Translating Migration. Methodological Approaches, Epistemological Questions, Theoretical Approaches

In the course of globalization and transnationalization processes, it is true for numerous professional fields of practice and research that conversations can no longer be conducted in the first language of the respective participants. In the context of refugee, asylum and migration regimes and policies, the complexity of translation and communication processes becomes particularly clear. Without the help of interpreters, migrants and refugees are often unable to communicate in conversations (interviews, hearings, therapy), which usually entail vital decisions. Also in qualitative social research, such as ethnographic or sociolinguistic field research on flight and migration, the increasing diversity of languages in research fields requires the involvement of language mediators/interpreters in the research process. Here, too, multi-layered, multilingual situational communication constellations arise in the conversational constellations that are already characterized by hierarchical relations of inequality and emotionality. Interpreting in migration-related multilingual, often tense situations has directed research interest above all to procedural strategies to be developed contextually in order to overcome linguistic as well as culturally conditioned communication barriers.