uuuurm they they live mostly in Biya and Bamenda the English speaking part of Cameroon AS: we want to rise .. to to hoist up a flag I: yes yes but I’m coming to that AS: ok I: I’m coming to that . just be patient AS: sorry I: no problem no problem .so .. this flag was hoisted hen as a symbol of the indep as a symbol of independence … hen …. urm and the police and the gendarmes reacted to that .... by urm urm shooting with tear gas .. and rubber bullets and urm real life bullets hen .. so the crowd . there were many people there the crowd scattered .. hen … and they ran away . and many people were arrested and during the attack with the tear gas during the shooting with the tear gas I ran way and I went home .. hen ..the 7th of January 2000 I heard about 4. 30 I heard the dog bark … uuurm a vehicle was . approaching .. I heard .. urm some noise .. and the dog sto stopped barking …… urm there was a knock on the door and we thought my wife and I we thought that .. uurm there were burglars … we were standing in the hall .. and weeee heard this voice saying … if you don’t open the door . we will break it down ……….. the door was broken down . urm I saw military people … I was urm held under gun shot … I was uuurm beaten I was uurm also my wife was beating beaten .. and the house was urm searched very quick very thorough …. they took all my documents .. also my membership card of the SCNC

Amendment 1 (12) AS: yeah . and .I don’t really know the documents that they took . they just come in WHERE I put my documents .. I don’t know the documents that urm took (13) I: they you don’t know if they took it (14) AS: what I don’t know (15) I:= or not (16) AS: yes

64

Katrijn Maryns

(17) (18) (19) (20) (21) (22) (23) (24)

(25) (26) (27) (28) (29)

I: you just don’t know AS: yeah I don’t know I: ah yea yes AS: what the what they really what what I know that I saw it .. I: you just saw urm they searched AS: = cau my no my my my this thing I: yes AS: my ID card my ID card my names ID card ID card number so I know that they ‘re taking it but they search when they remove all those things on the cupboard they took it away I don’t know whether my they’ve taken my I: uhum AS: SCNC card or SDF card but I ‘m (not sure of it) yeah I: no .. but .. it can be that they took it but it can also be that it’s still in your house AS: yes I don’t know one or two ok I: but I’ll add it . at the end of the story . ok that I’ve made a mistake here and.. uuuurm . so . I was taken away .. so and in this car allez this this . this van with this container … of the secret police hen

Amendment 2 (30) AS: it was uurm secret gendarmes . corps (31) I: =ah gendarmes .. corps (32) AS: yes secret gendarmes corps secret gendarmes corps (33) I: ok .. uuurm …. so you were urm urm u pushed into this container you were told to lie down on the floor and they were beating you with sticks on your back …. hen .. so urm inside this container urm several people were lying down on the floor I had to lie down too . the car drove away I don’t know where urm it went . and I was urm locked up in a cell ….. I was tortured I was beaten . didn’t get any medicine didn’t get . any food … I had to . sleep on the floor . so the the the circumstances were terrible …… in July 2000 I came Amendment 3 (34) AS: we excrete in the same bucket (35) I: pardon (36) AS: we excrete in the same bucket (37) I: yeah yeah ok … (38) AS: while inside the cell inside the cell inside the cell we excrete inside bucket no cover . the scent ………….. pies all inside there …………………………………………. (39) I: so I guess . we had to do our thing hen in a a bucket . uhum .. so

Text Trajectories

65

in July two thou 2000 .. I became very ill .. so I was taken to the hospital .. the Amikam Hospital in Bamenda .. and urm there we I was being guarded by a gendarm

Amendment 4 (40) AS: there is one body that died (41) I: pardon (42) AS: one body died in the cell …. (43) I: yes (44) AS: .. cause they want to remove that man (45) I: uhum (46) AS: that’s where that’s where . I go near like that xx xx so when the man xx the gendarm xx they saw me and sorry . take me to the hospital .. that’s how I come to the hospital . xx (47) I: so you asked . (48) AS: no I just urm they were carrying the track in the corps xx (49) I: yes the corps (50) AS: yes (51) I: of the dead pe of the dead person (52) AS: yes .. because they has the scenting (53) I: yeah (54) AS: so I shoo I show my x to him (55) I: yes (56) AS: so he (57) I: and he saw you (58) AS: yes he sorry pitied me (59) I: and and he pitied you and hee sent you to the hospital (60) AS: the hospital yeah (61) I: uhum (62) AS: but under under gendarm care but not handcuffed no handcuff (63) I: ah yeah (64) AS: and they rode off . down the street (65) I: uhum (66) AS: that’s why I had my chance to run (67) I: uhum .. so uurm one moment please hen …………….. so I became this . ill ……………………. …………………………… so and this boy died in the hospital hen … (68) AS: in the cell (69) I: in the cell yes . sorry . sorry in the cell yes . so while I was in urm while while I was in the hospital .. uuurm a visitor came .. a driver a visitor came whose tyres of his car ha I had changed .. and this man came to visit a patient and to bring him food hen .. uuurm I

66

Katrijn Maryns

(70) (71) (72) (73) (74) (75) (76) (77) (78) (79) (80) (81)

(82) (83) (84) (85) (86) (87) (88) (89)

don’t know his name … I do remember the the AS: number I: the number of his car hen AS: 40 6B I: north west 40 6B AS: uhum .. I: I asked him to go to my urm business to my shop and to ask Pete .. the the AS: that’s the helper of my worker I: yes .. urm to ask my driver’s license because it was my only means to uuurm to legitimeren . urm legitimate myself AS: yeah I: make myself legitimate … make myself known AS: yeah I: hum ….. ((somebody interferes, colleague of I)) …. uuuuuuu uuurm ah yeah Pete to ask because it was the only way to make yourself AS: identified I: identifiable . yeah… because . it was your intention to run away . hen . … so . at night .. this soldier also advised me to . to run away . AS: uhum I: hen .. urm the man did this because the relationship between the army and the the secret the the the secret gendarmes urm are is bad AS: they don’t like the other …… I: so the army doesn’t like what the secret police does what the what those AS: hen I: the army doesn’t like what the gendarmes do

Amendment 5 (90) AS: yes they they they secret gendarmes .. corps . that’s how they call them .. secret gendarmes corps (91) I: yes (92) AS: these are known in the French oppressonant commandement oppressonant that’s urm . thatthat is the French (93) I: ahaa (94) AS: but in English we call it secret . gendarmes corps (95) I: corps . ok (96) AS: because they are those coming . secretly (97) I: yes (98) AS: other they come and shoot you .. xx they and xxx bang shoot you with that silence hen

Text Trajectories

(99) (100) (101) (102) (103) (104) (105) (106) (107) (108) (109) (110) (111) (112) (113) (114) (115) (116) (117) (118) (119) (120) (121) (122) (123) (124) (125) (126) (127)

67

I: hum AS: they leave your corps there and go I: yes AS: that’s what they’re doing now..they started since around 88 in Cameroon but it’s too hot now it’s too hot xxxxx Cameroon I: hum AS: if you are against the SDF party the man on the chair . the the CPDF-party sorry I: yeah AS: the CPDF-party x I: that’s the party which is in power AS: yes .. CPDF …. I: if you are against them they they AS: that’s what the sec that’s the secret gendarmes corps I: yeah yeah uhum AS: some they move . no uniform I: no AS: some they move like drunken people I: yes AS: but are no drunk I: undercover AS: they are following you and know where you are staying and come at night or in the day at any time they xx I: uhum AS: these persons …. I: urm yes .. now this this soldier advised me hen to to to run away but at that time I didn’t feel strong AS: yeah I: but three or four three or four days later …… so I managed to escape from theee hospital AS: yeah I: I went to the bus station AS: yeah I: because my urm urm

Amendment 6 (128) AS: =I know so many drivers (129) I: pardon (130) AS: yes . I know so many drivers there (131) I: yes (132) AS: they all buy me tyres (133) I: aha

68

Katrijn Maryns

(134) (135) (136) (137) (138) (139) (140) (141)

(142) (143) (144) (145) (146) (147) (148) (149) (150) (151)

AS: I sell them tyres I: aha AS: . I repair their tyres I: yes AS: because I sell tyres I repair tyres I: yes yes but I’m coming to that . AS: ok sorry I: uuurm . because it was my intention to go uurm urm to my uncle’s place to hide myself there hen …. so . one of the drivers recognized me AS: uhum I: because he was a customer of mine .. he was xx the bus driver . hen … urm but . the problem was that I had no money AS: uhum I: but the chauffeur ((/sjo:fer/)) urm accepted uuurm the fact that my uncle was going to pay … urm the name of my uncle is Pita Bah AS: that’s right I: and he’sss he’s living in Tiko AS: that is right I: yes ….. so in a meanwhile . in the meanwhile . my escape wasss ….. geseind … allez everybody was notified that I had escaped AS: uhum I: hen … so there were many con cont uurm control posts .. and urm urm . while changing urm buses. because you wanted to go to Tiko . you had to change bus

Amendment 7 (152) AS: no the driver was going to Douala (153) I: yes (154) AS: they put me too the bus going to Tiko (155) I: to Tiko yes .. urm . so uurm there was . another uurm control (156) AS: control I I had to (157) I: yes (158) AS: urm (159) I: and during that control I was (160) AS: caught (161) I: caught hen … so I was beaten .. the blood streamed out of my mouth .. I was crying …. and I was again pushed in this container .. urm I was urm handcuffed at the ankles . hen (162) AS: uhum (163) I: and to (164) AS: my ankles yeah

Text Trajectories

69

(165) I: yes and urm brought to an unknown urm destination … and again locked up (166) AS: yes .. (167) I: uhum .. urm the circumstances there were even worse than in the first prison (168) AS: uhum (169) I: uhum .. when the prison uurm was being uurm visited by urm a commissionary

Amendment 8 (170) AS: no the the the the they CAUGHT….. a brother of one commissioner . family member of one commissioner…. (171) I: yes (172) AS: they CAUGHT him and put him in the cell so the man discovered that they catched caughted his brother (173) I:= so this commissionary was also caught . (174) AS: hen (175) I: he was also in the cell (176) AS: u u ((saying no)) . no (177) I: no …. (178) AS: the brother the brother of the commissioner (179) I: the brother of the commissioner (180) AS: caught was was caught (181) I: was caught (182) AS: and put in the cell that I was we we were there (183) I: in you in your cell . in the same cell (184) AS: yeah we were there (185) I: yes (186) AS: there he was tortured . he was tortured xx us they never knew that he was the brother of a commissioner (187) I: no (188) AS: so . when then the commissioner discovered that they caught his brother (189) I: yes (190) AS: when I see him they saw the the provisional delegate of urm security in Bafoussam (191) I: yeah (192) AS: so that’s when the man came HOW did I get that to get that story WHEN I was in the hospital (193) I: uhum (194) AS: I didn’t get the story (195) I: =where at at that moment you didn’t know but afterwards in the hospital you knew

70

Katrijn Maryns

(196) AS: = yeah x started telling me that . that is how the thing come around (197) I: yeah .. but uurm it is a fact that ((coughs)) . a family member of this commissioner was . (198) AS locked up (199) I: locked up in .. in the same cell as you as you were hen. uurm so his brother .but . the prison was being visited by this commissioner hen (200) AS: the pri the commissioner came with a big commission.. (201) I: yes .. (202) AS: with a big commission . provisional commissioner .. and then the they cannot enter (203) I: no (204) AS: the scenting too much …. so the meet the co the the the workers .. xx commissioner which is . taking care of that urm area the gendarm people urm they told him to send out urm they want to see what is taking place in that cell and that’s how when they ‘re taking some of us that were being tortured some were then taken to the hospital….. no that I …… (205) I: so this commissionary .. whose brother was locked up … in the same cell .. he was very urm .. … (206) AS: annoyed (207) I: annoyed . he was urm …. urm … verontwaardigd …. urm …. mijn Engels is urm (my English is urm) (208) AS: = he was annoyed he when I saw the bigger commissioner (209) I: yes (210) AS: the bigger commissioner come and then saw this xxxx (211) I: they were shocked yes (212) AS: they were shocked (213) I: he was shocked by the circumstances in which you were locked up (214) AS: we were locked up in the cell (215) I: uhum (216) AS: they TORTURED they TORTURED because THERE they saw they know how the cell is that there is torture .. yeah . the torture ……………………….. (217) I: so everybody had to come out . so that they could check everything (218) AS: yes (219) I: uhum …. and I was . so ill …….. that I I I (220) AS:= urm most five of us (221) I:= but (222) AS: all the five of (223) I:= yes

