Laura Smith-Khan
Biographic Data
| ID | 737129 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Laura Smith-Khan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Laura |
| FAMILY NAME | Smith-Khan |
| SIGNATURE | SMITH-KHAN L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Technology Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3551-221X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 70 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Language, culture and professional communication in migration law education
Improving client communication skills in migration law and practice education
This article reports on a research-teaching collaboration in the Graduate Diploma in Migration Law and Practice. The collaboration aimed to improve students’ client communication skills by embedding interdisciplinary expertise to improve the learning materials and activities on offer in the program. After providing an overview of the collaboration, we share findings from the research, identifying key aspects of students’ skills development. The a…
Judging Refugees: Narrative and Oral Testimony in Refugee Status Determination
Trust at the border: Identifying risk and assessing credibility on reality television
Every day, officers working at international airports investigate potential risks to state safety and security. But how do they decide who they can trust, and also ensure that the broader public trusts them to conduct this work? This article explores these questions through an examination of the reality television show Border Security: Australia's Front Line . Through critical discourse analysis of a collection of 108 televised airport encounters…
Securing the borders of English and Whiteness
This article examines how racial and linguistic identities are constructed on the Australian reality TV show Border Security. Based on an analysis of 108 episodes of the show involving 253 border force officers and 128 passengers, we explore how the hegemonic Australian identity of the White native speaker of English is constructed on the show. Officers are represented as a relatively uniform group of heroes devoted to protecting Australia’s nati…
Incorporating Sociolinguistic Perspectives in Australian Refugee Credibility Assessments: The Case of CRL18
Credibility assessments in asylum visa applications have attracted criticism across diverse research fields. This article builds on existing critical examinations by presenting a case study of a successful appeal in the Federal Court of Australia (FCA) which overturned a decision involving one such problematic credibility assessment. The article establishes that credibility assessments often rely on flawed language ideologies and reasoning that t…
Common language’ and proficiency tests: A critical examination of registration requirements for Australian registered migration agents
Registered Migration Agents (RMAs), the practitioners who assist with Australian visa applications and appeals, play a crucial role in navigating these complex legal procedures. RMAs’ registration requirements, including those relating to English language proficiency (ELP), have thus garnered much attention, leading to government-commissioned reviews and inquiries, and amendments to regulations. The most recent changes have attracted scrutiny by …
Linguistic diversity as a challenge and an opportunity for improved legal policy
This article introduces this Themed Issue, Linguistic Diversity as a Challenge to Legal Policy, and reports a small, peer-reviewed study of the integration of research about language issues in legal contexts in Australian legal education. The article explains that interdisciplinary law and linguistics research has emerged to better understand potential inequalities and injustices. This research speaks to concerns shared across many legal systems …
Deficiencies and loopholes: Clashing discourses, problems and solutions in Australian migration advice regulation
In Australia, access to high-quality migration advice can often be crucial to obtaining a visa, and migration advisors have attracted ongoing scrutiny from policymakers, leading to successive inquiries and reviews. Such inquiries and the recommendations they produce are used to justify policy design and reform that can have significant impacts on a range of stakeholders, including of course, migration advisors and their clients. This article expl…
Bringing linguistic research into legal scholarship and practice
This article suggests a cohesive articulation of the shared basis upon which the interdisciplinary research field of law and linguistics is developing, organising the research around the familiar three branches of the state: legislature, executive and judiciary, thus providing a map oriented towards non-linguists and legal practitioners. It also invites interdisciplinary scholars to critically reflect on future directions for this research area. …
I Try Not to Be Dominant, but I’m a Lawyer!’: Advisor Resources, Context, and Refugee Credibility
Credibility assessments are a key component of refugee status determination. However, the difficulties associated with these assessments make professional assistance important. This article examines qualitative interviews with eight Australian migration advisors, exploring the key resources they report drawing on when contributing to client credibility in refugee status determination processes. Participants make sense of these resources and their…
Why refugee visa credibility assessments lack credibility: A critical discourse analysis
Whether those seeking asylum can be believed is a central concern in both public discourse and institutional processes. As a result, credibility assessments have become an important component of the latter. This article contributes to existing scholarship on credibility assessments by critically examining the discourse and related ‘language ideologies’ underlying them. The examination includes published tribunal decisions on appeals of institutio…
