Lecture | This Time for Africa! series
Language Analysis in the Context of Asylum in the Netherlands, with a Focus on Africa
- Tina Cambier-Langeveld, Gerard Tolsma, Sjef van Lier
- Date
- Friday 20 June 2025
- Time
- Series
- This Time for Africa! series
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 2.27
Abstract
Language Analysis (LA) in the asylum procedure involves evaluating an asylum seeker’s spoken language to assess whether and to what extent it aligns with their claimed origin. In the Netherlands, the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) has employed LA since 1997, initially for Iraqi asylum seekers. The process includes a semi-structured interview recorded with an interpreter, later analyzed by a trained native speaker and a supervising linguist. Their findings are compiled into a report, which is legally valid and shared with the asylum seeker's legal representative.
LA has been debated intensely, and when linguists first become aware of its existence they often feel uneasy about this application of their field. We therefore begin the presentation by discussing the question whether it is unethical to perform such analyses in asylum cases, or whether it can be unethical not to do it.
We will highlight some cases pertaining claimed backgrounds from African origin, particularly focusing on methods for improvement of the assessment of cases from claimed Somali origins, with its diverse dialects and variants. We present the grammatical, lexical, and phonological features most commonly used in language analyses of Somali over the past 15 years, and aim to analyze their robustness over time. Also a specific case from a claimed origin in the Central African Republic will be discussed as an example case.
References
- Abdirachid, Mohamed Ismail (2011). "Dialectologie du somali: problématiques et perspectives." Paris: Institute National des Languages et Cultures Orientales (INALCO) dissertation.
- Braun, Angelika and Hermann Künzel (1998). "Is forensic speaker identification Unethical – or can it be unethical not to do it?" Forensic Linguistics 5, no. 1: 10-21.
- Cambier-Langeveld, Tina (2018). "Language analysis in the asylum procedure: consider the context." In I. M. Nick (ed.), Forensic linguistics: asylum-seekers, refugees and immigrants, Vernon Press, pp. 1-21.
- Cerulli, Enrico (1919). "Nota sui dialetti somali." Revista degli Studi Orientali 7, pp. 861-876.