Langue et migration

Abstract

Through the story of an 8 year-old Filipino child, we will see how language played the leading role in the ups and downs his family was subjected to, but also how the language of the welcoming country can become the main instrument of a new family and filial balance. Paulo built himself on a cultural cleavage, a separation between two worlds: the one "inside" (the family) and the other "outside" (the welcoming country), each constantly conflicting with the other. Alone, Paulo had to come to grips with this foreign world, a source of anguish for him and heavy with the weight of the distress transmitted to him by his parents. In this context, Paulo had to carry on his slender shoulders the mighty task of guiding and helping his whole family in their integration, since he was the one that was most familiar with the codes and language of the welcoming country that he had picked up at school. This resulted in an upheaval in the order of generations, which makes these children what we call "child-fathers". The oedipal reactivation which follows is accompanied by a feeling of omnipotence, accentuated by the process of parentification carried out by Paulo's father, rooted in the latter's feeling of castration. By learning French, it seems that Paulo's father succeeded in setting up a double "bridge": a bridge from the singular to the collective, in the sense that he could now be a reassuring and guiding figure for his son, a guide towards socialisation, an image with which he could identify, but also a cultural bridge, or should I say "intercultural", in the sense that this father, having acquired the language and thus a much better understanding of the culture of the welcoming country, enabled Paulo to reduce the cultural cleavage that he had put into place. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)