Text Trajectories

(224) (225) (226) (227)

71

AS: five of us I:= yes AS: that commissioner brother and four x so I was among I: uhum….so together with five other people ........................... …………………………………................…………………… uuuuuuurm sooo . I was brought to the hospital … together with five other people … to the .. Bafoussam general Hospital ……… I was cuffed . to the bed .. I was guarded …. urm that was the beginning of March … 2001 hen ……

Amendment 9 (228) AS: within not really . on the first within the begin urm within March early March I don’t know the day (229) I: early March yeah . the eighth or or the nineth (230) AS: yeah that I don’t know (231) I: yeah (232) AS: don’t really know .. but I know that .. it was in MARCH (233) I: yes (234) AS: but I escaped on . the very end March .. March 30th (235) I: yes (236) AS: because the treat that they was putting in my body it made me to .. glucose this ..glucose xx in the whole that there was putting to it (237) I: yeah (238) AS: so it made me to be . stronger (239) I: feel stronger .. (240) AS: yeah (241) I: that it made you feel stronger yes ….. urm so urm . the end of March .. you were … you were going to be sent back to urm . prison .. but you didn’t want it x … so … I already told the guard that I wasn’t feeling too well . (242) AS: hen (243) I: I wasn’t feeling well (244) AS: I TOLD (245) I:= but then (246) AS: =the man that I that I’m not feeling well .. he said that (247) I: = I’m not feeling well hen (248) AS:= the gendarm then tell me what are you xx now you are going back… (249) I: yeah (250) AS: you are going back to the cell (251) I: yeah

72

Katrijn Maryns

(252) AS: very early in the morning (253) I: yes (254) AS: why I don’t xx I’m not take me back to the cell early in the morning (255) I: yes (256) AS: so . then they pack my things .. I have only one shirt . two shirt. one on my body one on the bed to sleep at (257) I: yes (258) AS: so I done like this I push my hand (259) I: yes (260) AS: and on xx (261) I:= so urm urm I told the guard I didn’t was feeling very well hen I put my finger into my throat … to vomit (262) AS: yes (263) I: uhum .. uuurm that I suggested .. I I su suggested to the guard to clean it because he wasn’t going to do (264) AS: yes (265) I: because it was too .

Amendment 10 (266) AS: scenting (267) I: scenting (268) AS: xxx the scent it was terrible (269) I: uhum (270) AS: because . inside the cell .. you x in all the scent (271) I: uhum (272) AS: you don’t xx urm there no one . no aah (273) I:= there was no ve ventilation or (274) AS: no no no no no (275) I: or air conditioning or (276) AS: the air condition that we are getting small .. this thing this black is bigger than the hole … RIGHT UP .. right . very up and small so that the people inside vomit. (277) I: uhum (278) AS: so whether you mess …. xx you pee (279) I: ye ye ye (280) AS:= toilet all .. (281) I: yes urm . so he he didn’t want to clean it hen because of the the strong scent and he urm urm (282) AS: remove the chain (283) I:= urm removed the chain yes (284) AS: x there is no way that I can .. take it (285) I: no

Text Trajectories

(286) (287) (288) (289) (290) (291) (292) (293) (294) (295) (296) (297) (298) (299) (300) (301) (302) (303) (304) (305) (306) (307)

73

AS: I can no I can no carry to go bed I: yeah AS: I go and carry and go on to it I: yes AS: so remove it … then control me to . begin to carry it .. so the first time I carry this vomit I: yes AS: then later on … I start to begin to clean it . this patient in the hospital . they x that I should go I: yes AS: so later on I have sense that I begin to carry the small small I: small pieces yes .. and then you saw that the guard was in his AS: chair lying . yes I: yes uhum AS: snoring . really snoring I: snoring . he was urm asleep … AS: uhum I: so you managed urm to urm get out of the hospital AS: yeah I: through a a neigbouring garden .. a neighbouring AS:= over the fence I:= compound and over the fence AS:= and jump .. in the neighbour’s compound I: neighbouring urm neighbouring compound he .. urm .. you again went to the to this bus station

Amendment 11 (308) AS: Bafoussam bus station (309) I: Bafoussam bus station Amendment 12 (310) AS: DO YOU KNOW my brother why I’m going to the bus station . because people at the station know me (311) I: because they know you ((questioning)) (312) AS: = I deal with their tyres (313) I: uhum (314) AS: they once buy me tyres (315) I: uhum (316) AS: so any bus . station . drivers know me there … so I can now run away they don’t know I was go to xxxxx (317) I: yes (318) AS: yeah (319) I: so and and there there you sought J Jamal

74

Katrijn Maryns

(320) (321) (322) (323) (324) (325) (326) (327)

AS: yes Jamal I:= the schoolboy who urm urm AS:= he was staying near my house going to school I: staying he’s staying near your house and he passes your shop every day when he’s going to school AS: yeah I: that’s why you knew him AS: Jamal I: uhum so this Jamal hid me

Amendment 13 (328) AS: he he first refused but I beg me hid me (329) I: first yes …. (330) AS: he first refused I beg him very well .. xxxxxx my uncle my uncle x …. cau he was afraid …x from somebody to run from this . from the handcuff .. xx that should hit him is not a truth … … … … … ……………………………………………………………………………… (331) I: so . and uurm you ask him to notify your uncle hen Amendment 14 (332) AS: I aks him whether he know my uncle he said no .. he say he knows so he know people that xx come and buy .. me medicine for spraying cacao (333) I: yes (334) AS: so he were at the man that had that store . whether he know any person of that nature .. he go and ask he said that he know somebody of that nature . Pita Bah .. so he he phone urm the big and had also come and buy cacao and go to Tiko . he phoned him (335) I: yes (336) AS: say let him phone my bro let my brother come very fast (337) I: yes (338) AS: then lat (339) I:= so you you said yeah … urm so .. even through ur this this didn’t know your uncle urm even in the beginning he managed to (340) AS:= NO . he know but the person that is selling . medicine for cocoa (341) I: yes (342) AS: he don’t know (343) I: so he notified this person (344) AS:= then he person know . somebody (345) I:= knew somebody (346) AS:= that goes buy big quantity (347) I: yes

Text Trajectories

(348) (349) (350) (351) (352) (353)

(354) (355) (356) (357) (358) (359) (360) (361) (362) (363) (364) (365) (366) (367) (368) (369) (370) (371) (372) (373) (374) (375) (376)

(377) (378) (379) (380) (381)

75

AS: to go to Tiko I: yes AS: he phoned that xx so that I:= aaah yes AS: my old brother also come and buy medicine for I:= like that .. so it wasn’t the boy .. the boy just … notified somebody who went … urm to Tiko . because urm he .. no? … yeah ok … ((laughs)) it’s a bit difficult I know ……. AS: urm .. the big shop … big shop I: yes AS: there is somebody in Bafoussam I: yeah AS: in Bafoussam I: yes and he goes regularly to Tiko . AS: no I: he KNOWS somebody AS:= that ALL come and buy it in big quantity I:= big quantity AS= for Tiko I:= yes AS: carry big quantity to Tiko I: uhum yeah AS: so he phoned that person that all come and buy in big quantity to take to Tiko I: uhum uhum AS: the person know my brother my brother also come and buy from him in Tiko I: uhum uhum AS: you understand I: urm yes urm and that is urm the way AS:= yeah .. that’s how the wave I: yes . but this AS: it goes like a wave ………………. uhum ………… the big shop … the big buyer … the small buyer was my brother uhum …. my uncle ………………………………………………… I: to to to tooooo so your uncle came … together with urm another person who .. AS: I no .. I don’t know the other person I: no you don’t know his name hen AS: the person that brought urm a person to my uncle was that Jamal I: yes … well yes ok .. so .. in meanwhile the police was still

76

Katrijn Maryns

Amendment 15 (382) AS: =urm it was it was terrible when I when I was going I was seeing it . it was terrible . if they they caught me that that they are kill me . shoot me immediately it was terrible (383) I: yes yes (384) AS: it was terrible (385) I: so you had to change . urm hiding places a few times (386) AS: there are the people that change me many many change me from here to there I don’t know just take me (387) I: yeah (388) AS: take me that I don’t know .. then x my head all …shaved shaved shaved (389) I: and then . urm one day urm .. so on they they one day I was x was cleaned up hen (390) AS: yeah (391) I: they they shaved my beard they cut my hair (392) AS: yeah (393) I: I got a nice urm …… x clothes (394) AS: urm the clothes the clothes is the xx because (395) I: ((laughs)) yeah yea but I know .. I didn’t but … I don’t have to see them you know .. ((laughs)) I believe that they gave it they gave them to you … so urm a few days later . (396) AS:= cause I go to come and take me inside (397) I: yes (398) AS: come give me (399) I: uhum… a few days later . a few days later .. my uncle … myself and those two other men .. went to the the airport .. the the Douala international airport Amendment 16 (400) AS:= .. is the second … (401) I: pardon (402) AS: second (403) I: the second of urm April (404) AS: April yes (405) I: yes (406) AS: because I I arrive here . on Monday . urm at urm third morning time morning time .. third . around third xx I don’t xxxx (407) I: uhum (408) AS: I arrived to this airport here this airport here (409) I: yes . Zaventem (410) AS: yes . we don’t go anywhere we just go go like this

Text Trajectories

77

(411) I: hum (412) AS: here they don’t inside that they crossing urm xx Sierra Leone or xxxxx because I’m not .. we are going down they are going down xxx that’s my first time to enter (413) I: uhum (414) AS: so we landed in none one anyway just from Cameroon (415) I: yeah yeah … ok so.. and one of those two peo two people who were in the car came with you . to Belgium .. took all your papers … your doc . took all your documents .. (416) AS:= put me in the taxi (417) I: in the taxi yes (418) AS: I DON’T KNOW WHETHER (419) I:= went back to . he went back to .urm .. (420) AS:= the WHEN the taxi was going NO I DON’T KNOW WHERE HE WENT back to Cameroon or xx WHEN that he put me inside the taxi (421) I: yes

Amendment 17 (422) AS: xxx so this guy . I know the colour very well . black Mercedes car here (423) I: yeah (424) AS: it’s my first time to see a Mercedes car because in our country … Mercedes car is terrible you cannot drive it for taxi (425) I: yeah (426) AS: so I saw the taxi a Mercedes car .. BLACK (427) I: yes (428) AS: uhum so it was from father father aged man (429) I: hum (430) AS: aged man .. well the man driving the Mercedes car no young boy …………. the man was a aged an not a young boy… if the man can be young . he can be fifty something (431) I: yeah yeah but that that is not urm .. very important … but …. one of those two came to Belgium and … he took all your documents (432) AS: hun (433) I: he took all your documents .. they had to give your documents back to this person who came with you (434) AS:= xx give me the documents (435) I: yes .. you had to give them back … (436) AS: back to him … as he ‘s putting me inside the taxi (437) I: yeah (438) AS: as would make pass all the policemen under the… there’s a thing that is inside the airport who pass under it . then xxxx back

