“Winning a battle, but losing the war”: contested identities, narratives, and interaction in asylum interviews

Abstract

Drawing on how divergent discourse frames can lead to contests of how and what to tell in institutional autobiographical narration, this article presents data from a Norwegian asylum interview. Institutional interviewing is basically an information-sharing endeavor; the interviewer aims to get information on the situation of the interviewee in order to establish how to deal with his or her case, framing the discourse as truthful, in contrast to other discourses of innocence and morality. The outcome depends very much on the interviewee's ability and willingness to share relevant information on his or her case. The interactional dynamics of the interviews must be considered in order to achieve an understanding of what identities are constructed by the participants. Intertextuality plays an important role in the analysis. In the interplay between elicited accounts and interactional processes, meanings and identities are negotiated and resisted in narrative discourse as part of the encounter between the interviewing officer, the interpreter, and the asylum applicant, within the social practice of asylum procedures. Finally, the need for further in-depth analyses of such interviews is pointed out.