Asylum seekers who go through the complex, legal-administrative procedure of applying for international protection in Belgium have reported feelings of uncertainty (Fedasil 2018). In this regard, the UN refugee agency has critqued how asylum lawyers fail to consistently provide asylum seekers with clear information about their procedural prospects (UNHCR 2019). My research project, based on linguistic-ethnographic fieldwork at asylum law firms resulting in 72 audio-recordings of legal consultations, aims to scrutinise this claim by investigating how legal information is communicated during counselling interactions between asylum lawyers and their clients (Jacobs 2022). The analysis reveals that lawyers often explicitly verbalise the way in which the legal framework as well as the procedure around asylum entails a level of uncertainty. Lawyers are thus providing clients with accurate information yet not with the type of information that offers clarity. In communicating the fact that there are little procedural guarantees (something which is backed by scholarly research that argues how asylum law is ever-changing and how institutional decision-making can be considered quite arbitrary – Gill & Good 2019), lawyers aim to be upfront yet empathetic. This discursively challenging balancing act takes the shape of hedged statements about procedural developments and meta-pragmatic framing of the unpredictable character of the asylum procedure. The communication of uncertainty also impacts the lawyer-client relation: the fact that lawyers acknowledge the limits of their own epistemic authority, renders the legal consultation into a democratic and collaborative discursive space.
Fedasil (2018). Kwetsbare personen met specifieke opvangnoden.
Gill, N., & Good, A. (2019). Asylum determination in Europe: Ethnographic perspectives. Springer Nature.
Jacobs, M. (2022). Language, legal counselling and asylum: A linguistic ethnography of immigration law firms in Belgium. Ghent University Press.
UNHCR (2019). Juridische Begeleiding van verzoekers om internationale Bescherming in België.
