Minors of immigrant origin in linguistic intermediation: making visible a social phenomenon

Abstract

The use of bilingual children to carry out linguistic mediation tasks, referred as child language brokering (CLB), between their families and the different public services (schools, healthcare centers, social services, etc.) providers is a recurrent phenomenon in migration processes. The main objective of this study is to describe the effect that these experiences have on the construction of the personal narratives of the children. In order to achieve this objective, 20 interviews were conducted with youngsters between 17 and 29 years of age, belonging to different linguistic groups, who have carried out CLB tasks in the past. Based on a qualitative methodology and a thematic analysis, the results allow usto conclude that CLB is a phenomenon recurrent in the Catalan context, which has a clear impact on the people who carry it out and on the relationships they establish with their environment. CLB begins spontaneously in the most intimate and familiar environment, but it reaches settings of greater specialization and complexity falling under the domain of Public Services.