Immigrant Voices in the Courts

Abstract

This is a study of how asylum seekers' persecution stories are represented in court opinions in the United States. The researcher analyzed the facts portions of ten asylum opinions in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Four linguistic analyses were conducted to compare renditions of the persecution narratives in winning versus losing cases. First, a breakdown of the narratives into component parts revealed that the overall organization was similar. Second, an analysis of quoted and reported speech showed that judges in winning cases chose more frequently to quote the applicant's own words. Third, an analysis of evaluative language demonstrated that the judges described the winning applicants' experiences in a highly positive light. The final analysis showed that winners' persecution events were portrayed as human-to-human interactions in which both victim and persecutor were personalized. Overall, judges appeared to recast the supposedly neutral persecution facts in a light that rationalized their decisions to grant asylum or to deport the applicant.