Language(s), Migration and Identity Perspectives from the RM @ Borders Project Ustinov Seminar 16 Dec 2015 Durham University

1. Language(s), Migration and Identity
Perspectives from the Researching
Multilingually At Borders Project
Ustinov Seminar: Movement and Identity
16 December 2015, Ustinov College, Durham
Melissa Chaplin and Judith Reynolds
PhD Candidates, Durham University, School of Education

2. 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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. practice

6. Structure of the Project
Five Case Studies

7. 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)

8. Structure of the Project
Two Hubs

9. Two Hubs
Multimodal Complementary Methods
Processes
(reflexive, ethical)
Researchers
(Teams, two hubs, five case study sites, four PhDs)
CATC hub
Performance, artistic
creative methods
RMTC hub
Academic, investigative,
comparative methods

10. 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

11. Researching multilingually
Drawing on one’s linguistic resources - Taken for
granted

12. Multilingual and intercultural communication
within the UK asylum procedure:
a study of asylum applicants’ interactions with
institutions and the law
Doctoral research project 1

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. • ‘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

18. • 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

19. • 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

20. • 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

21. • 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

22. Creative Arts in Research
Creative arts – Redefining research methodology

23. Language and therapeutic creative
writing with asylum seekers and
refugees: a narrative study
Doctoral research project 2

24. 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

25. 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

26. Doctoral research project 2

27. 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

28. 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

29. 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.

30. Research Outputs
Impact – Maximising engagement

31. Thank you
‫ا‬ً‫شكر‬
Merci
Danke schön
ありがとう！
m.r.chaplin@durham.ac.uk
j.t.reynolds@durham.ac.uk

32. References
Blommaert, Jan (2001). Investigating narrative inequality: African asylum seekers’
stories in Belgium. Discourse and Society 12(4) 413-449
Bohmer, Carol and Shuman, Amy (2008). Rejecting Refugees: Political asylum in the
21st century. London, New York: Routledge
Hall, 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-
676
Hogg, M. A. (2006). Social identity theory. In Burke, P. J. (Ed.), Contemporary social
psychological theories (pp. 111-136). Stanford: Stanford University Press
Inghilleri, Moira (2012). Interpreting Justice: Ethics, Politics and Language. New York,
Abingdon: Routledge
Maryns, Katrijn (2006). The Asylum Speaker: Language in the Belgian Asylum
Procedure. Manchester: St Jerome Press
Risager, Karen (2006). Language and Culture: Global Flows and Local Complexity.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters