Disclosure and (re)performance of gender‐based evidence in an interpreter‐mediated asylum interview

In order to handle the complexities of increasing influxes of people, asylum agencies tend to adhere to static categorisations of the variability encountered in the institutional space. This study demonstrates that, although classification is to some extent inevitable, isolation of social categories (gender, age, citizenship) into policy guidelines and routine procedures can be counterproductive in socially heterogeneous settings, such as the asylum determination interview, where several participants (asylum officers, interpreters, decision makers) are deeply implicated in the discursive co‐construction of client identities. Drawing on sociolinguistic micro‐analysis of gender‐based evidence from an interpreted asylum interview in the Belgian asylum procedure, this study shows how the (re)performance of gender issues is deeply embedded in and therefore cannot be understood outside the specific socio‐discursive dynamics and the broader institutional context of the asylum interview.