78

Katrijn Maryns

(439) (440) (441) (442) (443)

pass like this .. it made ching ching ching ching I: yeah AS: xx we go we go and come out out from the plane .. you had one put like this way one put like this way I: uhum AS: they control you to pass and go on like this I: uhum so this is your story hen do yo ha do you have something to add

At least 5 categories of amendments can be distinguished: (1) (2) (3) (4)

Correction of serious misunderstandings: 1/ 8/ 14 Qualification of important details: 2/ 7/ 9/ 13 Adding important facts: 3/ 4/ 10/ 16 Adding epistemic context: general socio-political context/ individual: 5/ 6/ 12/ 17 (5) Adding affective context: 10/ 15

Definitely, the asylum seeker’s narrative of escape is more than ‘just a story’. It is a very complicated account full of deeply contextually loaded developments and complicated, though logical twists. The narrator is constantly on the move, and so is his story. This interplay between the contextually dense network of narrated experiences and the extra dimension of mobility to different pretextually constrained interpretative spaces accounts for the fact that even after three hours of narrating, explaining and negotiating, the official’s interpretative account is still permeated by inconsistencies and misunderstandings. Inconsistencies such as the one in amendment 8 for instance (confusing the commissioner with his brother) may backfire in the interviews to follow, but also, as soon as the statement assumes the proportions of a claim as serious and consequential as the controversial detention of a commissioner, this fact may turn into a verifiable one and hence the claim may be denounced on grounds of “a lack of external consistency (agreement with known facts)” (UNHCR: Interviewing applicants for refugee status: 1995:58-59). Despite the applicant’s efforts to underscore the socio-political relevance of particular distinctions made in his home country, and despite the fact that the official eventually picks up certain differences, the distinctions do in some cases not survive the translation process and become blurred again as they are formulated in the report (cf. amendment 2: confusing gendarmes with police; cf. amendment 5: epistemic contextualization, the need to explain the difference between police and

Text Trajectories

79

gendarmerie). In cases where a plain presentation of facts and events suffices for the official, the applicant wants to add particular contextual information to sustain his argument (cf. amendments 6 and 12: the applicant wants to underscore the relevance of his job as a dealer in tyres when explaining why he went to that particular Bafoussam park immediately after his escape). Also the applicant’s qualification of particular facts (cf. amendment 9: specifying time reference; amendment 11: specifying the name of the park) contributes to the plausibility of the report, but also to its anticipation of institutional standards (the requirement of detail). In many of the amendments, the applicant simply repeats and adds to the account what the official had left out. In some cases these omitted facts add crucial argumentative and affective information to the account, often to such an extent that it contributes to the basic assessment of the claim against the Convention of Geneva. In amendment 4 for instance, the fact that this boy died in his cell is an important fact that should not be left out of the report: not only does it explain why the applicant was transferred to the hospital, it also raises questions about the detention of political prisoners and human right violations in Cameroon. The interaction also shows that the horrible conditions under which the applicant was detained, no matter how important this information might be for the claim, are often simply not sayable in a bureaucratic report (cf. amendment 3: the fact that the prisoners had to ‘excrete’ in the same bucket was at first entirely banished from the report and then eventually reformulated as ‘to do their thing’). Still, despite the fact that the official proposes to read out his version of the account for confirmation by the applicant, his report falls short on some important amendments suggested by the applicant. Yet before turning to this report, I would like to conclude my analysis of the interview with a short reflection on how the participants in the interaction conceive of the idea and the purpose of the communicative event. What made me consider this particular dimension of the exchange is the applicant’s striking – though in asylum interviews not exceptional – reaction to his case’s liability to be declared inadmissible. The applicant apparently cannot understand why, after all the efforts made to justify his case, it is still liable to a negative evaluation: Extract 14 (1) I: I’m going to explain urm the procedure Mr. Koulagna. uuurm somebody upstairs is going to take a decision urm based on your the story you told me . hen you understand ….. (2) AS: ((laughs))

80

Katrijn Maryns

(3)

(4) (5)

(6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)

(12) (13) (14) (15)

(16) (17)

(18) (19)

(20) (21) (22) (23)

I: no .. do you understand …. somebody is going to take a decision … on the basis of the story that you told me so somebody upstairs is going to read all this … and then he will take a decision .. you understand . he will take .. a positive decision so you . are . let into the country or a negative decision .. so you are not allowed in the country AS: = urm xx let me do this I I will go .. if I go back they will kill me I: no no no I I know but … urm in case of a negative decision . you have a possibility to make an appeal …. you understand . so . you get you get a seco a chance for a second interview hen AS: to make appeal urm I: yes .. urm you you make appeal .. simply by . writing a letter … to the Commissariat Général . that is next door .. AS: and who I:= the the address .. I will show you the address ……. AS: but now I bu I I told you my problem now my problem in my head I cannot . put down something good I: no .. but it is on your annex … you see .. it is on this paper .. it is on this piece of paper you always have it with you so .. is not it’s not that that difficult …….the Commissariaat Generaal is at North Gate I .. this is the address ….. you know I I under I underline it for you hen AS: I know that that I: that is next door . number 6 AS: straight straight straight I: yes ..number 6 .. hen .. if you IF your nega if you decision I don’t say THAT it’s going to be negative but IF it’s negative … you write to this place .. hen .. AS: this place here I: this nor North Gate I …. Koning Albert II- Laan number 6 1000 Brussels . hen .. and in your letter .. you write that you don’t agree with the decision taken here at Dienst Vreemdelingenzaken .. hen .. that’s all you have to do .. you have to do it within three days … when you get your decision .. hen . you understand .. AS: uhum I: uurm if you do that you don’t have to leave the country you can stay here .. and you will get a second chance next door . at the Commissariat .. do you understand .. ok ………….. that’s ….. AS: I try to ………………… I’ve explained I I but I’ve explained it you heard it I I: yah but . I know yes yes . but AS: I removed my dress you’ve seen what did happen I: yes

Text Trajectories

(24) (25) (26) (27) (28) (29) (30) (31) (32) (33) (34) (35) (36) (37)

(38) (39) (40) (41) (42) (43) (44) (45) (46) (47) (48) (49) (50) (51) (52) (53) (54) (55) (56)

81

AS: all these things x belt wound belt I: uhum AS: and if I I’m not a x man myself xxxx my woman my children so . I don’t know I: so but . do you think that AS: my head I: yes ..do you think that your uurm AS: my family I: d do you think that your family is in danger at this moment AS: yes because . do you know something . my family is on danger because . when I around … I: so .. you will have to come back. Friday …hen .. Friday for your decision.. then you will receive your decision . you understand AS: please please please I: yes but I yes AS: urm when yeah I’m crying like this please I: yeah yeah yeah yeah .. but I’ll … I’ll take this . file . personally . to the one who’s going to decide it .. and I will tell them that I am sure . that you are that you’re telling the truth AS: no that urm if you want that I should remove all my dress xx my back .. I will do it I: ((laughs)) no .. I believe you I believe you AS: I I don’t I don’t urm lie to you hen I: no no no I know I know but that is AS: some people will come and tell lies but I don’t do so I’m the person I have .. I’ve been telling xxxx no no no I: hum AS: I was xxxx I remove my dress to see I I:= but I can see it at your clothes because they are a little bit small at the moment urm they are a little bit urm big AS: big I: yeah AS: yes . my address is urm . extra large I: yeah R: ((laughs)) AS: but you see I: yes AS: I de bu I I cannot leave urm my .. three house xx my own compound very big compound my family live in there I: uhum AS: then just decide and run I: uhum

82

Katrijn Maryns

(57) (58) (59) (60) (61) (62)

AS: leaving my business my money my xx no no no I: no AS: it’s because my life .. if I look xx then I’d die.. ..xxx I: but I’ll be right back urm I just have to make a photocopy of this AS: ok I: one moment please

The fragment is taken from the last part of the interview. Now that the interview is finished, the official explains what will happen next in the procedure. In his explanation he considers both the possibility of getting a positive decision (residence permit) and the possibility of getting a negative one (repatriation). What is so striking about the decision making process, however, is that the official conducting the interview is not the same person as the one making the decision. Despite the fact that the official conducts the interview, writes the report and asks the applicant to sign, he is not qualified to actually make the decision. The decision-maker serves as a third person who has to arrive at an ‘objective’ decision on the basis of the interviewer’s written report. In other words, the decision-maker has no access to the original discursive process upon which the official’s report is based. The official winds up his contribution to the treatment of the case and prepares the applicant for the next step in the procedure. This discursive activity marks the transition from a personal to a depersonalized case: the official dissociates himself from the actual substance and interpretation of the asylum seeker’s case and switches to the depersonalized file it becomes as soon as it enters the information-processing procedure. The applicant, however, lacks the required institutional preknowledge to equally make this switch. Unlike the official, he sticks to a deeply personalized event perspective that clashes with the procedural way of reasoning. What for the official serves as no more than a formal routine activity that – except when something is unclear – assumes no further response, is treated as a matter of discussion and negotiation by the applicant. The applicant does respond and he does so in ways that are institutionally inappropriate. Inappropriate behaviour here emanates from the fact that he is not sufficiently socialized into the bureaucratic-institutional system: –

–

the applicant is apparently not aware of the fact that the official’s interpretation of his account is the first in a long series of de- and recontextualizations of his case; the applicant is apparently not cognisant of the hierarchical structure according to which the institutional system is organized, i.e. the fact

Text Trajectories

–

83

that decision-making and assessment of physical maltreatment are outside the competence of the interviewer ; the applicant is not able to distance himself from this first encounter with the official, the person he has confided his personal problems to. He does not seem to realize that this interpersonal relation becomes totally irrelevant in the further bureaucratic treatment of his case.

All of this makes him misjudge the actual status and purpose of the first interview within the larger context of the procedure. Despite the official’s attempts to change the perspective from his personal assessment of the case to the further process of decision-making, the applicant sticks to the official’s responsibilities in the evaluation of his account. Therefore, he believes that the official is the only one to persuade and so he keeps on arguing why he has the right to a get a residence permit, each time expressing his indignation over the fact that although he has already explained all this, the official apparently still needs to be persuaded: – –

– –

– –

–

turn 4: ‘if I go back they will kill me’: (here appealing to his basic argument of personal persecution) turn 10: ‘but I told you my problem now, my problem in my head, I cannot put something down good’ (he refers to the physical problem he suffers from in order to account for his insecurity to express himself in writing) turn 20: ‘but I’ve explained it, you heard it’ turn 22: ‘I removed my dress you’ve seen what did happen’; turn 24: ‘all these things wound belt wound belt’; turn 38: ‘that if you want that I should remove all my dress my back I will do it’ (he refers to his scars as a proof of physical maltreatment) turn 26: ‘my woman my children so I don’t know’ (he refers to his uncertainty about the condition of his relatives) turns 34-36: ‘please please please . when yeah I’m crying like this please’ (he is desperate as he apparently cannot persuade the official with arguments and therefore he starts begging him to give him a chance) turn 40: ‘I don’t lie to you hen’, turn 42 ‘some people will come and tell lies but I don’t do so’ (calling upon his preknowledge about abusive use of the asylum procedure).

The official keeps on insisting that he does understand and believe the applicant and he even intends to bring this file personally to the decisionmaker. In this way, in his attempt to bridge the gap between his personal treatment of the case and the formal, neutral and therefore impersonal

84

Katrijn Maryns

assessment of the case, the official even wants to go further than he is institutionally allowed to. This suggestion only further encourages the applicant to persuade the official of the fact that he is telling the truth. The official, however, no longer responds, he apparently gives up his attempts to explain the working of the procedure, an organization that is unquestionable anyway, and proceeds with his duties.