The Highest Attainable Standard’: The Right to Health for Refugees with Disabilities
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) creates duties for States Parties and UN agencies to ensure that individuals under their protection have equal enjoyment of the full range of human rights. This includes the Article 25 right to enjoy ‘the highest attainable standard of health without discrimination on the basis of disability.’ However, refugees, who are forced to seek protection outside their state, face particular …
Migration practitioners’ roles in communicating credible refugee claims
This article explores the important communicative roles that Australian migration lawyers and agents play when assisting refugee visa applicants, with particular attention to how they contribute to the (re)construction of applicant credibility. It identifies a range of communicative choices and concludes that practitioners have a variety of individual beliefs and skills that lead them to participate in applications and appeals in diverse ways. Th…
Communicative resources and credibility in public discourse on refugees
This article examines how communicative resources affect the construction of credible texts and identities in a public debate on Australia's treatment of a refugee. It centres on two key written statements-one from the Immigration Minister, and another from a Somali refugee. The analysis is divided into four levels, exploring the parties' respective linguistic, material, identity, and platform resources, and how these impact their statements' cre…
The Legal Protection of Refugees with Disabilities: Forgotten and Invisible?
This ground-breaking book focuses on the 'forgotten refugees', detailing people with disabilities who have crossed borders in search of protection from disaster or human conflict. The authors explore the intersection between one of the oldest international human rights treaties, the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, with one of the newest: the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Drawing on fieldwork in …
Different in the Same Way? Language, Diversity, and Refugee Credibility
There is a growing awareness of the challenges associated with communicating and decision making in the intercultural setting of refugee status determination processes. However, the way institutions conceptualize diversity has significant implications for how accommodating these processes will actually be of diversity, including in credibility assessments – a key component of many asylum regimes. This article aims to explore how Australian guidan…
Telling stories: Credibility and the representation of social actors in Australian asylum appeals
To secure protection in the global North, asylum-seekers must overcome restrictive government policies and present a convincing refugee narrative. Their credibility becomes their main asset and must survive the multiple challenges arising from intercultural communication and interactions involving multiple institutional actors. Aiming to explore the impact institutional understandings of refugee narrative creation have on credibility assessment, …
Philipp Sebastian Angermeyer: Speak English or What? Codeswitching and interpreter use in New York City courts
Speak English or What? is based on Philipp Sebastian Angermeyer's doctoral research, focusing on interpreter-mediated hearings in three small claims courts in New York City. Covering everything from theories of legal consciousness, through narrative construction and bilingual practices, to language ideology, Angermeyer insightfully explores how speakers of languages other than English(LOTE) participate in this informal legal setting, asking wheth…
Negotiating narratives, accessing asylum: Evaluating language policy as multi-level practice, beliefs and management
Theories of language policy increasingly emphasise focusing on the specific contexts in which language management occurs. In government settings, policy seeks to shape how individuals interact with officials. Australian asylum procedure is an area where policy aims at tight control. I examine how communication is managed in this setting, in which successful outcomes are so important. After reviewing the relevant policy documents, I explore the ex…
To 'Promote, Protect and Ensure: Overcoming Obstacles to Identifying Disability in Forced Migration
Every year, millions of people are forcibly displaced as a result of natural or human-made disasters. Although a significant proportion are persons living with a disability, remarkably little is known about the incidence and type of disabilities they experience. To design services that best respect rights and address needs, effective procedures must be devised to identify persons with disabilities in situations of displacement. This article draws…
Telling stories: Credibility and the representation of social actors in Australian asylum appeals
To secure protection in the global North, asylum-seekers must overcome restrictive government policies and present a convincing refugee narrative. Their credibility becomes their main asset and must survive the multiple challenges arising from intercultural communication and interactions involving multiple institutional actors. Aiming to explore the impact institutional understandings of refugee narrative creation have on credibility assessment, …
To 'Promote, Protect and Ensure: Overcoming Obstacles to Identifying Disability in Forced Migration
Every year, millions of people are forcibly displaced as a result of natural or human-made disasters. Although a significant proportion are persons living with a disability, remarkably little is known about the incidence and type of disabilities they experience. To design services that best respect rights and address needs, effective procedures must be devised to identify persons with disabilities in situations of displacement. This article draws…
