Engagements institutionnels. Enjeux glottopolitiques de l’interprétation dans les instances décisionnaires de l’asile en France

Abstract

In the institutions responsible for asylum adjudication in France, namely OFPRA (Office Français de Protection des Réfugiés et Apatrides) and the CNDA (Cour Nationale du Droit d'Asile), interpreting has a crucial part. At an interactional level, interpreters play a central coordinating role between asylum seekers and institutions ; at the administrative level, their work has become a major financial and operational issue.Although OFPRA and the CNDA are supposed to enjoy a certain degree of autonomy, they implement the French asylum procedure. It may therefore seem contradictory to mobilise, in order to understand interpreting practices that occur there, a concept that has been forged to extract sociolinguistic analysis from an overly statocentric focus: glottopolitics.However, the glottopolitical approach makes it possible to understand OFPRA and the CNDA as specific interpreting contexts. By focusing the analysis on institutional dynamics and not on overarching norms, it reveals differences between the two bodies in the framing and organisation of interpreters' work.Consequently, the glottopolitical perspective examines in depth the complex involvement of interpreters in the asylum administration, by comparing the neutrality that is required of them in the interaction with the ambiguity of their institutional situations.

Keywords

• public service interpreting
• asylum administration
• Office Français de Protection des Réfugiés et Apatrides
• Cour Nationale du Droit d’Asile
• glottopolitics