Investigating narrative inequality: African asylum seekers' stories in Belgium

This article addresses narrative inequality in the Belgian asylum procedure by means of a complex of preconditions for communication, noticeable in recorded interviews with African asylum seekers in Belgium. The author first examines the issue of linguistic-communicative resources: the 'broken' varieties of European languages in which asylum seekers tell their stories. Next, the structure and functions of a particular type of densely contextualizing sub-narrative, called 'home narratives' are explored, with special emphasis on their role as localizing discourse. Finally, the role of narratives in the asylum procedure is discussed, and the contrast in contextualizing directions between asylum seekers' narratives and text trajectories in the procedure is highlighted.