Linda Pfister

Short presentation

Behind every asylum decision is an encounter between a person seeking protection and an authority deciding whether they have a right to it. As a linguist, I arrive after the encounter is over and read what remains. I study how language shapes the interpretation and assessment of accounts of persecution and trauma – in a procedure that ultimately determines who can stay and who must leave.

Keywords

• legal linguistics
• asylum adjudication
• medical evidence
• migration health
• legal consciousness
• social participation
• participatory research
• PTSD
• torture

Biography

I am a linguist and migration researcher at Uppsala University. Since 2024, I have been part of the Child Health and Parenting (CHAP) research group at the Department of Public Health and Caring Sciences. I am also a visiting researcher at the Department of Scandinavian Languages.

In 2025, I completed a cotutelle doctorate at Uppsala University and the University of Siegen, receiving doctoral degrees in Scandinavian Languages and Applied Linguistics, respectively. My doctoral thesis examines how legal norms are shaped through language in precedent-setting Swedish asylum cases involving children. I also hold a bachelor's degree in Political Science.

Research

Medical evidence in Swedish asylum adjudication

What happens to medical knowledge when it becomes part of an asylum case? A medical certificate may document post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or injuries resulting from torture. I study the role such evidence plays when the Swedish Migration Agency assesses an asylum seeker's account and determines their right to protection.

This research is part of Nordic Refugee Determination: Advancing Data Science in Migration Law, a Nordic project on variation in asylum decisions in which Uppsala University is responsible for the subproject on medical evidence. The material comprises all 592,642 asylum decisions issued by the Swedish Migration Agency between 2006 and 2022. This allows us to follow the reasoning in an individual decision while also identifying patterns that become visible only when hundreds of thousands of decisions are considered together.

In one study, we examine how medical certificates documenting PTSD are taken into account when an asylum seeker's account is assessed; in another, together with Swedish Red Cross Competence Center for Rehabilitation of Torture and War Trauma, how medical evaluations of torture injuries are used in asylum adjudication; and in a third, the role of medical and psychological certificates supporting accounts of torture in the Swedish Migration Agency's assessment.

Legal consciousness in the Swedish migrant rights movement

How do people relate to law when it sets the conditions for their own lives or the lives of others? In a research collaboration with Stockholm University, I study legal consciousness in the Swedish migrant rights movement.

The study draws on Asylarkivet, an interview archive with 89 participants created to preserve experiences of the rapid transformation of Swedish asylum law between 2015 and 2017. Some of those interviewed have themselves sought asylum. Others encounter the asylum system through their professional work or involvement in civil society. By comparing their accounts, we examine how the same legal demands are understood from different positions – and what people perceive themselves as able to do when confronted with them.

The EU Pact on Migration and Asylum has applied since June 2026. As Member States now reshape their asylum systems, the Swedish material offers a rare opportunity to examine what rapid legal change can mean for people's relationship to law.

Migration health and social participation

What does it take to participate in society – and where are the opportunities to do so created? I explore this question in a study of Mamma United BAS, a twelve-week public health programme for mothers with a migration background, together with researchers at Uppsala University, Karolinska Institutet and the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences. There, the women meet representatives of public services, including social services and the police, to discuss issues that affect their everyday lives. The study draws on 40 interviews with participants, programme staff and collaborating professionals.

I also work with participatory research in migration health. On behalf of the World Health Organization (WHO), I am developing Toolkit for Participatory Research in Migration Health together with researchers at Uppsala University and the University of Limerick. It provides practical guidance on how researchers can work with people with lived experience of migration throughout the research process – and identify questions that might otherwise never have been asked.