Language brokering as acts of care: experiences of young migrants born in Poland and Romania living in Sweden

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to analyse how young migrants born in Poland and Romania, living in Sweden, construct their experiences of language brokering as acts of care within family relationships. The empirical data is based on narratives and visual material produced during interviews with 18 young people who moved to Sweden as children to join one or both parents migrating for work as part of the intra-EU mobility since 2004. The article adds new knowledge to the research on language brokering by focusing on its relational dimensions and designating it as one of the many other caring activities circulating between family members. The young people in the study act as language brokers by translating, interpreting, doing the writing and speaking as well as taking on an advocating and educational role for parents. By switching between languages in their ordinary conversations with siblings and parents they also engage in mutual multilingual learning. Their role as language brokers is analysed as part of the changing care dynamics between children and parents after reunification in Sweden. The young people construct their experiences in relation to feelings of love and obligation and their understanding of what is age appropriate to do. Their experiences of language brokering change over time and depend on other family members' bilingual competences and a supportive environment. According to our results, practicing language brokering may contribute to strengthening children's capacities as citizens and their feelings of being seen as important and valued in the family and society.

KEYWORDS:

• CEE-born children and youth
• Sweden
• language brokering
• care circulation

Introduction

The aim of this article is to analyse how young migrants born in Poland and Romania, living in Sweden, construct their experiences of language brokering as acts of care within family relationships. They have moved to Sweden to join their parent(s) who, due to the free mobility within the EU since 2004, could search for employment and better life chances for themselves and their children (Melander and Shmulyar-Gréen 2018). The results presented here are part of the broader study Transnational childhoods¹ (Shmulyar Gréen, Melander, and Höjer 2021, 2022).

Language brokering can be seen as a mediating activity in which young migrants become involved while developing their language competences in a new country. Within a context of migration, competences in several languages serve as important resources for communication, shaping relationships and understanding social and cultural worlds. As newly arrived, having moved to a country with which they are not familiar and consequently not speaking the majority and official language(s), young migrants and their families are in need of translation and interpretation support in the short or long term. In the prominent studies by Orellana (2001, 2003, 2009), Orellana et al. (2003) and Bauer (2016), language brokering was examined in the context of North America and Great Britain. According to previous research, the language broker is most often a migrant child who has learned the new language faster than the parents. Young family members’ language skills become a necessary resource within the intergenerational care unit in families (Bauer 2016; Orellana 2009, 2003; Orellana et al. 2003).

In line with this research, we understand language brokering as a relational and caring activity, performed within informal relationships such as between family members, wider kin and friends. Language brokering covers one or several types of activities, including interpreting spoken language, written texts, speaking and writing for someone else. Furthermore, we understand the function of the broker as one of mediator, facilitator, problem solver or advocate. Performing one or several of these activities and functions, the language broker contributes to strengthening the power position of an individual or a whole family.

By focusing on language brokering within families of migrant children and youth in Sweden, the article sheds light on these activities that take place largely in informal and everyday situations, which have seldom before been empirically examined. The article seeks to answer the following research questions: 1) Who give and receive language brokering and how can these activities and their functions be understood within families’ changing care dynamics after reunification in Sweden? 2) How do young migrants construct their experiences of practicing language brokering over time?

Language services for migrants in Sweden

There are several integration services directed at newly arrived migrants in Sweden. According to Swedish legislation (2017, 900 § 13), public services within the welfare state are required to use interpreters when service users and patients have limited knowledge of the Swedish language (Gustafsson, Norström, and Höglund 2019). Free adult language education, Swedish for immigrants (SFI), is available to anyone 16 years or older who has their habitual residence in Sweden and possesses a Swedish personal identity number (Skolverket n.d.). EU citizens with a residence permit but without a personal number acquired the legal right to attend SFI classes free in the year 2010 according to the Swedish Eduction Act (Skollagen [2010:800] 13 § Chapter 22 and 2 § Chapter 29).

Newly arrived children are provided with language introduction classes, during which they are taught Swedish before entering compulsory education. Language support from language teachers, who follow newly arrived children in ordinary schools, plays a role in both linguistic and cultural brokering. Another source of support for migrant children is their right to receive education in their mother tongue. Besides providing language training, mother tongue teachers help children maintain their social ties and cultural identity closely related to their native language. As underlined by some studies, native language skills are important for sustaining childrens' relationships with their parents and other kin and friends within a transnational social network (Schmidt, Fält, and Malmgren 2018).