Migration practitioners’ roles in communicating credible refugee claims
This article explores the important communicative roles that Australian migration lawyers and agents play when assisting refugee visa applicants, with particular attention to how they contribute to the (re)construction of applicant credibility. It identifies a range of communicative choices and concludes that practitioners have a variety of individual beliefs and skills that lead them to participate in applications and appeals in diverse ways. Th…
Securing the borders of English and Whiteness
This article examines how racial and linguistic identities are constructed on the Australian reality TV show Border Security. Based on an analysis of 108 episodes of the show involving 253 border force officers and 128 passengers, we explore how the hegemonic Australian identity of the White native speaker of English is constructed on the show. Officers are represented as a relatively uniform group of heroes devoted to protecting Australia’s nati…
Negotiating narratives, accessing asylum: Evaluating language policy as multi-level practice, beliefs and management
Theories of language policy increasingly emphasise focusing on the specific contexts in which language management occurs. In government settings, policy seeks to shape how individuals interact with officials. Australian asylum procedure is an area where policy aims at tight control. I examine how communication is managed in this setting, in which successful outcomes are so important. After reviewing the relevant policy documents, I explore the ex…
I Try Not to Be Dominant, but I’m a Lawyer!’: Advisor Resources, Context, and Refugee Credibility
Credibility assessments are a key component of refugee status determination. However, the difficulties associated with these assessments make professional assistance important. This article examines qualitative interviews with eight Australian migration advisors, exploring the key resources they report drawing on when contributing to client credibility in refugee status determination processes. Participants make sense of these resources and their…
The Highest Attainable Standard’: The Right to Health for Refugees with Disabilities
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) creates duties for States Parties and UN agencies to ensure that individuals under their protection have equal enjoyment of the full range of human rights. This includes the Article 25 right to enjoy ‘the highest attainable standard of health without discrimination on the basis of disability.’ However, refugees, who are forced to seek protection outside their state, face particular …
Communicative resources and credibility in public discourse on refugees
This article examines how communicative resources affect the construction of credible texts and identities in a public debate on Australia's treatment of a refugee. It centres on two key written statements-one from the Immigration Minister, and another from a Somali refugee. The analysis is divided into four levels, exploring the parties' respective linguistic, material, identity, and platform resources, and how these impact their statements' cre…
Deficiencies and loopholes: Clashing discourses, problems and solutions in Australian migration advice regulation
In Australia, access to high-quality migration advice can often be crucial to obtaining a visa, and migration advisors have attracted ongoing scrutiny from policymakers, leading to successive inquiries and reviews. Such inquiries and the recommendations they produce are used to justify policy design and reform that can have significant impacts on a range of stakeholders, including of course, migration advisors and their clients. This article expl…
Bringing linguistic research into legal scholarship and practice
This article suggests a cohesive articulation of the shared basis upon which the interdisciplinary research field of law and linguistics is developing, organising the research around the familiar three branches of the state: legislature, executive and judiciary, thus providing a map oriented towards non-linguists and legal practitioners. It also invites interdisciplinary scholars to critically reflect on future directions for this research area. …
Language, culture and professional communication in migration law education
Improving client communication skills in migration law and practice education
This article reports on a research-teaching collaboration in the Graduate Diploma in Migration Law and Practice. The collaboration aimed to improve students’ client communication skills by embedding interdisciplinary expertise to improve the learning materials and activities on offer in the program. After providing an overview of the collaboration, we share findings from the research, identifying key aspects of students’ skills development. The a…
Trust at the border: Identifying risk and assessing credibility on reality television
Every day, officers working at international airports investigate potential risks to state safety and security. But how do they decide who they can trust, and also ensure that the broader public trusts them to conduct this work? This article explores these questions through an examination of the reality television show Border Security: Australia's Front Line . Through critical discourse analysis of a collection of 108 televised airport encounters…
To 'Promote, Protect and Ensure: Overcoming Obstacles to Identifying Disability in Forced Migration
Every year, millions of people are forcibly displaced as a result of natural or human-made disasters. Although a significant proportion are persons living with a disability, remarkably little is known about the incidence and type of disabilities they experience. To design services that best respect rights and address needs, effective procedures must be devised to identify persons with disabilities in situations of displacement. This article draws…
The Legal Protection of Refugees with Disabilities: Forgotten and Invisible?
