Language has a home: how case officers make use of language analysis in asylum decisions

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which the results of language analyses were taken into account when Swedish Migration Agency (SMA) case officers built arguments concerning unaccompanied children's countries of origin. The research literature on LADO has primarily commented on risks of unreliability. Data was drawn from one calendar year of asylum decisions concerning unaccompanied children, and the sample where LADO had been conducted was analysed by qualitative thematic analysis. The main finding indicates that LADO is primarily used as an enhancer of other circumstances present in the asylum case, which means that it has the potential to ‘tip the scales’ into approval or rejection. The findings also suggest that case officers use the results of LADO in different ways to regulate the issue of credibility depending on the political and geographical dynamics in the children's reported countries of origin. The practical implications are that migration authorities should regularly examine to what extent the results of LADO are given weight in asylum case processing and that the influence of LADO results on individual decisions should be comprehensively explained in child consequence analyses.