1.2.4 The interviewer’s report The organization of the official’s report is generally based on the standard questionnaire that has to be filled in by the official as he is conducting the interview. The official writes the required information in the spaces on the form and this completed questionnaire then serves as the written report of the hearing, i.e. the main reference text for the decision-making process. In annex 3, I provide an overview of the list of questions making up the questionnaire. Because it contains a lot of private information about the applicant in question (identification questions), the entire document was very hard to get hold of. In order to preserve the anonymity of the applicant, I was only allowed access to the completed version of question 42, i.e. the official’s written account of the narrative of escape (annex 5: the DVZ report of the case Koulagna). Extract 15: The written version of the DVZ report (my translation of annex 5) 42. The concerned declares: I am married and have 4 children. I was politically active as a sympathiser. I ask the Belgian government to treat my asylum procedure. In December 1999 (the 30th), the SCNC (Southern Cameroon National Congress) held a meeting. The SCNC is an organization that stands up for the English speaking people in Cameroon who predominantly live in BUYA and BAMENDA, the English-speaking part of Cameroon. A flag was hoisted, as a symbol of independence, to which police and gendarmerie reacted with tear gas and firing (rubber and life bullets). The crowd, there were many people, scattered apart and ran away. Many people were arrested. During the tear gas firing I ran away and went home. On 07/01/2000 I heard the dog barking around 4.30 when a car drew near. I heard a bang and the dog stopped barking. There was knocked on the door and we thought that there were burglars. We stood in the corridor and we heard that the door would be broken down if we

Text Trajectories

would not open it. The door got broken down, I saw military people and was caught under fire, overmastered and beaten, my wife also. The house was searched very quickly and thoroughly and they took all my documents, also my membership card of the SCNC. I was taken away and pushed inside a car of the secret gendarmerie while they were hitting me on my back with rubber bats. In the car, different people were lying on the floor and I also had to lie down on the floor. The car went off, I don’t know where, and I got locked up in a cell. I was tortured, beaten, got no medicine and food and had to sleep on the floor. The conditions were terrible. We had to excrete in a bucket. In July 2000 I became so ill that I had to be brought to the hospital: AMIKAMhospital in BAMENDA. There I was guarded by a gendarme. While I was in the hospital, somebody came whose tyres of his car I had changed (that is my job). This man came to visit a patient and bring him food. I do not know his name, but I don’t know the number plate of his car (NW 4060B). I asked him to go to my business and ask Pete (my worker) for my driving license, my only means left over to legitimate myself, because I was planning to escape. In the evening a soldier advised me to escape. This man did so because the relation army-secr. police is not so good. At that moment however I didn’t yet feel strong enough. Three or four days later, I escaped from the hospital and went to the bus station because I planned to hide with my uncle. A bus driver recognized me because he was a customer of mine. I did not have any money however, but the driver accepted that my uncle should pay. My uncle is PETER BAH and lives in TIKO. In the meantime my escape had been signalled, there were many controls and when changing buses, there was a control during which I got arrested. I was beaten, the blood ran out of my mouth and I cried. I was again pushed into a car, was chained at the ankles and brought to an unknown place and locked up. The circumstances were even worse than in the first prison. When the prison was visited by a commissioner, whose brother was also locked up there, he was very indignant about the conditions* (*about the torture with five other people). Everyone now had to come out so that everything could be well inspected. I was again so ill that I was brought to the hospital**: BAFOUSSAM GENERAL HOSPITAL. I was chained on a bed and guarded. That was in the beginning of March 2001. Around the end of March I would be sent back to prison, what I did not want. I had told the guard that I did not feel well. I stopped my

85

86

Katrijn Maryns

own finger in my throat to vomit. I proposed to the guard to clean it, but then he first had to unchain me. He did not want to clean it because of the strong scent and unchained me. I took the vomit in the hand and had to go several times to the toilet. In the meantime I started to think that maybe I could escape. I saw that the guard had fallen asleep on his chair so that I could escape from the hospital via a neighbouring house. I again went to the bus station* (*there the chance was bigger that I would meet somebody that I knew) where I saw JAMAL, a schoolboy who passed my compound daily as he went to school. He hid me** (after insisting very strongly) and warned my uncle. He came to me together with another person whose name I don’t know. In the meantime the police was still looking for me. I changed my hiding-place a few times. I was rubbed up: shaved, cut, clean clothes and a few days later my uncle, me and two other men went to the airport: DUALA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. One of the two men came with me to Belgium and returned with all my documents. He gave me 2000 BEF. In ’92, during the president elections, I was already arrested as SDFmember (Social Democratic Front), who protested against the falsification of the elections by the party of the president: CPDM (Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement). I was a member, also of this party. I was locked up for one month in the police office of BAMENDA. My lawyer, BART LUCAS, had me released but had to pay a fee of 30 000 BEF. Due to the maltreatment in the prison I have a lot of problems with my head: it is as if there is something liquid inside my head. I take medicine for this, prescribed in Belgium. In ’94 the SCNC held a referendum about the stay together of North and South Cameroon. I participated in this and went from door to door to collect signatures. Somebody got arrested and told the police that I collaborated. The police came and I had to go with the police and was locked up in the police office for 9 days (17-26 of June ’94), also tortured. I had to sign a document that I would never take part any more in anti-government actions and I was released. I signed because I was about to get married.

In his report, the official confines himself to the general list of questions comprising the standard questionnaire. He also sticks to this method when dealing with question 42, a question that requires a very elaborate answer compared to the other questions on the list. Just because of its

Text Trajectories

87

comprehensiveness, this question 42 requires a fairly large number of sub-questions in the interview. These sub-questions, however, are not taken account of in the official’s report. In the report, the official sticks to what could be considered a synthesis of the different answers to the subquestions provided by the applicant. Any kind of synthetic reproduction inevitably involves a loss of information. Yet, one could argue that as long as the applicant agrees with the kind of reformulation suggested by the official, this account can be considered reliable. However, the problem is that the applicant is generally not given the opportunity to fully assess the official’s version of his account. And this brings me to the next subject of discussion. In order to be able to fully assess – check or control – the official’s written version of the account, the written report should be the product of an interactive process involving formulation, assessment, reformulation and re-assessment of the account, a process that should take as long as needed to get things right. As further analysis will show, however, negotiation and re-negotiation of the meanings produced cannot be taken for granted at all in the procedure: more often than not, the official does not read out – re-translate from Dutch to English – his report for the applicant and as such, the applicant is not given the chance to correct where necessary. In the case Koulagna, the applicant is given the chance to assess the official’s version of the account before it goes on record indeed. But still, despite the high number of amendments suggested by the applicant, the report fails to represent some important nuances and details. Decontextualization at different levels impedes upon the clarity and the consistency of the argument: –

–

The official does still not include particular contextual information, information that the applicant, however, clearly wanted to be added to the written report of his account. In the account of his second escape for instance, the report leaves unexplained how the boy managed to inform the applicant’s uncle. This may raise questions in the course of the further processing of the case, all of which may require from the applicant endless retellings of the same events, and all of which may nourish feelings of frustration and incomprehension with the procedure. Some of the qualifications suggested by the applicant are not included in the report: the applicant proposed to qualify the fact that all his documents got stolen, arguing that he was not able to check this fact but rather, that he assumes that this was the case. Such nuances however – given the important status of personal documents in the

88

Katrijn Maryns

–

procedure – are not taken down in the report and in this way threaten to backfire in the following stages of the procedure. Subtle nuances get lost and particular information gets charged with a slightly different connotation due to the official’s sometimes quite awkward wording in the report. The inconsistency between the rigid structure of the report – the strictly chronological presentation of the events, the use of capitals for names, the way in which the discourse is preceded by a standard formulation (‘I am (not) married and have x children. I was (not) politically active. I ask the Belgian authorities to consider my claim’) – and the colloquial style in which certain facts are being formulated, threaten to make the account come across as less serious and well-sustained than the initially produced discourse: Dutch expressions such as ‘gendarmen’ (the French loanword for the Dutch word ‘rijkswacht’ (Federal Police) normally occurs as a dialectal variant with an informal connotation), ‘busstation’ (cf. analysis extract 12: a culture-specific notion implying particular characteristics (time table, bus stops, bus connections, tickets) that do not at all correspond with the concept referred to by the applicant), ‘ik nam de kots in de hand’ (‘kots’ being a very informal word for ‘vomit’).

At this point, however, I want to stress once more how difficult the circumstances are under which the official has to work: the fact that he does not have a computer makes it practically even more difficult to present a chronological written version of the events, particularly because additional information cannot simply be inserted but has to be mentioned elsewhere in the document. This practical problem probably accounts for the scanty reference to or even total ignorance of the amendments suggested by the applicant. Another source of problematic discourse representation is that the official is supposed to make a translation from spoken English (his second or even third language) to a formal, written variety of Dutch. The thing is that all of this has to be realized on the spot, all of which requires from the official both the ability to immediately abstract the information that is institutionally relevant, and the linguistic fluency to present this information in a way that reconciles institutional relevance with an accurate reproduction of the spoken discourse.

1.2.5 The decision What is so striking about this first stage of investigation at the DVZ is the above described independence between the stage of interviewing on the one hand and the stage of investigation/ evaluation on the other: the decision-maker decides on the basis of the hearing report whether or not

Text Trajectories

89

the application is admissible, yet without having access to the exchange between the I and the AS, upon which the interviewer’s report is based. During the interview, the applicant expressed his indignation and incapability to understand the bureaucratic logic behind this practice of handing over of his case to a third person. His reluctance towards these proceedings can be justified if we have a look at the report of the decision-maker (annex 6: the DVZ decision of the case Koulagna): Extract 16: the decision (my translation of annex 6) The person concerned declares that in 1992 he was arrested as a member of the SDF and imprisoned for 1 month. In 1994 the person concerned would have been locked up in a police office for 9 days. On 30/12/1999 he would have been present at a meeting of the SCNC that was dispersed by the police and the gendarmerie. On 07/01/2000 military men would have entered his place, they would have taken the documents of the person concerned (under which his membership card of the SCNC), the person concerned would have been carried along and locked up in a cell. In 07/2000 the person concerned would have been transferred to a hospital. One day he would have escaped from the hospital. At a checkpoint the person concerned would have been arrested again and transferred to a for him unknown place. In 032001 the person concerned would have been transferred to a hospital again. He would again have escaped from the hospital. The police would have been looking for him again. The person concerned would have hidden himself in different places. On 03-04-2001 he would have left Cameroon. The testimony of the person concerned is extremely vague and general. He gives very little concrete facts and exact data. He presents not one identity -or travel document due to which it is impossible to verify his identity, nationality and travel route. After 1994 the person concerned had no problems with the Cameroon authorities till the beginning of 2000. The he would have been arrested, he was not officially accused or sentenced and could escape. It is not clear when exactly he escaped and when he got arrested again. Also when he got arrested again later, he was not officially charged or sentenced. He could escape again. Finally, it has to be noted that the person concerned offers no element of proof whatsoever to sustain his stated facts. The motives that he gives do not sufficiently show his wellfounded fear of personal persecution in the sense of the Convention of Geneva. Consequently, his asylum application is inadmissible. Definitely, one cannot deny that this account is extremely vague and general. So in this respect, I totally agree with the decision-maker. The question

90

Katrijn Maryns

is to what extent this short piece of discourse can still be ascribed to the applicant. A comparison with the other cases in my corpus reveals a particular pattern of report-writing for DVZ decisions. A number of standard features systematically recur: –

– –

what we get is a chronological, depersonalized and decontextualized account of events. The report, rather than presenting a representative list of factual elements – which is in itself already a highly debatable version of the account – presents a particular selection of factual elements that are relevant to the rejection of the application; the account is formulated in the conditional mode, immediately suggesting uncertainty about the veracity of the statements; a great deal of the argumentation is based on a thorough and fundamental entextualization of the account. After all, this short piece of discourse is the result of a deeply layered process of de-and recontextualizations. Because the decision-maker has no access to anything preceding the writing of the interviewer’s report, current inaccuracies cannot be rectified and new ones come into existence. The main argument in the rejection of this particular case is the fact that the applicant cannot provide concrete facts and precise data. Paradoxically enough, the initially produced account has been stripped of most of its concrete information in the course of the information-processing procedure, a filtering process that is largely out of the applicant’s control. Compared to the discourse produced by the applicant during his first interview, it becomes clear that many of the concrete facts have not survived the entextualization process and are hence not mentioned in the report.

