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When a person applies for asylum in the Netherlands, doubts may arise regarding the nationality, regional origin or ethnic background of the applicant, in particular when he cannot show any documents to prove his claims. In such cases, the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service can offer the applicant the opportunity to dispel these doubts by means of a language analysis. In a language analysis, the linguistic output of the applicant is analysed, as well as his geographical and cultural knowledge, in order to determine whether or not the applicant can be traced to the language and cultural community in his claimed place of origin. The outcome of the language analysis can be a crucial element in a government's decision to grant asylum or not. Language analysis is part of asylum procedures in a number of countries in Europe and elsewhere, including The Netherlands.

When an applicant disagrees with the outcome of a language analysis, he has the right to have a contra-expertise (second opinion) carried out by an independent organisation or expert, at his own cost. De Taalstudio is an independent linguistic company that offers such contra-expertises carried out by professional linguists.

In this presentation I will discuss the use of language analysis in the Dutch asylum procedure and some of the concerns that linguists have raised about the quality and reliability of such analyses. These concerns relate mainly to the complexity of the language phenomena involved: mutli-lingualism, language attitudes, and the scarcity of descriptive studies of certain languages.

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Individuals with varying types of language expertise - linguists with academic credentials, interpreters with different levels of qualification, native speakers with few or no academic qualifications - are increasingly involved, in different configurations, in the determination of national, regional or ethnic origins of refugees as part of the asylum process (Eades 2005). There has been considerable controversy over the role that language experts and linguistic expertise should play in this process. Attempts to draw up a minimum set of standards (Language and National Origin Group, 2004), though widely endorsed by linguists, are still preliminary and have been contested in proceedings. While each host nation differs in its practices, a common solution for governments is to employ a commercial language firm, such as Sprakab (based in Sweden), who collect speech over the telephone, analyse it, and provide a report within a few hours. These reports may then be relied upon by bodies such as the UK Asylum & Immigration Tribunal in deciding asylum claims.

This paper considers related issues, illustrated with data drawn from recent cases of Somali appellants in the UK asylum process. Somali appeals cases are distinctive: there is rarely disagreement as to whether the applicant speaks a language natively that is characteristically spoken in Somalia - indeed, it is generally granted that the applicant has Somali origins. Rather, the issue at stake is often membership of a minority and persecuted clan, of which the ability to speak the relevant minority dialect of Somali - Af-Reer Hamar - is held to be an index. This focuses the language issues on a set of questions including the following:

o What does it mean to be bi-dialectal? Do linguistically-naïve actors in the asylum process make valid assumptions about multilingualism?

o Why do speakers switch between standard languages & stigmatized minority dialects? What consequences do such language choices have for the asylum process? What effects do the language-testing context have on these choices?

o What effect do language attitudes and ideologies have on the ability of actors in the asylum process to recognize, produce and label ways of speaking?

o How is determination of ethnic identity related to speech evidence?

o What types of analysis need to be undertaken to give accurate and reliable results? What standards of accuracy and reliability should be applied? What qualifications ought to be required of those claiming language expertise?

o What actual qualifications, types and levels of expertise are possessed by those now submitting evidence to the UKAIT process? Does practice meet international scientific standards? Does it match standards of expertise required in civil and criminal court processes in the UK?

Conclusions are drawn concerning the nature of expertise that is recommended for practitioners of language analysis.

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This article examines and compares the way in which human rights violations related to gender and sexual orientation are dealt with by the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (AIT) in England. Hence credibility assessment and subjectivity in the process of asylum decision-making are addressed. More specifically, the present paper analyses the reasons-giving in the asylum decision-making process at the appeal level in gender and sexual orientation related claims, uncovering in particular the subjective variables at play. The article concludes on the basis of the literature and the decisions examined that, in most cases, the assessment of the appellants' credibility in gender and sexual orientation related asylum claims is intimately related to the presiding judges' perception of the veracity of the appellants' sexuality, or to the judge's considerations on how the appellants ought to physically and socially behave as a male or female and/or convey their sexuality if returned to their country of origin. In addition, in both situations, and more often than not, international legal instruments and / or principles are of little relevance for a decision-making process that due to the very nature of the claims has to rely heavily on credibility assessments - of one's individuality or of one's collective belonging.

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