ABSTRACT
Article 1A(2) of the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees defines a ‘refugee’ as someone who has a ‘well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion’. The administrative and legal procedures adopted by signatories to the convention for determining whether an individual satisfies this definition characteristically involve complex processes of cultural and linguistic translation and interpretation. In the following article, we explore the interplay between language and intercultural communication within refugee status determination procedures in the UK and France, comparing the ways in which linguistic and intercultural issues are addressed, in theory and in practice, in the two countries. We will be concerned, in particular, to examine the role played by interpreters in facilitating intercultural communication between, on the one hand, asylum applicants and, on the other, the different administrative and legal actors (e.g. civil servants, rapporteurs, lawyers and judges) responsible for assessing or defending their claims.