Again, the problem is a matter of pretextual differences. As mentioned before, detail matters both to the official and the asylum seeker. What is at stake here however is not the demand for detail in itself, but the relevance of a particular kind of detail: institutional relevance (the demand for concrete verifiable facts, exact names, places, time indications) clashes with experiential relevance (crucial experiences and events that mark his personal perception). Decontextualization, however, seriously affects the argumentative structure of the account. The applicant’s argumentation is often implied in particular contextual details, details that may not correspond to the kind of factual evidence required in the procedure, but that do play a crucial role in the structure of the argument. In some cases the applicant even explicitly mentions his incapability to meet institutional requirements of exact reference and detail, yet by sketching the particular context in which his experiences have to be

Text Trajectories

91

situated, he does succeed in explaining why he is not able to provide these details. This particularly applies to time and place references: throughout his account a particular pattern can be observed according to which on the one hand important facts and events are well-documented and situated in time and place, whereas on the other hand, periods of detention remain vague and undetermined because, as he literally says, ‘inside the cell I don’t know whether today is Monday or Tuesday’. The applicant also explains why he has no identity nor travel documents to present – in the first place because of his sudden arrest; secondly because he had to return his travel documents to the person organizing his transport – yet, this information is not taken into account in the evaluation of his case. In other words, the main problem with the assessment of the case is that particular contextual information that serves an important explanatory and argumentative function in the account and that is therefore indispensable for the assessment of the case, does not survive the entextualization process. De-and recontextualization of the account weaken the argument and qualify the statement of personal persecution. To give an example, I want to turn once more to the incident with the boy in the cell (first period of detention): his account of the event during which a boy dies because of maltreatment in the cell, contains important information about the conditions under which political prisoners are detained, conditions that are life-threatening. In the decision however it is stated that “[t]he motives that he gives do not sufficiently show his well-founded fear of personal persecution in the sense of the Convention of Geneva”. The arguments provided by the applicant are apparently not taken seriously enough to be admitted in the information-processing procedure and this brings me to a final thought. I want to emphasize that it is not my intention to judge the decision in itself, I just want to question the applied method. The applicant’s account may be little convincing (cf. the plausibility of his escapes), the fact that he got arrested and detained may not be verifiable (one may argue the reliability of this criterion) and he also has no personal documents to present (which is however not unusual for refugees), but still, in any case, whether it is a good or a bad story, the applicant should be given the chance to tell his story and to have his story considered and assessed properly and according to the postulated standards. As long as the institution considers the interview between the applicant and the public official as a basic tool in the evaluation of asylum applications, applicants should at least be given the chance, not only to tell their story, but also to keep control over the deand recontextualizations of their account. The applicant from Cameroon is to a certain degree given the chance

92

Katrijn Maryns

to express himself during the interview, yet the representation of his account reduces it to such an extent that the account he is eventually being judged on no longer belongs to him. In addition, the applicant has the right to a well-argued evaluation rather than a vague enumeration of standard formulations. Recapitulating, in my analysis of the investigation of admissibility at the DVZ it could be seen how the applicant and the official entered the interactional space with different pretextualities, different socio-cultural backgrounds, different perspectives towards the events and different linguistic-narrative resources. They both had to make enormous efforts to get their intended meanings across, and all the available resources and discourse strategies had to be addressed (epistemic and affective contextualization work, intonation, repetition, stress). On top of this, the interlocutors had to cope with a difficult tension between experiential and institutional contextualizing demands: whereas the applicant needed to provide particular contextual information in order to fill the pretextual gaps between his socio-culturally and politically ‘placed’ experiences on the one hand and the official’s limited contextual background on the other, the official had to anticipate particular institutional criteria of textuality. Nevertheless, the time and energy invested in the interview process were totally out of proportion to the quality of the report and the decisionmaking process: an enormous load of information was filtered out as it entered the stage of decision-making and could eventually not be taken into account in the assessment of the case. In the next section, I shall follow the case Koulagna as it moves from the first to the second stage in the procedure, the urgent appeal at the CGVS. The analysis of the case will shed a light on the tension between the first and the second interview and more particularly on the way in which this tension is perceived by the participants in the interaction.

1.3 The urgent appeal at the CGVS: The caseKoulagna (2) Length of the interview: four hours and a half. This is one of the few occasions on which I have been given the chance to observe and record a second interview within the scope of one and the same file. This however not without difficulties, for the applicant could not understand why I wanted to follow-up his case for a second time. Because I was present in the CGVS office at the time that he had to do his

Text Trajectories

93

second interview, the applicant must have realized that I had been informed in advance by the authorities about his case and this is probably one of the reasons why he expressed his reluctance towards my intentions, literally asking himself: “why me?”. It should also be noted that it is the interviewer who explains my position as a researcher and who asks the applicant for the permission to observe and record the interview. It is my experience that in cases where the interviewer proposes to do this, applicants easily refuse, probably because interviewers generally underscore the fact that they are free to refuse. Fortunately in this case, I have been given the chance to further clarify the purpose of my research and in this way I managed to convince the applicant of the importance of his cooperation. Whereas for the first interview at the DVZ it was the standard questionnaire that served as a basic tool in the organization of the interview, the interview at the CGVS is based on the interviewer’s individual selection of routine, prepared and on the spot- questions that he considers relevant to the asylum seeker’s case. Within this set of questions, three particular types of questions can be distinguished: identification questions, knowledge questions and motivation questions (table 1). Each type of questions serves the objective of gathering particular information and each type requires a particular explanatory mode:

Type Subject matter/ objective

Identification questions to establish the identity of the applicant:

Knowledge questions to determine credibility:

Motivation questions to verify and assess the narrative of escape and the motivation for seeking asylum in Belgium:

name address place of birth political affiliation travel route

to determine nationality: what do the post boxes look like in your country, where is the national airport, can you give the name of some big rivers?

have you been physically offended?

to determine political activity: who is the

for how long have you been detained? what cities did you pass on your way to the airport?

94

Required explanatory mode

Katrijn Maryns

short decontextualized answers

president in your country, what are the most important political parties, can you describe your membership card? isolated facts

a chronological account of events and experiences

Table 1. Question types

Even though the official at some points in the interview suddenly switches from one type of questions to another (e.g. inserting knowledge questions in the applicant’s narrative of escape), the interview displays a particular pattern of questioning: it starts with a list of identification questions, the last question of which marks the switch to the next section of knowledge questions. The official then explicitly moves on to the third and last section of the interview. This is the longest part in which the applicant is asked to explain all his problems in a chronological order. One of the ultimate objectives of the second stage of investigation is the veracity check and this objective conditions method and style. Yet, as this important dimension of the second interview, a dimension that actually dominates the entire process of information exchange, is made insufficiently explicit in the course of the interview, it causes a lot of confusion and incomprehension. As further analysis will show, this confusion is particularly reflected in the applicant’s struggle with the different types of questions – each type assuming a particular explanatory mode – due to which he fails to live up to the required format. Moreover, this ceaseless confusion about both formal and functional requirements of the interview – about what to provide where and how – arouses frustration, uncertainty and reluctance towards the intentions of the official. Before I start with the analysis, let me quickly reconsider the way in which the second interview is organized, because also for me as an analyst, it was not easy to clearly structure and represent my analysis of the case. As outlined above, the interview is organized on the basis of three particular types of questions. Confusion about the purpose of the interrogation however gives rise to long meta-discursive passages that seriously impede upon the observed interview structure. Moreover, the metadiscursive passages can be characterized by a recurring pattern as well: particular points of discussion repeatedly turn up in the course of the in-

Text Trajectories

95

formation exchange. In order to avoid too much repetition in the analysis, I have decided to centralize my discussion of these passages in the final section of the analysis – this is where the argument between the applicant and the official comes to a head – rather than presenting a separate analysis of every single meta-discursive passage as it occurs in the chronology of the interview. For the rest, I stick to the observed pattern of questioning (identification questions
knowledge questions
motivation questions). It is not my intention to do a word for word analysis of the entire interview (this interview is even longer than the first one). Rather, I have decided to select certain passages that enable me to link up with the first interview and that contribute to the argument that I want to make.

1.3.1 Identification questions Just as in the first interview, this interview also starts with a list of basic questions about the applicant (age, place of birth, schooling, profession). In this way, the applicant has to repeat almost literally what he has already explained during the first interview. Moreover, the applicant again misjudges the actual purpose of this kind of questioning. Such identification questions can be considered a standard ingredient of bureaucratic interviews or questionnaires. The main objective of these questions is to gain an insight into the applicant’s personal state of affairs. Such an identification sheet displaying one’s common state of affairs is generally considered a stable thing that changes very little over time and that therefore takes the shape of a standard information sheet that requires very little explanation (‘I live in Bamenda’, ‘I have three brothers and two sisters’, ‘I work as a dealer in tyres’). In other words, identification questions should not be seen as requests for experiential narration but simply require a statement of one’s common state of affairs. The asylum seeker’s state of affairs, however, has often lost this taken for granted stability. In this respect, identification questions are no longer unequivocal questions because for the asylum seeker there is often more than one reality: the way it used to be and the way it is now. In some cases asylum seekers do not even know what their current state of affairs is like. In the bureaucratic questionnaire, however, asylum seekers are treated like any other applicant: there is no ambiguity about identification questions, what is considered as the common state of affairs is the situation as it used to be, before anything changed. Asylum seekers, however, are apparently not always familiar with this unequivocal interpretation of the question. Further analysis will show how difficult it can be for applicants to talk

96

Katrijn Maryns

about their situation like it used to be without referring to their current state of affairs as a source of uncertainty and fear about their home and relatives. This is also the case for the man from Cameroon: already during the first interview at the DVZ, the question about his profession makes him express his concerns about his business and the relatives he feels responsible for. The applicant’s emotionally charged account, however, clashes with the required factuality of the standard questionnaire. Similarly in the second interview, the applicant associates the question about his profession with the actual condition of his business and the people working there at the moment of speaking. The interviewer, however, does not respond but implicitly silences the applicant, first by indicating his lack of interest – at least at this particular stage in the interview – simply saying ‘uhum’, rather than asking more about the problems; secondly by the fact that he starts typing on the computer (which is very loud and obtrusive and therefore does not allow the applicant to continue wit his account) and third, by moving on with the next question ‘are you married?’ (turn 41). Extract 17 (1) I: ***************************************************** ******************** ok .. what did you do then . after your schooling (2) AS: yeah I managed to ..xx too repair tyres (3) I: uhum (4) AS: xxx (5) I: uhum .. and where did you do this . (6) AS: urm it was at Bamenda (town) (7) I: in Bamenda . (8) AS: yeah (9) I: and did you had your own shop or (10) AS: yeah yeah I have my shop .. this that’s way xx (11) I: what was the name of the shop (12) AS: aah yeah urm just called it Koulagna urm Tyres urm .. just Koulagna Tyres hen .. because urm ((laughs))…. it is my name Koulagna (13) I: yes I know (14) AS: xx the tyre xxx (15) I: ****************************** (16) AS: that’s xxxxxxx (17) I: sorry (18) AS: that’s the xxxxxxxxxxx Koulagna tyre xxx xxx (19) I: uhum

