LANGUAGE TESTING OF
ASYLUM SEEKERS
Prof. Peter L. Patrick
Dept. of Language & Linguistics
and Human Rights Centre
University of Essex
17 Sept 2011
Language Day Conference for Teachers
Outline of the talk
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Asylum – a social and human rights problem…
…Thus, a problem for governments
A possible linguistic solution… but, does it work?
What do we know about languages?
So, who is a language expert?
Involvement of the linguistics profession
What can actually be achieved?
 Please ask Questions at ANY POINT
Pressure to Manage Asylum Flow
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Government concern for borders, control over population,
spread of conflict, economic selfishness of Haves, the
desire to regulate economic migration, leads to…
Attempt to manage/reduce flow of asylum seekers,
Selectively discriminate the categories & outcomes.
Search for way to serve these interests leads to (among
many other trends, policies, procedures) a range of
gate-keeping devices
Gate-keeping to Manage AS Flow
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Gate-keeping mechanisms employed by govts. to
assess claims of origin, weed out false ones
 Performed
in context of general governmental and public
disbelief or hostility to immigration & refugees –
UKBA “culture of hostility”
 Eg, belief most are economically motivated as opposed
to motivated by ‘well-founded fear of being persecuted’
 Bureaucratic pressures of cost, time, policy, caseload;
judged on efficiency, quantity (& results...), perception
.
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Effort to draft in the sciences to perform GK tasks
What evidence have we got?
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An asylum seeker who lacks documents presents two
main types of evidence:
 Her
body
Medical/physical evidence
 Her story
Linguistic evidence
 Incl. all interviews, recordings, statements, texts in process
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How does one assess such linguistic evidence?
What factors influence its production and use?
Who is qualified to perform assessment? Who does so?
What do RSD stakeholders need to know in order to
commission, evaluate & reliably use valid evidence?
Types of Gate-Keeping
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Physical:
 Fingerprints:
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Social/linguistic:
 Incl.
LADO
-- DNA:
Use of Gate-keeping Tools
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Tools for interpreting/ascribing identity, including
selective equation of language w/national identity
…in order to assess AS claims of origin, confirm true
ones, and weed out false ones.
Language assessment of asylum seekers:
 LADO
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(Language Analysis for Determination of Origin)
 (focus may be national, regional or ethnic origin)
Motivating assumption seems plausible to laypeople:
“Language reflects Citizenship” – “Linguistic Passport”
But: How valid and reliable is it, scientifically?
Who performs LADO for Govts.?
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Varies widely from one jurisdiction to another
Mediterranean nations do not use it: Spain, France, Italy, Greece
Swiss, Germans/Austria use (mostly) independent academic experts
Dutch BLT have own analysts, but buy from commercial agencies too
UK, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Sweden
have all used commercial analysis firms, e.g.
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Eqvator (formerly) – Skandinavisk Språkanalysis (=Sprakab) – Verified
Swedish bureau spun off company in 1990s – sold expertise back
to government, then other EU governments, then further afield
Firms compete re contracts: business pressure on product offered
Employ few linguists (w/BA, MA qualifications) but many analysts
(most NENS) who conduct LADO cases w/supervision by linguists
Who is unqualified to perform LADO? :
Non-linguist language professionals
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Spoken-word interpreters or translators of written word
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Students of “foreign” languages at university/elsewhere
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Typically no linguistic analytic or comparative training
Rarely any formal training in ‘exotic’/unwritten languages, hence
no standards exist for knowledge of such languages
Native speakers of exotic or un(der)-studied languages
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May be trained, but little/no linguistics, rarely do research
Any university degree-level study of language usually = literary
not scientific, text not speech, no comparative scientific base
Such persons can be classed as NENS, Non-Expert Native
Speakers rather than expert linguists in view of (Shuy 2009)
“the definition of a linguist as a scholar who is highly trained
and deeply involved in the scientific study of language”
‘Language analysis’ requires
expertise in Linguistics
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Scientific, comparative study of language systems
Structure of sounds, words, grammar, meaning
Study the range of human languages to discover:
What elements are necessary/possible in human language?
 In which ways can they be organized into systems?
 How language changes, is learned, come in contact, disappear
 How speakers manipulate system/elements for social function
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“Linguist” has both folk and expert senses:
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Untrained person who speaks several languages?
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Specialist w/postgraduate training in linguistic science
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What Linguists Do and Are
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Analyse elements & structures of recorded speech data
Identify them as organised into recognized systems –
languages/dialects described in the scientific literature
Familiar w/contact processes between languages (not
random, but according to empirically-studied principles)
Professional training means postgraduate specialization
in accredited institution by research-active scholars...
Experts w/knowledge based in literature, own research
on 1 or more languages (besides native ones, usually)...
Contribute to scientific knowledge: present research at
open conferences, publications reviewed by peers, etc.
What is Sociolinguistics?
Comparative study of speech communities, linguistic
practices, and social ecologies of language
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Sociolinguists≠ HR practitioners, interpreters, lawyers – and
these professionals, of course, are not usually linguists
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Sociolinguists professionally involved w/ issues such as
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language endangerment, esp. preservation/revitalization
language planning, at academic, govt/local/NGO levels
forensic, clinical, and other institution-based linguistics
bilingual education &other school-centred language issues
action research with urban linguistic minorities
discourse analysis of talk by powerful/vulnerable speakers
ethnolinguistic work w/indigenous peoples, & much more...
What Languages are Involved?
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Linguistics studies all languages – c. 6,900 in world
234 European languages: English, French, German etc.
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2,100 African: Niger-Congo (1,500), Afro-Asiatic (350)
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30% of languages, 12% of speakers, avg. <350,000/lang.
2,300 Asian: Sino-Tibetan (450), Austronesian (1,200)
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3% of world’s languages, 26% of speakers, avg. 6.6 million
33% of languages, 60% of speakers, avg. 1.5 million/lang.
Largest: Chinese (1.2b), Spanish, English (330m), Arabic
LADO: Somali (13m), Pashto (9.7), Tigrinya (5.7), Rohingya (1.5)
What Languages are Involved?
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Linguistics studies all languages – c. 6,900 in world
234 European languages: English, French, German etc.
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2,100 African: Niger-Congo (1,500), Afro-Asiatic (350)
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30% of languages, 12% of speakers, avg. <350,000/lang.
2,300 Asian: Sino-Tibetan (450), Austronesian (1,200)
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3% of world’s languages, 26% of speakers, avg. 6.6 million
33% of languages, 60% of speakers, avg. 1.5 million/lang.
Largest: Chinese (1.2b), Spanish, English (330m), Arabic
LADO: Somali (13m), Pashto (9.7), Tigrinya (5.7), Rohingya (1.5)
Which languages relevant to LADO?
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LADO: usually smaller, regional/ethnic dialects
 E.g.
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Often spoken across borders, not just within them
 E.g.
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minority clans in Somalia (Reer-Hamar, Ashraf)
Mandingo: Senegal, Mali, Guinea, S. Leone, Liberia
Often unwritten for most speakers til very recently
Many unstudied, or little detail known about them
No standard tests for assessing speakers’ knowledge
Handful of experts in each country, or the world
Some Next Steps
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Develop international scientific agreement over key issues
Involve colleagues and public by raising basic science issues
Convince UKIAT (via courts) to rely only on qualified expertise, by
Unifying the standards with (civil and) criminal requirements,
Thus making bad science less common and acceptable in court
Press commercial applications to raise/adopt scientific standards
Innovate methods/technology to lower costs of good science
Develop secure, scientific research base against which expertise
can be established, by commissioning new applied research
Expand reference database to focus on refugee-producing areas
Contact Info
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My Email:
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patrickp@essex.ac.uk
Homepage:
 http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~patrickp
Dept. of Language & Linguistics:
 www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics
Human Rights Centre:
 www.essex.ac.uk/human_rights_centre
2004 Guidelines for best practice
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2004: Guidelines for use of language analysis in relation to
questions of national origin in asylum cases (Lang Nat Origin Group)
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19 coauthors/signers from Africa, Europe, Australia, USA
17 PhDs, over half with 1st-hand forensic experience in RSD context
Published in 2 peer-reviewed linguistic journals, UNHCR RefWorld
Main principles include:
LADO must be done by qualified linguists – proof of expertise
 Caution in rendering opinions – degree of certainty
 Knowledge of native speakers ≠ expertise of linguists
 Linguists to determine/advise on data quality for LADO
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Other issues: cross-border, language mixing, 2nd-language LADO...
Now cited in courts from UK to Pacific, influences govt. practices