Award for anthropologist Jan Blommaert: Language, Asylum and the National Order
Jan Blommaert has been awarded with the first Barbara Metzger Prize for his article Language, Asylum, and the National Order published in the journal Current Anthropology in August 2009 (vol. 50, no. 4). Jan Blommaert is professor of language, culture and globalization at Tilburg University, the Netherlands and professor in African linguistics and sociolinguistics at Ghent University in Belgium. In his article Blommaert probes the way in which officials try to ascertain the authenticity of those seeking asylum in Western Europe. He shows that officials sometimes rely on assumptions about linguistic competence of asylum seekers that may be inaccurate when applied to citizens of often multi-lingual communities.