Text Trajectories

(20) (21) (22) (23) (24) (25) (26) (27) (28) (29) (30) (31) (32) (33) (34) (35) (36) (37) (38) (39) (40) (41)

97

AS: if I have a bad tyre than (I shall repair it) I:**************** . you repaired and AS: and selling I: and sell the new tyres … AS: (go) new second-hand and the new I: uhum AS: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx selling the ones … vehicles … taxis xxx I: yes. but you are .. the owner you are AS: yeah yeah I: and you have drivers who are working for you AS: no no no xxxxxxxxxx have drivers I: you have drivers who . ride your taxis AS: yeah yeah I: uhum … and how many AS: there were three I: uhum AS: but . xxx the condition xxx I: you ha you have to speak up a little bit because AS: I don’t know the condition of my business now as I’m speaking I: uhum AS: I don’t know the condition I: uhum … hum ….*********************************** so urm . are you married

The following extract represents a good example of how cultural differences require additional contextualization work. The applicant’s explanatory account can be seen as a short passage of home narration that is framed by utterances situating it in relation to the cultural information he wants to convey: preceded by the statement “you know with us .. if you have money”, and followed by a conclusive statement linking up the home narration with the argument he wants to make “that’s urm that’s Africans”. The explanatory account here provides a particular epistemic format (Blommaert 2001:433): “a metapragmatically framed ‘aside’ in which crucial referential and indexical ‘fillings’ are given of terms, concepts and features of the story” Extract 18 (1) I: and what do you mean by many many children or many people are living with you (2) AS: oh yeah .. my my my xx (3) I: uhum (4) AS: my small sister

98

Katrijn Maryns

(5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15)

I: uhum AS: the one of my wife .. my st my stephsister child . my uncles xxxxx I: and why aren’t they .. staying with their parents AS: hen I: why are they not staying AS: aah you know with us if you have .. money I: uhum AS: yeah I: uhum AS: that’s urm that’s Africans I: uhum

The next question is a question about language. The applicant’s answer differs from the one he gave in the previous interview at the DVZ. If we now compare the first interview with the second one, it becomes clear that the difference between the two interviews has to do with the way in which the interviewers phrase their question: Extract 19 DVZ (1) I: so and which which language do you speak originally …. (2) AS: my village ... or . from Cameroon .. (3) I: yes (4) AS: now English (5) I: English (6) AS: yeah …………..

CGVS (1) I: **** and urm what languages do you speak besides . English* **** (2) AS: my dialect . in my cou in our country we have two languages (3) I: uhum (4) AS: x French and x English xx (5) I: do you speak French (6) AS: no no no no only English (7) I: so and besides English .. any dialects (8) AS: ((laughs)) my dialect (9) I: and how is it called . your dialect (10)AS: Meta (11)I: Meta also (12)AS: yeah … Meta Meta that is my dialect (13)I: ***** (14)AS: the village town of Momo ….. (15)I:********

Text Trajectories

99

In the interview at the DVZ, the applicant apparently interprets the question as an ambiguous one – the language he uses in his village versus his national language – and in this way he proposes to further qualify the question. In his request for qualification the applicant refers to those two possible interpretations, yet the interviewer reacts as if it was a yes-no question. The applicant therefore chooses for the latter interpretation, and so his answer is quite easy, English. In the interview at the CGVS on the other hand, the question is phrased in a much more sophisticated way: the interviewer immediately rules out the possibility for ambiguous interpretation, for the answer to the general question about the applicant’s national language is already embedded in his formulation of the question. Still, the applicant first turns to the national languages spoken in his country and this gives him the opportunity to explicitly state that he only speaks English and no French. The interviewer then rephrases his question, asking whether he speaks any dialects. The applicant’s reaction expresses surprise about the fact that he is asked about his native African language. And once more the interviewer has to rephrase his question before he finally gets an answer. The applicant probably cannot see the point in talking about his local language, maybe because of its locality in the area of Momo, an area and a dialect he probably assumes the interviewer is not familiar with anyway. Another interpretation could be that the applicant interprets the question as a purely pragmatic one rather than a request for information: his English suits the purpose of communication with the interviewer so there is no need to go into detail about any other language. In short, the applicant apparently only refers to his native language when it is explicitly asked for and this marks the difference between the first and the second interview. What I want to emphasize here is that the inconsistency between the interviews is not necessarily a matter of deliberate choice by the applicant but could as well be seen as a difference that is conditioned by the official’s way of questioning. The next fragment serves as a good example of what I have repeatedly identified as a clash between the trauma embedded in the applicant’s experiential narration and the rigidity of the bureaucratic questionnaire: Extract 20 (1) I: since when have you . when was the last time you saw them …. (2) AS: hum .. they caught me urm …… January . January seven …. 2000 (3) I: and since then you haven’t (4) AS: no no no ….

100

Katrijn Maryns

(5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)

I: **** AS: no I (didn’t) I: ******* AS: urm 4 a.m. in the morning I: uhum … we’ll come to your problems urm AS: uhum I: later on ………………….

Just like in the first interview, the official’s question about time makes the applicant reconstruct the event of his arrest. According to the official, however, this is not the right moment in the interview to talk about his problems so he interrupts the applicant and proposes to move on with the next set of questions.

1.3.2 Knowledge questions The section of knowledge questions serves as a basic tool for determining the credibility of the argument. The fact that this type of questions is totally absent in the first interview at the DVZ, marks probably the most striking difference between the two interviews, a difference that causes a lot of confusion about the actual purpose of the interview. Although the first interview displays a particular tension between the rigidity of the bureaucratic format on the one hand and the applicant’s structurally complex and highly emotional narrative on the other, the interview still seems to be conceived as a joint-venture between the applicant and the official, the basic concern here being a complete, correct and representative account of the case. As he moves on to the second stage of investigation at the CGVS, however, the applicant basically has to provide the same information, yet he meets with a strikingly different method of interrogation. This method clearly follows the formal guidelines of the UNHCR training modules for determining refugee status (Interviewing applicants for refugee status 1995: 58-59): In order for the interviewer to be in a position to fully assess the claim, it will have to be thoroughly documented. This includes noting the circumstantial evidence surrounding key events such as arrests, periods of detention, or reasons for flight from a country of origin. For example, you will want to ask the applicant a series of precise, probing questions concerning what he or she was doing just before being arrested, including details of where he or she was, with whom,

Text Trajectories

101

what were the circumstances of the arrest, were there any witnesses, and so on. You will also want to establish a number of “dated” elements or facts. Providing precise dates should not be over-emphasized, as it is more important to establish general “time” indicators which can assist you, and the applicant, to place certain events into the overall sequence of the claim.

As a result, the interaction becomes much more of a cross-examination and the list of knowledge questions particularly adds to the rigidity of the approach. Still, the applicant does not seem to know how to judge the official’s interrogation style. As further analysis will show, he struggles with the tension (a) between the different types of questions – each type assuming a particular explanatory mode – and (b) between the different interviews – each interview serving a particular function in the processing of the case – and in this way fails to live up to the required format of information exchange. The section is organized on the basis of a long list of knowledge questions ranging from questions about the history of the political movements (“When was the party legalized?”) to questions about their structural organization (“What are the different party organs of the SDF?”), their main objectives and their slogan/ motto and the most important individuals within each party (“Can you give me some names of important people within the SCNC?”). A particular question-answer structure characterizes this section, a structure that is dominated by a very rigid examination style: the official takes on the dominant role of all-knowing questioner, and the applicant is supposed to assume the submissive role of examinee whose knowledge of his own world of experience is tested against the learned knowledge of the examiner. The idea is that if a person claims to be politically active in a particular area, that person should be able to answer some basic questions about the political situation in that area. What this method of interrogation fails to take into account however is that it calls for two totally different explanatory modes that are very hard to reconcile within the scope of one and the same encounter: (a) the explanatory mode that is required for explaining one’s individual motivation for seeking asylum, a mode that, due to the contextual density of the account and due to the official’s lack of familiarity with certain seemingly insignificant but in fact crucial aspects of the applicant’s home situation, serves the function of teaching the official about his home situation in an attempt at filling some crucial pretextual differences and (b) the explanatory mode that is required to prove that one really comes from or belongs to the country or organization one claims to come from or belong

102

Katrijn Maryns

to. In other words, on the one hand the applicant needs to instruct the official about his home situation in order to avoid misinterpretation, on the other hand the official acts as if he knows that much about the applicant’s home situation as to be able to determine national origin. The tension between experiential narration on the one hand and the requirement of factual detail and a particular meta-discursive format on the other, develops into a serious argument between the applicant and the official, an argument that even threatens to overshadow the actual purpose of the information exchange. Probably one of the most striking differences between the interview at the DVZ and the one at the CGVS, is the required level of accuracy. Definitely, both interviews are very demanding for the applicant, yet in different ways. In the first interview it is mainly the task of narrating which is demanding for the applicant because the official has very little preknowledge about the socio-cultural and political situation of Cameroon. In this respect, the official predominantly focuses his attention on a correct interpretation of the given information all of which requires from the applicant an enormous amount of contextualization work. Just because this task of accurately reflecting upon the given account is in itself already a very demanding activity, little additional information is being asked for. The main purpose of the second interview on the other hand, is not merely the narration of the events, but also the presentation of the events against an accurately documented context. The official is familiar with some of the basics of socio-political and cultural life in the applicant’s home country and therefore he can pay more attention to precision and detail. The following extract represents a good example of this requirement of detail in the second interview. The official wants the applicant to describe his membership card of the SDF. The official folds a piece of paper that he will then use as an imaginary membership card on the basis of which the applicant is supposed to explain what his own card looked like. Extract 21 (1) I: Can you describe me your membership card … can you describe it to me . how how did it look like .. (2) AS: xx (3) I: was it . like this with a front and a back side . or was it (4) AS: about this (5) I: was it double folded (6) AS: yeah yeah like that like that (7) I: like this

Text Trajectories

(8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (19) (20) (21) (22)

(23)

(24) (25) (26) (27) (28)

(29) (30) (31) (32) (33) (34) (35) (36) (37) (38)

103

AS: uhum I: or was it a booklet AS: no no as those like that I: just like this AS: yeah yeah .. I: ok .. can you .. was it always like this .. with every card . or . did they change .. at a certain time AS: no n no like that like that I: always like this AS: yeah I: hum ……. can yo describe me what was on the front AS: now uurm this front you have the the the the the name of the party SDF both French and English I: uhum As: and just you have urm SDF I: **** … AS: Social Democratic Front both French and English .. then you have urm …… you have a a balance urm a balance kilo . that has been drawn there .. urm here ((shows on comparable card folded by the interviewer)) .. at the centre I: uhum hold on a little bit . so so I can urm write down .******* ***************************************************** ok there was a balance AS: kilo I: kilo AS: you see this hold like they draw here .. this hold like this the kilo was inside . weighing the same . a balanced . kilo .. I: balanced kilo … AS: then there is the kilo on top of urm urm a pot where they urm …… put food like this … that ‘s the here urm support .. for the whole .. then the kilo on top .. that is where you food food they are put I: uhum AS: uhum .. then the colour of the the the uurm the this thing .. I: ************** AS: grey white or white grey that is colour x I: ************ uhum . this is the front side or is there anything else AS: no that’s just all about it I: so when you open it AS: there are your names I: on the left side AS: your date of BIRTH .. date of birth your name xx

104

(39) (40) (41) (42) (43) (44) (45) (46) (47) (48) (49) (50) (51) (52) (53) (54) (55) (56) (57) (58) (59) (60)

(61)

(62) (63) (64) (65) (66) (67) (68) (69) (70) (71)