This ground-breaking book focuses on the 'forgotten refugees', detailing people with disabilities who have crossed borders in search of protection from disaster or human conflict. The authors explore the intersection between one of the oldest international human rights treaties, the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, with one of the newest: the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Drawing on fieldwork in …
Different in the Same Way? Language, Diversity, and Refugee Credibility
There is a growing awareness of the challenges associated with communicating and decision making in the intercultural setting of refugee status determination processes. However, the way institutions conceptualize diversity has significant implications for how accommodating these processes will actually be of diversity, including in credibility assessments – a key component of many asylum regimes. This article aims to explore how Australian guidan…
Telling stories: Credibility and the representation of social actors in Australian asylum appeals
To secure protection in the global North, asylum-seekers must overcome restrictive government policies and present a convincing refugee narrative. Their credibility becomes their main asset and must survive the multiple challenges arising from intercultural communication and interactions involving multiple institutional actors. Aiming to explore the impact institutional understandings of refugee narrative creation have on credibility assessment, …
Philipp Sebastian Angermeyer: Speak English or What? Codeswitching and interpreter use in New York City courts
Speak English or What? is based on Philipp Sebastian Angermeyer's doctoral research, focusing on interpreter-mediated hearings in three small claims courts in New York City. Covering everything from theories of legal consciousness, through narrative construction and bilingual practices, to language ideology, Angermeyer insightfully explores how speakers of languages other than English(LOTE) participate in this informal legal setting, asking wheth…
Negotiating narratives, accessing asylum: Evaluating language policy as multi-level practice, beliefs and management
Theories of language policy increasingly emphasise focusing on the specific contexts in which language management occurs. In government settings, policy seeks to shape how individuals interact with officials. Australian asylum procedure is an area where policy aims at tight control. I examine how communication is managed in this setting, in which successful outcomes are so important. After reviewing the relevant policy documents, I explore the ex…
Why refugee visa credibility assessments lack credibility: A critical discourse analysis
Whether those seeking asylum can be believed is a central concern in both public discourse and institutional processes. As a result, credibility assessments have become an important component of the latter. This article contributes to existing scholarship on credibility assessments by critically examining the discourse and related ‘language ideologies’ underlying them. The examination includes published tribunal decisions on appeals of institutio…
The Highest Attainable Standard’: The Right to Health for Refugees with Disabilities
The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) creates duties for States Parties and UN agencies to ensure that individuals under their protection have equal enjoyment of the full range of human rights. This includes the Article 25 right to enjoy ‘the highest attainable standard of health without discrimination on the basis of disability.’ However, refugees, who are forced to seek protection outside their state, face particular …
Migration practitioners’ roles in communicating credible refugee claims
This article explores the important communicative roles that Australian migration lawyers and agents play when assisting refugee visa applicants, with particular attention to how they contribute to the (re)construction of applicant credibility. It identifies a range of communicative choices and concludes that practitioners have a variety of individual beliefs and skills that lead them to participate in applications and appeals in diverse ways. Th…
Communicative resources and credibility in public discourse on refugees
This article examines how communicative resources affect the construction of credible texts and identities in a public debate on Australia's treatment of a refugee. It centres on two key written statements-one from the Immigration Minister, and another from a Somali refugee. The analysis is divided into four levels, exploring the parties' respective linguistic, material, identity, and platform resources, and how these impact their statements' cre…
Bringing linguistic research into legal scholarship and practice
