Language(s), Migration and IdentityPerspectives from the Researching Multilingually At Borders Project

Ustinov Seminar: Movement and Identity16 December 2015, Ustinov College, Durham

Melissa Chaplin and Judith Reynolds PhD Candidates, Durham University, School of Education

Researching Multilingually at the borders of language, the body,

law and the state• Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

through the Translating Cultures Theme • one of the three large grant awards within Translating Cultures• a collaboration between seven academic institutions (international

and UK) and third sector organisations• runs for 3 years (2014-2017)• international team of researchers, with different disciplinary

backgrounds, research experiences, language and performance skills

• AHRC Grant Ref: AH/L006936/1

Researching Multilingually

Two overarching aims:

1) to research interpreting, translation and multilingual practices in challenging contexts, and, 2) while doing so, to evaluate appropriate research methods (traditional and arts based) and develop theoretical approaches for this type of academic exploration.

Research Context

Focus on refugees, and persons under pressure and pain: real world imperatives

Concepts of borders and security/insecurity raise important practical and ethical questions as to how research might be conducted.

Focus on Methods: Part of the innovative nature of the project lies not in using new methods per se, but rather (i) in comparing across discipline-specific methods, (ii) interrogating arts and humanities methods where the

body and body politic are under threat,(iii) in developing theoretical and methodological insights

as a result. There are some pockets of work in disciplines, but no

existing overarching framework across multiple disciplines.

practice

Structure of the Project

Five Case Studies

Five Case Studies

1) Global Mental Health: Translating sexual and gender based trauma (Scotland/Uganda)

2) Law: Translating vulnerability and silence in the legal process (UK/Netherlands)

3) State: Working and researching multilingually at State and EU borders (Bulgaria/Romania)

4) Borders: Multilingual ecologies in American Southwest borderlands (Arizona, USA)

5) Language Education: Arabic as a foreign language for international learners (Gaza)

Structure of the Project

Two Hubs

Two Hubs

Multimodal Complementary Methods

Processes (reflexive, ethical)

Researchers

(Teams, two hubs, five case study sites, four PhDs)

CATC hub

Performance, artisticcreative methods

RMTC hub

Academic, investigative, comparative methods

Two Hubs

Multimodal Complementary Methods

RMTC Hub: Academic, investigative, comparative methods

CATC Hub: Performance, artistic, creative methods

Researchers: Five case studies, two hubs, four PhDs

Researching multilingually

Drawing on one’s linguistic resources - Taken for granted

Multilingual and intercultural communication within the UK asylum procedure:

a study of asylum applicants’ interactions with institutions and the law

Doctoral research project 1

PhD Research Aims

• To investigate multilingual and intercultural communication taking place within formal meetings and interviews in the UK asylum procedure between

• asylum applicants and their lawyers

• asylum applicants and UKVI officials

• To problematize and explore the process of multilingual research within diverse linguistic and cultural environments

Main RQ: How do asylum applicants to the UK, their legal representatives, institutional officers and interpreters communicate interculturally and multilingually with one another during formal interviews taking place as part of asylum application procedures in the UK?

- oral (linguistic and paralinguistic), written and other means of communication

- linguistic, cultural and discursive resources drawn upon (Risager, 2006)

Additional RQs: Contexts (social, cultural, political, institutional, spatial or geographical, historical,

ideological, interactional role-related, and other) relevant to these interactions (Kramsch and Whiteside, 2008)

Power dynamics of these interactions (Blommaert, 2001; Maryns, 2006; Inghilleri, 2012)

Impact of these factors on the success of the interaction

Methodological issues of researching in a context where the linguistic and cultural mix is unpredictable

Research questions

References

Someone who, owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country

(1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, Article 1A)

Definition of a refugee

References

• Identity – nationality (or normal residence)– group affiliation (racial, religious, social or

political) • The applicant’s life experience leading to the claim –

his or her ‘story’ of persecution• Lack of state protection…all complicated by a lack of external/documentary

evidence

Credibility, and communication, as key

Key issues for asylum claims

• ‘The asylum application requires answers to what seem to be simple identity questions, but these questions ignore the fact that the applicants are displaced people. The main feature that identifies their status is displacement, not having the ordinary means to establish identity’ (Shuman & Bohmer, 2008, p82)

• For the applicants in Shumer & Bohman’s research, ‘identity is a matter of reputation and relationships rather than a bureaucratic record’ (p88) – ie it is tied up with their religion, politics, ethics, all the reasons that caused them to flee persecution

• Contrast this with the view of the State of identity – names and documents – ‘the need for identity proof is based on an assumption that everyone has access to written documentation’ (p89 citing Quinn, 2002a)

• Displacement as a matter of identity (Blommaert, 2001, p433)• Self-identification as a refugee involves trajectory telling

• Narrative of flight as part of the applicant’s identity

Defining identity in asylum

• Credibility often measured by coherence, by presenting a consistent identity

• However trauma interrupts consistency and coherent identity (Herlihy et al, 2012)

• ‘The law requires identity to be a fixed category, but asylum applicants more often have multiple and changing identities, out of necessity.’ (Shumer & Bohman, 2008, p254)• Positivist view of identity: the self as autonomous, cohesive and

bounded, contrasted with• Social identity theory (Hogg, 2006), and• Symbolic interactionist views of identity as multiple and shifting

