Distributed agency in an asymmetrical institutional gatekeeping interview

This article examines how agency emerges across interaction and documentation in the highly structured and power-differentiated institutional context of Belgian investigations into possible “sham” relationships. Drawing on a case study of one municipal interview and its corresponding official report, we analyze how an applicant’s attempts to answer questions, clarify details, and make her relationship intelligible are taken up, reformulated, or omitted as talk is transformed into bureaucratic text. Focusing on the applicant’s interactional flexibility, including narration and repair, the use of photographs, and laughter, we show that agency is not located solely in participants’ interactional behavior, nor fixed at the moment of talk. Rather, agency is constrained by the institutional context, with the civil servant retaining control over what becomes consequential in the report and forms part of broader administrative decision-making. The article thus shows how agency is unevenly distributed across interaction and documentation under conditions of asymmetrical institutional gatekeeping.