This document summarizes a chapter that discusses the tensions between national sovereignty and universal human rights in the context of translation and interpretation in the global asylum system. It covers topics like the formation of the nation-state, globalization and migration management, the politics of belonging, and the role of interpreters in negotiating transnational discourse within authorized national frameworks. The chapter examines how interpreters navigate dichotomies between insider and outsider and national vs universal approaches in exclusionary asylum environments.

1. Moira Inghilleri:
Critiquing National
Translation and Sovereignty Vs.
Interpretation Universal Rights
Interpreting
Justice in
Global Context
by
Fira Nursya’bani
Kunto Adhi Prasetya
Riestia Handayani
Tantra Afianto

2. Highlight for today
 Introduction
 Formation of the nation-state
 Globalization, the nation-state and the
management of migration
 Migration and the politics belonging
 Political asylum, universal human rights and
the ‘trans-national’
 The interpreted encounter: transnational
iteration or authorized discourse?

3. How we conduct this presentation
 Reading the whole chapter
 Discussing
 Dividing the part
 Discussing again
 Making a slide
 Ready to present!

4. Introduction
 Position of interpreters within regimes that
rely on dichotomies such as
insider/outsider, national/universal, and
open/closed borders, focusing specifically
on exclusionary policies aimed at asylum
seekers.
 The extent to which communicative rights
granted to or claimed by interpreters and
translators in this context reflect the politics
of belonging that informs current
immigration policies and practices.

5. Continued...
 Participants in the political asylum
adjudication system are described as ‘the
roughest of rough games’. It means that
they have no clear understanding of the role
that is or should be played by the
interpreter.
 The objective norms of interpreting can be
perceived as either a hindrance to this aim
or as enabling its fulfillment.

6. Continued
 Global relations create and attempt to sustain
hybrid economic social and political networks that
inevitably involve some form of ongoing linguistic or
cultural ‘translation’ to ensure their function.
 Literature wealth on the subject of globalization
from a range of disciplinary perspectives – political
philosophy, international relations and migration
studies. Each of which directly or indirectly
considers the effects of global mobility on
local, national and transnational constructions of
identity and belonging.
 Within translation studies, global processes of
communication are the center of analysis of
cultural and linguistic textual representations.

7. Formation of the nation-state
Functioned in juridical terms
Modern state was defined in
relation to and as response to
questions of international order
and responsibility.

8. Globalization, the nation-state and
the management of migration
 The issue of migration has emerged as
central to questions of mobility and
membership in the present global order
 Migration is acknowledged to be an
inevitable consequence of the
establishment of global economic networks
 Motivation for current migration to and
between countries have tended to be
falsely portrayed

9.  First,most asylum seekers are willing and
able to contribute to the economic and
social life of the receiving country.
 Secondly, it is difficult to make a
distinction between ‘ refugee’ and
‘economic migrants’
 Thirdly, during times of economic
boom, policies toward all immigrants
have been more accommodating.

10.  The migration ‘crisis’, attributed to the
rising numbers of people seeking
asylum world wide since the
1980s, has just justified stricter controls
at the borders of receiving countries.

11. Migration and the politics of
belonging
 Contemporary debates originating from western
liberal democracies over migration, citizenship, and
belonging have predominated in countries with
well-established histories of migration
 The issue of asylum occupies a distinct position
within the debates as refugees and asylum
seekers are normally perceived primarily in terms of
their potential to be returned or contained.
 A relationship between the control of migration
and the maintenance of cultural cohesion in the
context of a sovereign state.

12. Political asylum, universal human rights
and the ‘trans-national’
 Transnational norms and discourse of
human rights erode the boundaries of
nation-state.
 Interpretation of human rights must be
considered as the concrete historical
tradition and practice of given
society, but in some cases it must be
‘context-trancending’

13. Continued...
 Bordieu stated that the efficacy of
speech derives not from language
but from the institutional conditions.
 Language which has no prior
authorisation cannot participate
equally in the type of transnational
democratic iteration

14. The interpreted encounter: transnational
iteration or authorized discourse?
 Acts of interpreting and translation are
instantiations of language attempting to function
in a context
 Interpreters make clients as conversational
partners
 Interpreters contribute to make asylum seekers to
be heard
 In asylum event, there is a context of national
cultures and identities
 Interpreters involved in this process do not come
from nowhere

15. Uncertainty and Inconsistency
 Different approaches to training
 Conflicting perceptions and
expectations