“I know it’s not as simple as that, but ... that’s what the law says”: conflict talk in “translating” the law to clients in asylum legal advice provision

This paper critically interrogates the metaphors of the lawyer as translator and mediator between legal and lay perspectives (Maley et al., 1995), by analyzing conflict talk in the context of an immigration lawyer delivering legal advice to refused asylum applicants. It focuses on instances of legal advice concerning the principle of internal relocation in asylum law, i.e. ineligibility for asylum where a person is able to escape persecution by relocating within their home country. The paper analyses interactions from immigration legal advice meetings, drawing from a linguistic ethnography of lawyer-client communication within a UK city-based not-for-profit advice service. Instances of conflict talk (Grimshaw, 1990), realized in the data as lawyer-client exchanges in which advice about the internal relocation principle is contested by clients, are examined. The analysis reveals negotiation between two conflicting perspectives, each informed by different cultural norms, in these episodes of conflict talk. The norms of interpretation and enforcement of international refugee law in the UK – a politico-legal culture influenced by UK cultural norms - are invoked in the lawyer’s talk. As these are confronted by the different cultural realities of the clients seeking advice, discursive conflicts arise. Whilst the lawyer interactionally manages these conflicts using a range of relational strategies, the immigration law perspective is also imposed as the dominant frame. Although the lawyer does function as a mediator between perspectives, this mediation activity is constrained by the hegemonic status of the law, a structural agent of power (Block, 2013)