“My maternal home, like my mother’s place”

Abstract This article explores how narratives of geographical place are constructed and negotiated in interpreter-mediated asylum interviews in Sweden. Drawing on a case study of one asylum seeker’s account, it examines how negotiations of place function as narrative resources under institutional constraints. Combining concepts of polycentricity, orders of indexicality, and interactional positioning, the analysis shows how narratives about place are co-constructed, contested, and evaluated in interaction. The data consists of two recorded interviews conducted by the Swedish Migration Agency. The study demonstrates how place is narrated relationally and experientially by the asylum seeker, yet institutionally interpreted through a narrow, cartographic lens, often via interpreter-mediated formulations. The analysis highlights the narrative consequences of this disjuncture, showing how credibility is negotiated, undermined, or reconfigured as participants engage in ongoing interactional and indexical work. In doing so, the article contributes to our understanding of narrative as shaped by institutional interaction and competing spatial frameworks.