Caregiving and flying cars: interactionally mediated practices of care through language brokering within an Afghan migrant family in Denmark

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent studies explore youth and children language brokering at the interface of caregiving for their migrant families and frame this conceptualisation as interactionally mediated practicing of care with the overall purpose of family sustainability during the family’s coping process within the migration context. From this joint perspective, youth and children brokers appear to provide actively care through language while conducting everyday brokering practices to fill interactional gaps between their families and the wider society, and enable the interactional parties involved to express themselves. During this mediation, interactional strategies are crucial because language brokering is beyond translating and interpreting. Drawing on ethnographic data, the paper shows the unique ability of linguistic ethnography to scrutinise interactional strategies in relation to care and applies this approach to examine a number of strategies that Sima, the main young language broker of an Afghan family in Denmark, employs during her within-family brokering. Whereas previous studies have shown that language and culture brokers in their brokering practices act from the perspectives and experiences of their families and the wider society, this paper demonstrates how Sima’s awareness of multiple competing perspectives within family interactions facilitates her mediation in caring for the family’s parent–child relationships and reconciliation.