This study evaluated caseworkers' information-seeking prompts in interviews with asylum-seeking minors and assesses the accuracy of the translations provided by interpreters. Twenty six Russian-speaking minors were individually interviewed by one of 10 caseworkers assisted by one of 17 interpreters. A quantitative analysis examined the type of questions asked and the accuracy of the corresponding renditions. The actual and translated content of the messages were examined using a qualitative analysis. The study showed that interviewers relied heavily on focused questions, which are more likely to elicit inaccurate information. When open questions were asked, the interviewers tended to ask narrow 'directive' questions rather than broader 'invitations'. The interpreters' renditions of utterances were often inaccurate. Almost half of the misrepresentations altered the content and one third involved changes in the type of question asked. This indicates that both interviewers and translators clearly need special training to ensure that they serve asylum-seeking minors adequately. © The Author [2008]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

This study explored how asylum-seeking minors report information when formally interviewed. Twenty-six Russian-speaking minors (M= 16.0 years of age) were individually interviewed by officials assisted by one of eighteen interpreters. A quantitative analysis examined the translated questions asked by the officials, the minors’ responses to them, and the accuracy with which the minors’ responses were rendered. The asylum-seeking minors distinguished themselves as active participants. They appeared eager to disclose relevant information despite being asked many potentially contaminating questions. Most of the children’s responses were accurately rendered but mistranslations can affect the fact–finding process substantially. Both the minors and the officials involved in the asylum-seeking process need to recognise that both the questions asked and the responses given may be influenced by the third parties involved, i.e. the interpreters.

This article is a study of how the participation status of asylum-seeking children is interactively constructed in interpreter-mediated asylum hearings. We have undertaken a discourse analysis of 50 non-repair side-sequences from 26 hearings with Russian-speaking, asylum-seeking children in Sweden. A side-sequence is here defined as a monolingual sequence conducted in only one of the languages involved in the interviews. It involves the interpreter and only one of the primary interlocutors. In this article, four extracts are chosen for a micro-analysis in order to elucidate how interpreters can challenge asylum-seeking children’s participant statuses. We show that the right of the child to make his or her voice heard can be challenged, especially when the interpreters exclude, distort, discredit and guide the voices of the children, which is often done with the tacit approval of caseworkers.

Trust, distrust and conflict between social groups have existed throughout the history of humankind, although their forms have changed. Using three main concepts: culture, representation and dialogue, this book explores and re-thinks some of these changes in relation to concrete historical and contemporary events. Part I offers a symbolic and historical analysis of trust and distrust while Parts II and III examine trust, distrust and conflict in specific events including the Cyprus conflict, Estonian collective memories, coping with HIV/AIDS in China, Swedish asylum seekers, the Cuban missile crisis and Stalinist confessions. With an impressive array of international contributors the chapters draw on a number of key concepts such as self and other, ingroup and outgroup, contact between groups, categorization, brinkmanship, knowledge, beliefs and myth.  Trust and Conflict offers a fresh perspective on the problems that arise from treating trust, distrust and conflict as simplified indicators. Instead, it proposes that human and social sciences can view these phenomena within the complex matrix of interacting perspectives and meta-perspectives that characterise the social world. As such it will be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and lecturers of human and social sciences especially social psychology, sociology, political science and communication studies.