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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Asylum procedure and narrative strategies in France
| Panel |
8. Refugees and the Law in Europe
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| Paper ID | 619 |
| Author(s) |
D'halluin, Estelle
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | Since borders have been closed to labour immigration and a deterency asylum policy has been implemented, asylum seekers are more and more suspected by the State and, more generally, by the French society. The refugee status has become a rare resource and claimants have to struggle to convince institutions of the veracity of their discourse. In order to obtain the refugee legal status, asylum seekers have to conform to institutional categories of French bureaucracy. How to prove a past when you have no empirical evidence ? Narrative is at the core of the procedure so that we can analyse the administrative procedure as a strategic argumentative game in which asylum seekers competence and networks are mobilized. I analyse the way asylum seekers, helped by NGO's workers, try to produce a performative narrative to obtain their status and how they work on their "voice". To understand what is at stake in those narrative strategies, we will analyse fieldworks data collected in French NGO that care for asylum seekers.
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