How language testing used to authenticate asylum claims fails to recognise the reality and complexity of language
The following article summary, contributed by Fahamu intern Rebecka Jonsson, highlights the unreliability of language testing in the context of asylum claims. The use of such testing by the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (Immigratie en Naturalisatie Dienst) (IND) has been challenged by Massimiliano Spotti and Joachim Detailleur, in their paper ‘Placing Shibboleths at the institutional gate: LADO tests and the construction of asylum seekers’ identities’.
The Language Analysis for the Determination of Origin (LADO) test was developed in the early 1990s by the Swedish Immigration Service SIV (Statens Invandrarverk) and began to be exported to different countries in the late 1990s. The LADO test is an instrument used to determine the area or ethnic origin of an asylum seeker. It uses ‘certain words in one’s speech as clues to the topographic origin of the individual’. Although submission to the test is described as voluntary, ‘its refusal has far reaching consequences for the asylum seeker’s application’ (p.5).
The paper describes the case of an Arabic-speaking Sudanese asylum seeker claiming Nuba origins. This case illustrates how the IND uses the LADO test results as evidence to refuse an asylum request when no documentation of origin is given. The purpose of the paper is to illustrate the practical implications of a badly implemented sociolinguistic theory through the IND policy of LADO testing. Ultimately, it questions whether there can be an accurate sociolinguistic tool able to encompass all the varieties of language use in the consistently evolving world of today.
The Language Analysis for the Determination of Origin (LADO) test was developed in the early 1990s by the Swedish Immigration Service SIV (Statens Invandrarverk) and began to be exported to different countries in the late 1990s. The LADO test is an instrument used to determine the area or ethnic origin of an asylum seeker. It uses ‘certain words in one’s speech as clues to the topographic origin of the individual’. Although submission to the test is described as voluntary, ‘its refusal has far reaching consequences for the asylum seeker’s application’ (p.5).
The paper describes the case of an Arabic-speaking Sudanese asylum seeker claiming Nuba origins. This case illustrates how the IND uses the LADO test results as evidence to refuse an asylum request when no documentation of origin is given. The purpose of the paper is to illustrate the practical implications of a badly implemented sociolinguistic theory through the IND policy of LADO testing. Ultimately, it questions whether there can be an accurate sociolinguistic tool able to encompass all the varieties of language use in the consistently evolving world of today.
The IND has a specialised unit — BLT (Bureau Land en Taal, known in English as Office for Country Information and Language Analysis) — that carries out these analyses. The process consists of a recorded interview in which the asylum seeker is asked a string of questions in Dutch by an immigration officer ; these questions are then translated in the claimants’ mother tongue or his or her presumed second language (lingua franca). The questions deal with a variety of subjects — the claimants’ native country, village/city from where they fled, their ethnicity and the characteristics of the ethnic group to which they claim to belong. The recorded interview takes on average 30 to 45 minutes and is then ‘analysed by a language analyst who entextualises the answers given by the applicant into a report’ (p.5). The report is then checked by one of the four BLT-linguists.
The LADO test of an asylum seeker of Nuba origin expects them to have a certain degree of proficiency in their respective tribal language. However, it does not take account of the fact that their homeland has been subjected to Arabisation campaigns since Sudan’s independence in 1956. Moreover, the IND relies on a report by the Nuba Mountain Solidarity Abroad (NMSA), an organisation set up by Nuba exiles to preserve their language and cultural traditions. As a result, the asylum seeker was rejected as falsely claiming Nuba origins.
The paper details the mistakes made during the interview of the asylum seeker by a native speaker (the first step of the LADO test) and how it transferred to a negative final analysis by the specialist linguist. The three most important mistakes are the following:
1. The conclusion of the test was that the applicant’s answers to the language situation in the Nuba area of Dilling were not correct. The asylum seeker was asked why he did not speak any Nuba tribal language, to which he answered: ‘I have been brought up like that. In our tribe is like this’ (p.9). IND ignored the many previous surveys that support this statement; in fact, about 89.23 percent of Dilling residents use Arabic as their primary language.
2. Cultural aspects such as dowry were brought up, and when closely examined the asylum seeker had correct answers. The information on which IND relied, however, was not correct.
3. The interviewer started the conversation using Khartoum Arabic, not the Arabic dialect of the Nuba mountains. For many years the Sudanese applicant was an Arabic teacher, thus giving him knowledge of the formal version of the language. On closer examination of the speech the applicant used were words and accents that are from the Nuba region — even with his effort to be as formal as possible.
This case is an example of why the LADO test cannot take account the many levels of language situations an individual may speak.
For more information on this topic, visit the website of the UK-based Language & Asylum Research Group (LARG), a group of experts who share an interest in LADO as a research topic, and/or from a practitioner’s point of view. LARG’s primary mission is to stimulate research, contribute to the further development of guidelines, and promote best-practice for practitioners working in the field of LADO.