This article suggests a cohesive articulation of the shared basis upon which the interdisciplinary research field of law and linguistics is developing, organising the research around the familiar three branches of the state: legislature, executive and judiciary, thus providing a map oriented towards non-linguists and legal practitioners. It also invites interdisciplinary scholars to critically reflect on future directions for this research area. …
I Try Not to Be Dominant, but I’m a Lawyer!’: Advisor Resources, Context, and Refugee Credibility
Credibility assessments are a key component of refugee status determination. However, the difficulties associated with these assessments make professional assistance important. This article examines qualitative interviews with eight Australian migration advisors, exploring the key resources they report drawing on when contributing to client credibility in refugee status determination processes. Participants make sense of these resources and their…
Common language’ and proficiency tests: A critical examination of registration requirements for Australian registered migration agents
Registered Migration Agents (RMAs), the practitioners who assist with Australian visa applications and appeals, play a crucial role in navigating these complex legal procedures. RMAs’ registration requirements, including those relating to English language proficiency (ELP), have thus garnered much attention, leading to government-commissioned reviews and inquiries, and amendments to regulations. The most recent changes have attracted scrutiny by …
Linguistic diversity as a challenge and an opportunity for improved legal policy
This article introduces this Themed Issue, Linguistic Diversity as a Challenge to Legal Policy, and reports a small, peer-reviewed study of the integration of research about language issues in legal contexts in Australian legal education. The article explains that interdisciplinary law and linguistics research has emerged to better understand potential inequalities and injustices. This research speaks to concerns shared across many legal systems …
Deficiencies and loopholes: Clashing discourses, problems and solutions in Australian migration advice regulation
In Australia, access to high-quality migration advice can often be crucial to obtaining a visa, and migration advisors have attracted ongoing scrutiny from policymakers, leading to successive inquiries and reviews. Such inquiries and the recommendations they produce are used to justify policy design and reform that can have significant impacts on a range of stakeholders, including of course, migration advisors and their clients. This article expl…
Incorporating Sociolinguistic Perspectives in Australian Refugee Credibility Assessments: The Case of CRL18
Credibility assessments in asylum visa applications have attracted criticism across diverse research fields. This article builds on existing critical examinations by presenting a case study of a successful appeal in the Federal Court of Australia (FCA) which overturned a decision involving one such problematic credibility assessment. The article establishes that credibility assessments often rely on flawed language ideologies and reasoning that t…
Securing the borders of English and Whiteness
This article examines how racial and linguistic identities are constructed on the Australian reality TV show Border Security. Based on an analysis of 108 episodes of the show involving 253 border force officers and 128 passengers, we explore how the hegemonic Australian identity of the White native speaker of English is constructed on the show. Officers are represented as a relatively uniform group of heroes devoted to protecting Australia’s nati…
Judging Refugees: Narrative and Oral Testimony in Refugee Status Determination
Trust at the border: Identifying risk and assessing credibility on reality television
Every day, officers working at international airports investigate potential risks to state safety and security. But how do they decide who they can trust, and also ensure that the broader public trusts them to conduct this work? This article explores these questions through an examination of the reality television show Border Security: Australia's Front Line . Through critical discourse analysis of a collection of 108 televised airport encounters…
Language, culture and professional communication in migration law education
Improving client communication skills in migration law and practice education
This article reports on a research-teaching collaboration in the Graduate Diploma in Migration Law and Practice. The collaboration aimed to improve students’ client communication skills by embedding interdisciplinary expertise to improve the learning materials and activities on offer in the program. After providing an overview of the collaboration, we share findings from the research, identifying key aspects of students’ skills development. The a…
Political science (20 works) · Law (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Linguistics (12 works) · Public relations (12 works) · Refugee (12 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (10 works) · Interpreting and Communication in Healthcare (9 works) · Credibility (8 works)