Abstract
AbstractThe phenomenon of child language brokering (CLB), that is, translation and interpreting tasks children take on to facilitate communication for their parents and other adults, is often invisible or neglected. The present article seeks to study CLB in the province of Barcelona (Spain) through the theoretical lens of Marcel Mauss's anthropological concept of the ‘gift’. The authors employ interviews with child language brokers, young mediators and parents to show that children's language competences circulate as a gendered gift that produces and reproduces social ties of different kinds—family, extended family, community, the public—and with different levels of reciprocity.
Highlights
Migration often involves language barriers that need to be overcome to adapt to the host society and enjoy basic rights
The phenomenon of child language brokering (CLB) is very often invisible or neglected. This is the case in Catalonia where CLB has only been approached by Rubio Rico et al (2014) and partially mentioned in more general anthropological studies, such as Beltrán Antolín and Sáiz López’s (2001) description of the Chinese community in Catalonia, or Arrasate’s (2018) thesis on Pakistani women in Barcelona, where CLB is just mentioned as a common practice in these communities
This section discusses the analysis of the interviews according to three main topics identified: the contextualization of CLB according to the rationale behind this practice, the description of CLB as a gift as reflected in the examples shared by the interviewees, CLB and the language gift as gendered practices
Summary
Migration often involves language barriers that need to be overcome to adapt to the host society and enjoy basic rights. Learning a new language as adults with few resources is not easy, and many parents face the reality that their children learn the host language faster than they do. They start trusting their children for small—and not so small—translation and interpreting tasks. The phenomenon of child language brokering (CLB) is very often invisible or neglected. This is the case in Catalonia where CLB has only been approached by Rubio Rico et al (2014) and partially mentioned in more general anthropological studies, such as Beltrán Antolín and Sáiz López’s (2001) description of the Chinese community in Catalonia, or Arrasate’s (2018) thesis on Pakistani women in Barcelona, where CLB is just mentioned as a common practice in these communities
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