Language, Culture and Justice Hub

Language Rights in the Context of Migration

This page lists selected resources that explore diverse aspects of how language — and the search to understand and be understood — impact the experiences of migrants, whether they find themselves on the move or settled in a new country.

Why a Theme on Migration?

Most academic scholarship focuses on migrants’ rights to legal representation or specific legal remedies, such as asylum, family reunification, or the right to study and/or work. However, little scholarly attention has been given to migrants’ communicative needs and rights, for example in accessing interpretation and translation. Moreover, a gap persists between the formal rules, laws and policies regarding language access, and the ways that language access is (or is not) provided in practice.

Another crucial aspect of migration and language pertains to interpreters’ roles and professionalism levels. Different legal and nonlegal contexts may have certain expectations about what interpreters should or should not do, as well as whether interpreters must be professionals or if they can be nonprofessionals (typically family, friends or community members). These expectations may differ from interpreters’ own understandings of their roles. Such misaligned expectations can create linguistic frustrations and may even adversely affect the individuals on whose behalf the interpretation is provided.

Equally important are “language ideologies,” defined by sociolinguist Kathryn Woolard as the “socially, politically and morally loaded cultural assumptions about the way that language works in social life and about the role of particular linguistic forms in a given society.” Language ideologies can affect how attorneys perceive their clients, and can have important ramifications for how they approach important aspects of immigration cases, such as declaration-writing, preparing their client to provide testimony and even deciding whether or not their client needs an interpreter.

This resource page highlights some of the scholarship as well as more publicly accessible commentary that speaks to these points. We hope that these resources are helpful in promoting dialogues around these important themes, both in academic and practitioner circles.

Resources

Click on the type of resource below to explore scholarly publications, reports, commentaries and more. Many of the items listed below without links may still be found gratis online through a simple Google search.

Books

  • Alim, H. Samy, John R. Rickford, and Arnetha F. Ball, eds. 2016. Raciolinguistics: How Language Shapes Our Ideas About Race. 1st Edition. New York: Oxford University Press.

  • American Bar Association, ed. 2012. American Bar Association Standards for Language Access in Courts. Chicago: American Bar Association, Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants.

  • Angermeyer, Philipp Sebastian. 2015. Speak English or What? Codeswitching and Interpreter Use in New York City Courts. Oxford University Press.

  • Berk-Seligson, Susan, ed. 2017. The Bilingual Courtroom: Court Interpreters in the Judicial Process, Second Edition. 2nd ed. Edition. Chicago ; London: University of Chicago Press.

  • Gatta, Gian Luigi, Valsamis Mitsilegas, and Stefano Zirulia, eds. 2021. Controlling Immigration Through Criminal Law: European and Comparative Perspectives on “Crimmigration.” Bloomsbury.

  • Inghilleri, Moira. 2012. Interpreting Justice: Ethics, Politics and Language. London: Routledge.

  • Maryns, Katrijn. 2006. The Asylum Speaker: Language in the Belgian Asylum Procedure. Routledge.

  • Mellinger, Hillary. 2020. Access to Justice at the Asylum Office. [Unpublished doctoral dissertation/master’s thesis]. American University.

  • National Center for State Courts, and State Justice Institute (U.S.). 2013. A National Call to Action: Access to Justice for Limited English Proficient Litigants — Creating Solutions to Language Barriers in State Courts. Williamsburg, Va.: National Center for State Courts.

  • Noll, Gregor. 2005. Proof, Evidentiary Assessment and Credibility in Asylum Procedures. Martinus Nijhoff.

  • Perrino, Sabina. 2019. Narrating Migration: Intimacies of Exclusion in Northern Italy. 1st Edition. New York: Routledge.

  • Piller, Ingrid. 2016. Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

  • Rao, Sonya. 2021. Privatizing Language Work: Interpreters and Access in Los Angeles Immigration Court. [Unpublished doctoral dissertation in Anthropology]. University of California-Los Angeles.

  • Shapiro, Shawna, Raichle Farrelly, and Mary Jane Curry, eds. 2018. Educating Refugee Background Students: Critical Issues and Dynamic Contexts. Multilingual Matters.

  • Tahmasebian, Kayvan, and Rebecca R. Gould, eds. 2020. Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism. Routledge.

  • Taiba, Moustapha. 2017. Translating for the Community. Multilingual Matters.

  • Trinch, Shonna L. 2003. Latinas’ Narratives of Domestic Abuse: Discrepant Versions of Violence. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

  • United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 2017. Handbook for Interpreters in Asylum Procedures. Vienna, Austria: UNHCR Austria.

  • Valero Garcés, Carmen, and Rebecca Tipton, eds. 2017. Ideology, Ethics and Policy Development in Public Service Interpreting and Translation. Multilingual Matters.

  • Vogl, A. (2024). Judging Refugees: Narrative and Oral Testimony in Refugee Status Determination. Cambridge University Press.

  • Woolard, Kathryn A. 2017. Singular and Plural: Ideologies and Linguistic Authority in 21st-Century Catalonia. Oxford University Press.

  • Wortham, Stanton, Briana Nichols, Katherine Clonan-Roy, and Catherine Rhodes. 2020. Migration Narratives: Diverging Stories in Schools, Churches and Civic Institutions. Bloomsbury.

Articles, Book Chapters, & Reports
Commentaries, Blogs, etc
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