The early part of the 21st century has been marked by widespread social upheaval and geographical displacement of people. This book examines how refugees, asylum-seekers, locals and professional refugee workers make sense of asylum and refuge in the context of current UK asylum policies.

The early part of the 21st century has been marked by widespread social upheaval and geographical displacement of people. This book examines how refugees, asylum-seekers, locals and professional refugee workers make sense of asylum and refuge in the context of current UK asylum policies.

Drawing on first-hand ethnographic data, field interviews with interpreters, interviewers and decision-makers, observations and off-record comments, The Asylum Speaker examines discursive processes in the asylum procedure and the impact these processes may have on the determination of refugee status. The book starts from the assumption that far-reaching legal decisions often have to be made on very limited grounds. Unable to submit any evidence to substantiate their case, the only chance that many asylum seekers have is to argue their case during the oral hearings with public officials at the different asylum agencies. Maryns investigates the performance of the asylum seeker during these interviews and analyzes the relationship between narrative structuring and gradations of linguistic competence. She explores a number of related questions: first, how the interaction between applicants and public officials proceeds; second, how this interaction forms the discursive input into long and complicated textual trajectories, and third, how the outcome of these discursive processes affects the assessment of asylum applications. Maryns demonstrates how propositional aspects play a crucial role in the asylum procedure whereas little attention is paid to narrative-linguistic diversity and multilingual speaker repertoires. Her analysis reveals how insufficient insight into the linguistic structure and narrative features of the asylum account often results in a deficient processing of important details.

This comprehensive, up-to-date volume reports on current practices and use of Language Analysis for the Determination of Origin (LADO). Readers will find chapters on how it is done, where it is used, how it is used, and learn about recent developments on the use of LADO reports in judicial practice, and current controversies in the field. LADO is a highly controversial topic, and a relatively new branch of forensic linguistics that is used by most European and some non-European governments. When asylum seekers cannot submit documentary proof of their origin, their language can be analysed in order to assess whether their linguistic profile is in accordance with their stated origin. Around 10,000 such language analyses take place annually. This volume is based on the series of meetings of the Language and Asylum Research Group held between 2010 and 2012 and convened by the editors, and offers a state-of-the art perspective from researchers, practitioners, policymakers and stakeholders working on or with LADO.

Winner of the 2000 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize 2002 finalist in poetry, Society of Midland Authors Quan Barry’s stunning debut collection has been compared to Sylvia Plath’s Ariel for the startling complexity of craft and the original sophisticated vision behind it. In these poems beauty is just as likely to be discovered on a radioactive atoll as in the existential questions raised by The Matrix. Asylum is a work concerned with giving voice to the displaced—both real and fictional. In "some refrains Sam would have played had he been asked" the piano player from Casablanca is fleshed out in ways the film didn’t allow. Steven Seagal, Yukio Mishima, Tituba of the Salem Witch Trials, and eighteenth-century black poet Phillis Wheatley also populate these poems. Barry engages with the world—the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, the legacy of the Vietnam war—but also tackles the broad meditative question of the individual’s existence in relation to a higher truth, whether examining rituals or questioning, "Where is it written that we should want to be saved?" Ultimately, Asylum finds a haven by not looking away.

Drawing on first-hand ethnographic data, field interviews with interpreters, interviewers and decision-makers, observations and off-record comments, The Asylum Speaker examines discursive processes in the asylum procedure and the impact these processes may have on the determination of refugee status. The book starts from the assumption that far-reaching legal decisions often have to be made on very limited grounds. Unable to submit any evidence to substantiate their case, the only chance that many asylum seekers have is to argue their case during the oral hearings with public officials at the different asylum agencies. Maryns investigates the performance of the asylum seeker during these interviews and analyzes the relationship between narrative structuring and gradations of linguistic competence. She explores a number of related questions: first, how the interaction between applicants and public officials proceeds; second, how this interaction forms the discursive input into long and complicated textual trajectories, and third, how the outcome of these discursive processes affects the assessment of asylum applications. Maryns demonstrates how propositional aspects play a crucial role in the asylum procedure whereas little attention is paid to narrative-linguistic diversity and multilingual speaker repertoires. Her analysis reveals how insufficient insight into the linguistic structure and narrative features of the asylum account often results in a deficient processing of important details.

Madeleine Roux's New York Times bestselling Asylum is a thrilling and creepy photo-illustrated novel that Publishers Weekly called "a strong YA debut that reveals the enduring impact of buried trauma on a place." For sixteen-year-old Dan Crawford, the New Hampshire College Prep program is the chance of a lifetime. Except that when Dan arrives, he finds that the usual summer housing has been closed, forcing students to stay in the crumbling Brookline Dorm. The dorm was formerly a sanatorium, more commonly known as an asylum. And not just any asylum—a last resort for the criminally insane. As Dan and his new friends Abby and Jordan start exploring Brookline's twisty halls and hidden basement, they uncover disturbing secrets about what really went on at Brookline . . . secrets that link Dan and his friends to the asylum's dark past. Because Brookline was no ordinary asylum, and there are some secrets that refuse to stay buried. Featuring found photographs from real asylums and filled with chilling mystery and page-turning suspense, Asylum is a horror story that treads the line between genius and insanity, perfect for fans of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Don't miss any of the books in the Asylum series, or Madeleine Roux's shivery fantasy series, House of Furies!