Katrijn Maryns

I: on the left side AS: yeah yeah ye yeah date of birth your name .. I:************ . name . date of birth . other things AS: yeah name the date of birth .. the province .. the province this side I: ************** AS: of where you stay I: sorry AS: the province this side … I: tell me becau we have to be complete hen so your name is mentioned on the left and your date of birth AS: birth aha I: anything else . is there anything else mentioned on the left side AS: when you still open you get the slogan of the party SDF that is the up yeah x up the upper part I: on the whole AS: urm yea I: on both sides AS: yes yes I: you see the slogan is mentioned here . on on the inside AS: yeah I: on one side or on both sides AS: here the slogan I: or does it . keep on AS: here the slogan . behind the slogan .. then now you had your name .. your three names . or your two names your date of birth where you are staying ….. I: *********************************************** so the slogan . your name your birth date of birth … where you are staying . urm and your province … AS: ur those not not but this one this side .. not whe born in Bamenda hen I: = province . is on the right side AS: yeah on this side ………… I: so here is the slogan too AS: yeah slogan slogan I: the province ….. anything else (*****) AS: yeah I just put down street … they want Corner Street here then here normally Bamenda north west province x are the same I:= where you are staying it’s also mentioned . on the right .. AS: Corner Street I: uhum .. then

Text Trajectories

(72) (73) (74) (75) (76) (77) (78) (79) (80) (81) (82) (83) (84) (85) (86) (87) (88) (89) (90) (91) (92) (93) (94) (95) (96) (97) (98) (99) (100) (101) (102) (103) (104) (105) (106)

105

AS:= they want Corner Street here I: uhum AS: then ……. North west north west Bamenda . north west province I: uhum .. so on the left there’s only .. AS: =your name your name I: your name and your date of birth AS: birth yeah I: uhum …. ********************************************* and on the back side AS: no no just just nothing the very the this thing behind nothing I: nothing yeah . and the slogan AS: the colour colour . it is look like all of x ….. here here here here . xxxxxxxx I: hen AS: here why they put is most of the slogan …let it . really come into your mind I: uhum so on the front front side the slogan AS: = the slogan of SDF I: =x or what. SDF or AS: S D F Social Democratic Party I: uhum AS: both French and English I: uhum AS: yeah I: that is AS: both French and English both French and English yeah this is both French and English .. I: ** ****** but didn’t you tell me that the urm sl ….. ah the MOTTO it w it’s not the motto AS: hen I: power for the people and equal opportunity AS: yeah I: is that mentioned somewhere on the card AS: do you ask me on the motto place of the motto on the card I: uhum but is that is that mentioned somewhere on the card AS: urm peace for fatherland …….. peace for fatherland urm I: what is urm peace work fatherland ……… here AS: yeah that urm yeah the one that wa that urm that is power of the people and equal opportunity I: uhum AS: when we on the rally

106

Katrijn Maryns

(107) I: uhum (108) AS: hen .. yes the the the chairman will shout power . to the people and equal then we will say . ‘and equal opportunity’ (109) I: uhum and is is that mentioned somewhere on the card (110) AS: no no no no no (111) I: no (112) AS: xxx you are supposed to ok (113) I: aha .. so the slogan is … social democratic front (114) AS: front hen SDF (115) I: uhum .. and that is mentioned on . every side of the membership (116) AS: =yeah on all all all all of it .. even their flags is there anything . of the SDF yeah is there . even this urm this drawing .. that box . they write it there small small . they xx small small this urm kilogram here like this . (117) I: and where is it then .. is this all over the card (118) AS: no no no no (119) I: or just on the front (120) AS: the kilogram is . behind here (121) I: haha . (122) AS: yah (123) I: and the slogan that is mentioned .. on every side is (124) AS: yes (125) I: Social Democratic Front (126) AS: Social Democratic front .. both French and English.......... ……………………………… (127) I: ***************************** and on the back side there is only the slogan . Social Democratic Front (128) AS: yeah then the flag .. and urm . the kilo ….. (129) I: the flag and the kilo (130) AS: uhum … (131) I: is also on the back (132) AS: yes nothing again (133) I: sorry (134) AS: nothing again …..nothing again ((laughs)) you have the name of our country . (135) I: uhum (136) AS: xxx the Republic of Cameroon (137) I: uhum (138) AS: yes (139) I: yes . but when you say nothing again . what do you mean (140) AS: here I mean this here here ((shows on paper)) . they draw this very kilo here

Text Trajectories

(141) (142) (143) (144) (145) (146) (147) (148) (149) (150) (151) (152) (153) (154) (155) (156) (157) (158) (159) (160) (161) (162) (163) (164) (165) (166) (167) (168) (169) (170) (171) (172) (173) (174) (175) (176) (177)

107

I: on the back side AS: yeah ok I: together with urm the flag AS: SDF .. the flag is ever the flag across like this ……………… I: on the whole AS: like this yeah I: on the whole back AS: yeah … the the a green white flag ……. across across it go across again .. green … white . all I:= which part is green and which part is white ((using that imagined card)) . this is the the front side hen .. AS: no .. let me let me let me show you like this I: uhum AS: you (bend) it like this I: uhum .. AS: this is green from here .. green … white.. when you bend it like this . you have the green like this I: aha AS: ok … go across . across …. yeah … across across like this I: uhum AS: this is the green ….. white I: so all this . is green . and all this . is white AS: = is white yeah ………………………………………… I: like this AS: yeah yeah yeah ….. I: and AS: also also . that is just the flag .. the flag of the party . I: and then .. AS: no not behind . behind I: only behind AS: yeah …. ok I: so and on the back side .. again . there is the slogan .. and … this balanced kilo AS: yeah yeah … I: together with the flag .. on the AS: = NO THE FLAG COVER THE WHOLE THING I: well yeah because because it’s covering the whole thing AS: yeah I: it’s it’s AS: the flag cover the whole thing I: ************* ******************** and urm SDF has always issued membership cards like this .. all the membership cards you had were like this .

108

Katrijn Maryns

(178) (179) (180) (181) (182)

AS: hen I: all the membership cards you had AS: that ‘s no tha that’s how that’s how the card I: uhum AS: yeah …

The data speak for themselves: the interviewer wants a complete reconstruction of what the SDF membership card looks like, i.e. a detailed description of where to find what verbal (letter words, slogans and abbreviations) and non-verbal (colours, symbols, logo and font) information on the card. This interview technique, however, raises a number of questions. A first question is to what extent the applicant may be assumed to be able to provide such a minuscule information about his membership card (turn 47: ‘we have to be complete hen so your name is mentioned on the left and your date of birth’). I just imagine that if I would be asked the same questions about my identity card or my driving license, I definitely would have problems providing a complete picture of what belongs where. Even if one carries the cards for years, it is not inconceivable that one is able to recall no more than some basic features (name, gender, place and date of birth, picture, nationality). Still, on the basis of the assessment report, it becomes clear that this kind of detailed descriptions serves as one of the main criteria for determining credibility. The fact that the applicant is not able to give a complete and correct description of his membership cards (SDF and SCNC) raises doubts about his actual membership of these parties and this is eventually used as one of the main arguments in the rejection of the case (cf. section 1.3.7.). Second, I want to focus on the complex interplay between two basic ingredients of the asylum application interview, viz. the institutional requirement of detail on the one hand and the problem of linguistic resources on the other. First, the expression and interpretation of accurate and nuanced statements requires a particular level of linguistic proficiency. In this case, the interview is conducted in English, yet neither of the participants in the interaction speaks English as a first language. The applicant for instance clearly struggles to find the right words to describe the logo of his organization: then you have urm …… you have a a balance urm a balance kilo . that has been drawn there .. urm here.. at the centre (…) you see this hold like they draw here .. this hold like this the kilo was inside . weighing the same . a balanced . kilo .. (…) then there is the kilo on top of urm urm a pot where they urm …… put food like this … that ‘s the here

Text Trajectories

109

urm support .. for the whole .. then the kilo on top .. that is where you food food they are put

Even a detailed description of basic concepts can become really difficult because of the limitations imposed by the language in which it has to be done. Problems with language proficiency also give rise to quite serious misunderstandings. After all, in order to discuss the organization of political parties particular distinctions need to be made: the name of the party (abbreviation versus letter word), the slogan (motto), the symbol (logo). In this extract, it is the word ‘slogan’ that gives rise to confusion: As: here why they put is most of the slogan …let it . really come into your mind I: uhum so on the front front side the slogan As:= the slogan of SDF I: =x or what. SDF or AS: S D F Social Democratic Party

The official and the applicant use the word ‘slogan’ with a different meaning. Whereas the official makes the distinction between the name versus the slogan or motto of the party, the applicant uses the word ‘slogan’ to refer to the letter word Social Democratic Front, a term that he uses to mark the distinction with the abbreviation ‘SDF’ (table 2):

Social Democratic Front

Power for the people and equal opportunity

Official

name

slogan/ motto

Applicant

slogan

motto

Table 2. Slogan versus motto

Second, the data show how the English language does not satisfy as a lingua franca for the intercultural exchange of detailed information. The interference of elements from endogenous language(s) at various levels of linguistic structuring (phonetic, syntactic, lexical) seriously complicates the exchange of detailed information and gives rise to misunderstandings. The preposition ‘for’ in the applicant’s African English pronunciation of the motto of his party (‘peace for fatherland’) is interpreted as a verb (‘work’) by the interviewer (turn 103).

110

Katrijn Maryns

Moreover, at certain points in the description, the applicant switches to his local African variety of English to express himself. It is a switch that serves an explanatory- persuasive function: I: aha .. so the slogan is … social democratic front As: front hen SDF I: uhum .. and that is mentioned on . every side of the membership As: =yeah on all all all all of it .. even their flags is there anything . of the SDF yeah is there . even this urm this drawing .. that box . they write it there small small . they xx small small this urm kilogram here like this

The use of African-English expressions such as “small small” helps the applicant to highlight the gist of what he wants to convey: basic information such as the abbreviation, the flag and the symbol are mentioned on every side of the card. In short, the requirement of detail and the use of English as a lingua franca here are two aspects that are very hard to accommodate. Yet, as the analysis of the assessment report will show, the kind of misunderstandings emanating from this clash between production and expectation has serious consequences for the eventual decision-making process.

1.3.3 Motivation questions The third and longest part of the interview focuses on the applicant’s narrative of escape and his motivation for seeking asylum in Belgium. It is the section in which the applicant is supposed to ‘tell his story’. Yet, as the analysis will show, instances of experiential narration are actually very scarce. Although at this point, one would expect the experiential narrative to occupy a central place in the interaction, it turns out to be overshadowed by some recurring points of discussion about (a) the required level of factual detail and (b) the required level of meta-discursive consistency. Therefore it is my intention to analyse the third part of the interview from this particular perspective of metadiscursive framing. At least three different though closely related aspects of meta-discursive framing that have already been touched upon in the course of the analysis, will be elaborately dealt with here: – –

the problem of consistency between the first and the second interview; the problem of the required explanatory mode;

Text Trajectories

–

111

the clash between experiential narration and the demand for accuracy and detail;

and a detailed discussion of these problems leads to the ultimate research question: is the applicant eventually given the chance to tell his story? In correspondence with my analysis of the first interview at the DVZ, the fragments selected for the analysis of the interview at the CGVS will be situated within the larger frame of the applicant’s account (the extracts are taken from the sections in italics). Let me return to the schematic representation of the account that I have provided in section 1.2.2: October 1992: demonstration at the time of presidential elections (arrest) May 1994: signature referendum (arrest) 1997-98: problems he prefers not to talk about (arrests) December 1999: main problem that made him leave Cameroon
Setting and provocation: the hoisting of the flag






Arrest at his compound The cell Event with boy Army Camp Hospital Bamenda Escape from the Army Camp Hospital









Arrest on the road The cell Event with politician Bamenda General Hospital Escape from Bamenda General Hospital The boy who helped him contact his uncle in Tiko


Belgium

Just as it was the case for the first interview at the DVZ, the applicant’s account can be subdivided into a set of narrative events or episodes. Yet, there are a few differences between the two interviews: –

–

the problems of 1997-98 (highlighted in bold) have not been talked about during the first interview (cf. discussion about the problem of consistency between the two interviews). whereas at the DVZ, the applicant presents the events according to a

112

Katrijn Maryns

particular order of relevance (the most relevant events, the events of 1999 that immediately lead up to his escape, are presented first, before those of 1992 and 1994), the organization of his account at the CGVS is strictly chronological (cf. discussion following next about the problem of consistency between the two interviews).

