THE POLITICS OF INTERPRETING DURING ASYLUM INTERVIEWS: Processes, challenges and the implications for the legitimacy of claims for asylum in South Africa

This chapter is part of a collaborative study of asylum systems in Sweden and South Africa. It is written against the backdrop of claims that migration and refugee policies in liberal democracies such as South Africa are marked by an ambivalence between seemingly contradictory jurisdictions and claims (Amit, 2011; Gibney, 2004; Johnson, 2015). This ambivalence has been at the centre of public debate about issues of human rights versus state security and the rights of refugees versus the right to protect the institutions of the national welfare state (Crush, Skinner & Stulgaitis, 2017; Johnson, 2015). In the case of Sweden,