Philosophical remarks on the asylum request interviews

Abstract

In this paper, we intend to demonstrate that the asylum request process can have its semantic and politic structures evidenced from an access via philosophy of language. In order to elucidate the normative nature of this social practice and to take a critical stance in relation to the treatment given to the refuge interview as it has been done in our country, we resort to certain concepts developed by the so called later Wittgenstein (as, for example, the concepts of rule and language game). Looking for a more complete treatment of our object of study, we also turn to the authors of Bakhtin’s Circle, which explore communicational dimensions that the Viennese philosopher did not properly explore –  with special emphasis on “value accents”.  In order to collect empirical evidence relevant to our purposes, a field research was carried out with professionals and volunteers involved in the asylum request interviews. The resulting reports provided us with more basis for the considerations we make about the normative fragility of the interview language game and the intricate value system that guides the interaction between interviewer (Eligibility Officer), interpreter and interviewee (asylum seeker).