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Communication Regarding Voluntary Return Programmes in Belgian Asylum Seekers Reception Centres: From Mediated Forms of Communication to Face-to-face Interactions

par Van Neste-Gottignies, Amandine ;Mistiaen, Valériane Marie
Référence The Migration Conference (18-20/06/2019: Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche, Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italie)
Publication Non publié, 2019-06-20

Communication à un colloque

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Résumé :

This communication belongs to a wider analysis led on the relation of communication constructed between the Belgian Federal Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (Fedasil) and asylum seekers during the reception period (Van Neste-Gottignies and Mistiaen, 2018). An important leading result of this analysis turns out to be that communication to asylum seekers is hardly visible; indeed, very few mediated forms of communication for asylum seekers are available (ibid). Beyond this lack of information, communication tools on reception and support seem not to be designed for asylum seekers (content, vocabulary, access, etc.) which results in a non-use of these tools in favour of orality. Consequently, practices and attitudes differ from one social worker to another. The study also shows that asylum seekers are more an object of discourse than legitimate and effective interlocutors. In this context, informing remains an additional favour granted by the host country to its guests rather than a right (De Cleen et al., 2017: 43-44). Asylum seekers seem to cope with “information precarity” (Wall et al., 2015), a concept referring to “the condition of instability that refugees experience in accessing news and personal information” (Wall et al., 2015: 1). However, this specific need for information is enhanced because foreigners categorised as refugees are newly arrived in the country. They lack the necessary knowledge concerning both the functioning of the national institutions and languages. The inequality of access to linguistic-communicative resources (Blommaert, 2001) reinforces the power asymmetry (Spire, 2007) that characterises relations between asylum seekers and reception institutions. Although the “invisibility” of reception discourses seems to prevail, there is an exception: communication regarding voluntary return programmes. Indeed, from a quantitative point of view, documents on voluntary return are actually more numerous than on reception (Van Neste-Gottignies and Mistiaen, 2018). This paper aims specifically to understand more deeply how and why this communication is predominant, as well as what the effects are on asylum seekers. The analysis takes into account the various medium of communication complexity, from mediated forms of communication to face-to-face interactions. To bring out macro-trends, the written productions are analysed with Corpus Linguistic tools by means of AntConc, a text analysis software. We use key-word frequencies as well as the concordance tool which allows the analysis of lexical associations (Sinclair, 1991: 115-116). To gain more insight into communication practices, and the usage and circulation of these communication tools, we select a multi-site approach which combines different field survey methods conducted between 2014 and 2017: interviews with Fedasil workers and directors, life story approach with asylum seekers and refugees and, finally, direct observation in two open centres. One of our main findings underlines the differentiation of treatment according to asylum seekers’ country of origin. These differences seem to match the representation of the “legitimate refugee” versus the “illegitimate refugee”. Blommaert J (2001) Investigating narrative inequality: African asylum seekers' stories in Belgium. Discourse & Society 12: 413–449.De Cleen B, Zienkowski J, Smets K, Dekie A and Vandevoordt R (2017) Constructing the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Flanders. Continuities and Adaptations of Discourses on Asylum and Migration. In: Barlai M, Fähnrich B, Griessler C and Rhomberg M (eds) The migrant crisis: European perspectives and national discourses. Zurich: LIT Verlag, pp.59–78.Sinclair J (1991) Corpus Concordance Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Spire A (2007) L'asile au guichet. La dépolitisation du droit des étrangers par le travail bureaucratique. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 4: 4–21.Van Neste-Gottignies A and Mistiaen V (2018) Une communication peu visible : l'Agence fédérale belge pour l'accueil des demandeurs d'asile, les centres ouverts et le retour volontaire. Langage & Société 165: 51–74.Wall M, Otis Campbell M and Janbek D (2015) Syrian refugees and information precarity. New media & society 19: 240–254.