The Linguistic Traces of Migration: Dealing with Multi- and Translingualism in Ethnographic Research with Refugees

Drawing on my fieldwork in southern Italy over the past 15 years, my presentation reflects on various methodological, research ethical and theoretical challenges and implications of ethnographic research in multi- and translingual contexts from a postcolonial perspective. Furthermore, I analyse the linguistic flexibility of the migrants who came across the Mediterranean as a potential for a cosmopolitan European society.