Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online 2025-12
Between ‘I’ and ‘They’: Distributing Authorship for Evidence-Making: How Asylum Lawyers Construct Credible Accounts Before the French Court of Asylum Law
Lawyers who represent asylum seekers in the French Court (CNDA) face the critical issue of ‘credibility’ on a daily basis. Drawing on legal advice meetings and court hearing sequences, I show how they navigate the tension between applicants’ natural storytelling and the legal framework's demand for consistency. I demonstrate that lawyers possess a ‘professional vision’ that enables them to distribute authorship between the applicants and themselves. On the one hand, the applicant is expected to deliver a genuine account in “I”. But they should also attempt not to defeat judges’ background assumptions. To this end, the lawyer familiarizes their client with this practical “know-how” using suggestion rather than explanation. On the other hand, judges suspiciously address self-identification in typical cases. The lawyer speaking in “they” in their defense speech allows them to rearticulate the applicant's personal reasons into a legal category.
BranniganALynchM (1987) Credibility as an interactional accomplishment. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography16(2): 115–146.
2.
ByrneR (2007) Assessing testimonial evidence in asylum proceedings: guiding standards from the international criminal tribunals. International Journal of Refugee Law19(4): 609–638.
3.
CarrES (2010) Enactments of expertise. Annual Review of Anthropology39(1): 17–32.
4.
CarverN (2014) Displaying genuineness: cultural translation in the drafting of marriage narratives for immigration applications and appeals. Families, Relationships and Societies3(2): 271–286.
5.
CNDA (2023) 2022 Activity Report.
6.
DequenJP (2013) Constructing the refugee figure in France: ethnomethodology of a decisional process. International Journal of Refugee Law25(3): 449–469.
7.
D’HondtS (2014) Defending through disaffiliation: the vicissitudes of alignment and footing in Belgian criminal hearings. Language & Communication36: 68–82.
8.
D’HondtS (2021) Habiller l’espace rituel de la salle d’audience. Catégorisations scéniques dans les audiences pénales de première instance en belgique. Revue Interdisciplinaire D’études Juridiques86(2): 189–209.
9.
DupretB (2001) L’intention en acte. Approche pragmatique de la qualification pénale dans un contexte égyptien. Droit et Sociétés48(2): 439–465.
10.
DupretB (2016) Adjudication in Action: An Ethnomethodology of Law, Morality and Justice. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate.
11.
EmersonRM (1983) Holistic effects in social control decision-making. Law & Society Review17(3): 425–455.
12.
FassinDd’HalluinE (2005) The truth from the body: medical certificates as ultimate evidence for asylum seekers. American Anthropologist107(4): 597–608.
13.
FassinDd’HalluinE (2007) Critical evidence: the politics of trauma in French asylum policies. Ethos (Berkeley, Calif )35(3): 300–329.
14.
FassinDKobelinskyC (2012) Comment on juge l’asile: l’institution comme agent moral. Revue Française de Sociologie53(4): 657–688.
15.
GarfinkelH (1959) Common sense knowledge of social structures. A paper distributed at the Session on the Sociology of Knowledge, Fourth World Congress of Sociology, Stresa, Italy, September 12, 1959. Siegen: Universität Siegen: SFB 1187 Medien der Kooperation 2019 (SFB 1187 Medien der Kooperation - Working Paper Series 11). DOI: 10.25969/mediarep/13805.
GoodwinC (1994) Professional vision. American Anthropologist96(3): 606–633.
18.
JacobsM (2022) The metapragmatics of legal advice communication in the field of immigration law. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA)32(4): 537–561.
19.
JacobsMMarynsK (2022) Managing narratives, managing identities: language and credibility in legal consultations with asylum seekers. Language in Society51(3): 375–402.
20.
JacquemetM (1996) Credibility in Court: Communicative Practices in the Camorra Trials. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
21.
KaganM (2003) Is truth in the eye of the beholder? Objective credibility assessment in refugee Status determination. Scholarly Works633: 367–415.
22.
KobelinskyC (2015) Judging intimacies at the French Court of Asylum. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 38(2): 338–355.
23.
KomterML (2020) Dilemmas in the Courtroom: A Study of Trials of Violent Crime in The Netherlands. New York: Routledge.
24.
LatourB (2010) The Making of Law: An Ethnography of the Conseil d’Etat. Cambridge, UK Malden, Massachusetts: Polity.
25.
LynchMBogenD (1996) The Spectacle of History. Speech, Text, and Memory at the Iran-contra Hearings. Durham: Duke University Press.
26.
PianA (2020) L’interprétariat à la cour nationale du droit d’asile : lorsque le récit est transporté par la parole d’un tiers. Terrains & Travaux36–37(1): 137–158.
27.
PolanyiM (1983) The Tacit Dimension. Gloucester: Peter Smith.
28.
ReynoldsJ (2020a) Investigating the language-culture nexus in refugee legal advice meetings. Multingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication39(4): 395–429.
29.
ReynoldsJ (2020b) Stability and hybridity in refugee legal advice meetings: discursive structure as a resource for lawyer-client intercultural communication”. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice15(1): 91–115.
30.
SchützA (1976) The problem of rationality in the social world. In: Collected papers II. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 64–88.
31.
Smith-KhanL (2021) I try not to be dominant, but i'm a lawyer!': advisor resources, context, and refugee credibility. Journal of Refugee Studies34(4): 3710–3733.
32.
SudnowD (1965) Normal crimes: sociological features of the penal code in a public defender office. Social Problems12(3): 255–276.
33.
SweeneyJA (2009) Credibility, proof and refugee law. International Journal of Refugee Law21(4): 700–726.