(Hall, 1992)

Defining identity: some problems

• ID documentation as problematic- class and nationality bias

- entering with false or no documents assumption of criminality

- problems obtaining documents left back home

• Cultural or national differences in documenting identity

- in Somalia, birthdays are not considered significant and many people don’t know theirs, so refugees from Somalia are routinely given a birthday of January 1 (Shumer and Bohman, 2008, p101)

Defining identity: some problems

• Institutional expectations about language:• Institutional ideologies of monolingualism• Expectations of fluency in a standard language variety

• Language Analysis for the Determination of Origin (LADO) procedure

• The reality of multilingual migrants (Maryns, 2006)• mixed linguistic repertoires• mixed-code use: partial fluency in a range of languages• use of diverse language varieties in different social contexts• acquisition of other language competencies during migration

Language and identity issues

• UNHCR guidelines tell assessors to take account of the fluency and clarity of responses given. This discriminates against mixed-code users, according to Maryns

• Identity is tied up in the institutional view with language – the fact that the speaker has a ‘shattered [linguistic] competence’ means that this is associated with ‘shattered identity’ (the fact that he is not linguistically competent in Krio means he is lying about his identity) • language competence is indexical of speaker identity

Language and identity issues

Creative Arts in Research

Creative arts – Redefining research methodology

Language and therapeutic creative writing with asylum seekers and

refugees: a narrative study

Doctoral research project 2

Pavlenko (2005) 'the traumatising power and primeval emotionality of the first language may also affect language choices for fiction, the inherently emotional written genre...Many bilingual writers acknowledge the language of childhood has remained for them the language of the heart' (p. 179).

...translingual writers point to the freedom of using new 'clean words' of the

second language, which are not imbued with memories, anxieties and taboos.

The 'stepmother tongue' creates a distance between their writing and

memories and allows them to gain control over their words, stories and plots.

(p. 183)

Doctoral research project 2

Writer Adnan Mahmutovic about his choice of English:

“For years I felt I didn’t have a language I could call my own, so I thought of trying

the famous lingua franca. It worked so well because I could write honestly and make

fun of my history without feeling this bondage to the nation implied in Swedish and

Bosnian. I understand that for postcolonial peoples English is not a neutral language,

but for me it is. For me it’s liberating exactly because I have no historical connection

to it.”

Doctoral research project 2

Doctoral research project 2

The black fog has returned

It is very old

It comes once in every decade

Or a hundred years

Or maybe much more

Nobody know where it comes from

It might come from the desert

And is made from sand and dust

Or it comes from a dead sea

Or it is ripped from history

And stops time and anything good from emerging

Black Fog by Aso

It sits on the horizon and beheads every new day

The black fog never wants to settle in one place

When it comes it quickly spreads

And occupies every piece of land

It stops minutes, hours and movement

It wants to push back time

There is a murkiness at the heart of everything

Over children, birds, plants and nature

But when the wind blows

The dark fog moves back to its black hole

And vanishes from this land, our land

The land of the Middle East

Dewaele and Costa (2013) explore in depth the way that multilingual patients experience psychotherapy, emphasising the role that code switching (CS) between languages can play in enabling clients to distance themselves from events, particularly those of trauma and shame. They acknowledge, however, that:

More research is needed on multilinguals who have experienced traumatic migration

and for whom language differences are not seen as benign but may have been part of

the traumatic experience (for example the languages in which torture or political strife

may have been conducted). (p. 46)

Bolton, Howlett, Lago and Wright (2004), note that: 'Writing is different from talking: it has a power all of its own...It can allow an exploration of cognitive, emotional and spiritual areas, otherwise not accessible, and an expression of elements otherwise inexpressible' (p. 1). Baraitser (2014, p. 102), echoes this sentiment, calling for creative writing to be utilised more for therapeutic purposes in the UK.

Research Outputs

Impact – Maximising engagement

Thank youشكراًMerci

Danke schönありがとう！

m.r.chaplin@durham.ac.ukj.t.reynolds@durham.ac.uk

References

Blommaert, Jan (2001). Investigating narrative inequality: African asylum seekers’ stories in Belgium. Discourse and Society 12(4) 413-449Bohmer, Carol and Shuman, Amy (2008). Rejecting Refugees: Political asylum in the 21st century. London, New York: RoutledgeHall, S. (1992). The question of cultural identity. In S. Hall, D. Held, & A. McGrew (Eds.), Modernity and its futures (pp. 274-316). Cambridge: Polity Press in association with the Open University.Herlihy, J, Jobson, L and Turner, S (2012). Just Tell Us What Happened To You: Autobiographical Memory and Seeking Asylum. Applied Cognitive Psychology 26(5) 661-676Hogg, M. A. (2006). Social identity theory. In Burke, P. J. (Ed.), Contemporary social psychological theories (pp. 111-136). Stanford: Stanford University PressInghilleri, Moira (2012). Interpreting Justice: Ethics, Politics and Language. New York, Abingdon: RoutledgeMaryns, Katrijn (2006). The Asylum Speaker: Language in the Belgian Asylum Procedure. Manchester: St Jerome PressRisager, Karen (2006). Language and Culture: Global Flows and Local Complexity. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters