Gaining and Gauging Trust Through Small Stories in the Interaction Between Guardians and Unaccompanied Minors

ABSTRACT In the lead‐up to their asylum interviews, unaccompanied minors often struggle to disclose the highly sensitive and personal narratives of their migration journeys to their guardians. Instead, they may resort to “thin stories”: generic, rehearsed stories of suffering, which risk being qualified by the authorities as “inauthentic” or even “untrue.” Guardians report how a lack of time and the high stakes of interview preparation undermine their relationships of trust. However, little research has looked at which interactional strategies might actually help establish a trusting environment. To this aim, this paper draws on transcribed audio‐recordings of ethnographically observed guardian–minor interactions to study the social role small stories and personal anecdotes might play in these encounters. The paper argues that leaving room for everyday and experiential stories could contribute to an open storytelling environment and introduces the concept of “alter‐narratives” to further theorize the tension between “small” and “big” stories in asylum encounters.