There is a trend in the field of asylum adjudication to develop and implement new technological solutions for the identification of asylum seekers. The Dialect Identification Assistant System (DIAS) developed by the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) stands out. What are the implications of automated dialect recognition technology for administrative-legal procedures of refugee status determination?
This paper employs a post-phenomenological approach centred on the analytical concept of ‘technological mediation’. It argues that the technological mediation of automated dialect recognition reinforces the tendency to focus on what asylum seekers do rather than what they say. Moreover, automated dialect recognition system constitutes asylum seekers as docile objects of government rather than recalcitrant subjects who can account for themselves. The article concludes that there is a need to further inquire what this technological mediation implies for refugee protection, as legal subjectivities afforded by human language are displaced by algorithmically constituted shibboleths.
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