The problem of consistency between the first and the second interview One of the central points of discussion in the interview is the question about relevance, i.e. about what particular information to include in the explanatory account. It is no coincidence that this argument culminates in the third section of the interview for this section explicitly focuses on the applicant’s narrative of escape and the problems that made him leave his country. Already from the very beginning of this section, there is confusion about what problems to talk about. Even the phrasing of the question in itself is already ambiguous for the applicant: Extract 22 (1) I: Can you explain me now . starting with . the beginning of your problems .. all of your problems why you left your country …………………… (2) AS: why I’d left my country or the problem that also had (3) I:= all the problems . starting like I said in a chrono chronological way (4) AS: ok . not .. (5) I: not the last one urm the big first problem (6) AS: yeah because uurm with my first interview I start with the last one that brought me here .. when they ask any problem again I go . (7) I: uhum (8) AS: I go to the … (9) I: but that’s no problem . we’ll talk about all the problems (10) AS: hum (11) I: so (12) AS: explain xx (13) I:= starting with the first one (14) AS: uhum … ok (15) I: and then .. continue .. For the applicant, the expression ‘all of your problems why you left your country’ is almost a contradiction in terms: the applicant had many problems, yet not all of them are immediately related to his escape. So for the applicant the request implies two separate questions that cannot

Text Trajectories

113

be answered as one: one option is to talk about all his political problems, whether or not these problems made him leave his home country, a second option is that he confines himself to the political problems that are immediately related to his escape (turn 2: ‘why I’d left my country or the problem that also had …’). The interviewer emphasizes that it is important to talk about all the problems in a chronological order. At this point, the applicant refers to his first interview and as such he implicitly expresses his desire for consistency between the two interviews. Two particular requirements of the second interview, however, make it very difficult for the applicant to live up to this desire: (a) the order of narration and (b) the narration of problems that are not related to his escape. The first point of discussion concerns the order of narrating the events that led to his escape. The applicant refers back to the interview at the DVZ and states that it was the order of importance rather than the chronological order of the events that made him structure his account (first he explained the main problems he had in 1999, then he mentioned his problems in ’92 and ’94). In this respect, the applicant repeatedly expresses his intention to start the account with the immediate cause of his escape and then after explaining this, to refer back to the two minor problems he had before. The interviewer keeps on insisting and the applicant gives in: he starts with the political problems that he had in 1992, then he moves on with the problems of 1994. After having finished the account of 1994, the applicant proposes to continue with the problem that actually made him leave his country, viz. the problem that started with his arrest in December 1999. This is where the interaction again lapses into the seemingly endless discussion about the account of one particular problem, viz. the problem that he had in 1997: Extract 23 (1) I: **************************** uhum .. so we can urm . I think we can continue .. oh . yes …. we can continue now ……. we can continue with the .. next problem .. (2) AS: now we finish with 1990 (3) I: we finish with 1994 (4) AS: uhum … x now we’re going to .. what brought me here...... ……………..... (5) I: uhum (6) AS: that is urm .. urm … December 1999 … the 30th of December 1999 (7) I: uhum … *******… (8) AS: ok ………………….. .. yeah hen

114

(9)

(10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (19) (20)

(21) (22) (23)

(24) (25)

(26) (27) (28)

Katrijn Maryns

I: did anything happen . between . 94 and . the 30th of December 99 …. did you have any problems between . 94 and the third . the 30th the 30th December 94 99 AS: yeah yeah . yes . in 97 1997 I: uhum .. what kind of problems AS: yeah they they they they they . no WHY I don’t want to say that because I don’t say it in my first interview I: uhum AS: yes because … I: but in my AS: but excuse me . when I say the first . interview .. I I talk I started in 1990 . what brought me here . I: uhum AS: he aks me .. I:= I know because I have AS: = whether I have another problem . excuse me . whether I have another problem I say the one of SDF and I say the one of SCNC 1994 .then we were going passed through .. aha . then . finally I say . I don’t say the one of urm 1997 .. but I have problem but I don’t say it because ..what brought me here was what . 199 ‘ I: uhum AS: 1999 I: I unders I understand and I ‘ve written it down . also but let me explain why I want to know all of your problems hen . because .we have to have a complete story with . all of the problems you had that’s why I asked . urm about the x you did and and you’re your profession and things like that . I don’t I AS: = NO you ASK xxx I:= I want to know everything about you hen I I have to know all your problems . and . because of the fact that you have said now . that you didn’t tell it the last time . I’ve written down that you didn’t tell the problems of 97 and 98 … on your first interview . but that does not mean . that you have to tell them to me hen that you can’t tell them to me . you don’t have to worry about urm the fact that you didn’t tell them the AS: = yeah because urm why why I’m talking about . I don’t want to mix up things you now I: uhum AS: when you take my file to see mix up things not urm I mean is not good urm . because I don’t I because when I was even telling urm . cause he was there too hum my my the person that was interviewing me too .. say got tired got tired . x to my head I don’t I speak gently . she was there hen ((points to R))

Text Trajectories

(29) (30) (31) (32)

(33) (34) (35) (36)

(37) (38) (39) (40) (41) (42) (43) (44) (45) (46) (47) (48) (49) (50) (51) (52) (53) (54) (55) (56) (57) (58) (59) (60)

115

I: uhum .. AS: taping it too I: uhum AS: so I don’t I don’t I I don’t think that will make a mix-up so I don’t want a mix-up .. is . you know thing that happen with me . I’ve the I’ve been saying nothing but the truth . because I can no leave my family . hen I: uhum AS: my wife .. my children .. I: *** so . but you have to tell me the problems between 97 and 98 …. because I want to know what what what kind of problems you had then .. ok .. but you if you want you can tell them in the end and we talk now about the 30th of December 99 . it’s like you want if you if you don’t want to . mix things up …….. AS: ha I: because … I I want to have a complete story . of all your problems .. you understand … AS: yeah I: so it’s important for me that I know about your problems in 97 and 98 ..even if you didn’t tell them the last time . that’s not important AS: uhum … I: the important thing is that I know all your problems .. AS: yeah I: you understand AS: yeah I: uhum AS: ok … I: I propose . for it’s easier … if you do it chronologically AS: = NO IF I:= but if you AS: = YEAH NO NO IF YOU I:= if you want to do it AS: = NO NO LOOk urm excuse me please I: uhum AS: no what I’m saying is . I don’t want to mix up with my file . that’s my problem I: uhum AS: I had problem in my country I: uhum As: I’ve been tortured I: uhum

116

(61) (62) (63) (64) (65) (66) (67) (68)

(69) (70) (71) (72)

(73) (74) (75) (76) (77) (78) (79) (80) (81) (82) (83) (84) (85) (86) (87) (88)

(89)

Katrijn Maryns

AS: because when in 1997 I can say it . but .but when I say it is mix up with my file .. you see . you mix up things that is I:= because you didn’t tell it the last time AS: = yeah so I don’t want to I: = that’s what I’m saying here to you AS: = I don’t want to mix up things no . xxxxxx . I don’t now what I’m saying I: uhum AS: that is not good like that ok I: it’s for you because you don’t have to worry about the fact that if you tell things that you didn’t tell the other time . it will be used AGAINST you . because .of you told if you tell me I didn’t tell him the last time that’s no problem AS: = I think they better they better .just (shoot) to .. 19 urm 1999 . what brought me here I: uhum … and then AS: uuurm but I can do . that is because xx of my family .. I: and then in the end you tell me your problems about 97 and 98 .. ok ……… and then after . we discussed the problems in 99 you tell me about the problems in 97 and 98 .. AS: NO if you ask me about the problem of 19 97 .. 97 I: uhum AS: I tell you that is mix up my file so let’s just go I:= yeah but yes AS: = let’s just go us STRAIGHT I: I understand AS: on ninety … because I won’t say anything concerned the 19 the 19 the 97 and 98 because it I: yeah AS: it will mix my file please I: it will not . that’s what I was trying to say to you .. it will not mix up your file . because you can trust me . if I say you AS:= nono I think no no I:= because of AS: = please please I:= let me let me continue and urm . finish my my point . because . it is important that you tell all your problems to me .you understand AS: = yeah yes I:= and because of the fact . that you told me . and I’ve written it down . that you did not tell . the problems of 97 and 98 in the other interview that is no problem . it’s more important that I know of ALL your problems AS: = yeah excuse me . do you know something urm … I just like .

Text Trajectories

(90) (91) (92) (93) (94) (95) (96) (97) (98) (99) (100)

(101) (102) (103) (104) (105)

(106) (107) (108) (109)

117

to come to plain and say . I do not say this .. there’s not somebody .. pushing me .to say that I no say . that . the thing that happened in 1997 . because in 1997 we have a x we have diseases but I don’t want to say it I don’t want that’s not the thing that push me here I: uhum AS: hen .. so I just want to say all what happened I: uhum AS: that . finally . urm I come here and find myself here I: uhum AS: to come and take asylum here .. so I won’t concern the 1997 I de and I will no say . concerning please I: *********************** have you been arrested in this period AS: 1999 or I: before 99 and after 94 ….. AS: hum hum I: because that’s important hen … you see .. I keep insisting I know .. but we’ll talk about it later on . I’ll talk about your lawyer .. I’ll talk with your lawyer about it AS: why do why do why do push me there I: uhum .. I don’t want to push me AS: no why you push me there I: the person . the the most important thing here for me to know . is all your problems AS: = no yeah I had the problem . and why I .why you see you see I’m still insisting because I do not say it .. I’m not a child . I have the problem. I can no start and saying the type of problem that I had since the day that I was born to .. today . no I just speak what brought me here . is the person that ask me .. what happened . I’d no have some problem I I first I said x about the problem at first . and not starting with that one . with the 1992 and then 94 I just go . straight to what brought me here I: uhum AS: yeah I: ok all right . I will not longer insist AS: I’d now start to what brought me here I’d now start to to what had happened in 92 . if you see my things I start . with 99 . before . he asked me . I’d no have any problem I tell him . 92 and 94 I x … and . if it not he . xxx because xx each year was different .. so I mean that I maybe I xxx I don’t want to . bring a mix-up hen . I don’t want to bring a mix-up yes .. because when I started I started with what brought me here .. I said what brought me here in 19 ..1999 December 1999 ..

118

Katrijn Maryns

The basic problem is one of anticipating the interrelationship between the different stages of investigation making up the procedure. The official’s treatment of the interview as independent from the previous one at the DVZ clashes with the applicant’s assumption of interdependence. This could be seen as yet another pretextual difference between the applicant and the official, a gap that is not immediately related to socio-cultural differences but turns out to be a matter of accessibility to bureaucratic norms of textual appropriateness. Table 3 schematizes the discussion between the applicant, who argues against the idea of talking about the problem of ’97, and the official, who argues for a full account:

Consistency

The applicant: CONTRA

The official's response: PRO

wants to provide a similar account as the one he presented at the DVZ:

wants to stress the independence of this interview from the previous one + explicit reference in the report about the fact that the applicant did not mention this problem before, has to rule out the argument of 'inconsistency between the interviews' in the final evaluation of the case:

tll""