Previous research on language brokering in childhood

Several studies by Orellana (2001, 2003, 2009) and Orellana et al. (2003) in different locations in the USA have focused on child language brokering in immigrant families. They reveal that translating and interpreting are essential parts of the day-to-day care work that many children do in their homes and that they consider natural to do. Based on a 3-year fieldwork, Orellana (2001) identified four areas of translating activities in which children were involved: face-to-face conversations, translating written documents, one-way interpretation and doing things and speaking for others. In another study, Orellana et al. (2003) examined language brokering in two communities in Chicago, one with immigrants mostly from Mexico and Poland and another with a more mixed ethnic population. An important contribution of this study, through observations of interactions between parents and children in their homes, is that it could show that language brokering is not a one-way activity. It is a collaborative activity, in which the child takes the lead and the parent is mutually involved in negotiating the meaning of the written text (Orellana et al. 2003).

Children’s involvement in language brokering activities has different functions. Orellana (2003) points out how the translation and interpretation work that children do for their parents and other close family members contributes to the family health, well-being and survival. Orellana shows how language brokering activities may contribute to the children’s learning and to higher achievements in school (Orellana 2009). In a retrospective study, Bauer (2016) interviewed 40 adults on how they had experienced language brokering between English and 15 different languages as children of immigrants in British society. These stories witnessed how language brokering contributed to the settlement and functioning of their families. Bauer (2016, 22) provides examples on the children’s mediating activities and how these ‘practical contributions’ gave voice to parents, solved different kinds of problems and secured resources, to which the family had the right, from social services. By deciding not to interpret every word in a conversation between the parent and a professional within medical services, some informants protected their parents from being humiliated and helped to maintain their dignity (Bauer 2016).

Several studies indicate that the activity of language brokering can develop into both positive and negative experiences. Orellana (2009), for instance, observed that most of the children felt that translating was a normal thing to do, as part of reciprocal caring relationships in their family, something that was expected of them and sometimes seen as an obligation. Some expressed that they felt good, happy and proud to help others, especially their family members. Others were frustrated when they could not find the right words, while some felt bored and annoyed about being interrupted when, for example, watching TV. Anxiety and feelings of guilt were sometimes evoked when the boundaries were overstepped of what was appropriate for a child (Orellana 2009, 62–64). According to Delgado (2020), children and youth are empowered by their ability to help their parents, but at the same time, they can be exposed to stress in their role as translators, leading to conflicts between children and parents. Furthermore, Delgado argues that her own and others' research shows that both societal power structures and supportive personal networks have an impact on how children experience language brokering. These experiences depend on how the child and family are positioned within societal structures related to legal status, class, ethnicity and race, and the services available in the community. A higher level of bureaucratization in society might also lead to more frequent involvement of children as translators (Delgado 2020). Other studies, for instance by Weisskirch (2007, 2013), underline that factors such as parental support and level of family problems had a direct impact on whether child language brokers found their work burdensome.

Very few studies in Sweden have engaged with the issue of child language brokering. One, and so far the only, national and statistically sampled study on children’s caring activities in Sweden, based on a school survey answered by 2424 children, asked 15-year olds in the 9^th grade if translation was part of other caring activities they were performing on a regular basis for their parents (Nordenfors, Melander, and Daneback 2014). The results showed that both Swedish- (89%) and foreign-born children (11%), were involved in several kinds of caring activities on a regular basis related to their household and the well-being of parents and siblings. Inspired by the child care continuum scale developed by Becker (2007), the survey revealed that 7% of children practiced a very high level of care and among them the majority helped their parents with translation at least monthly.

Within this group, one-third was born outside Sweden. It is especially relevant to our article that nearly one-third of all the children who participated answered that they translated for their parents at least monthly.

In his study on undocumented migrant childhoods, Lind (2018) focused on how children and their parents work together to solve their legal cases. In this process, Lind shows how the interpreting skills of older children as well as their knowledge of how to navigate the bureaucratic system supported the parents in resolving their legal cases.

Gustafsson, Norström and Höglund (2019) conducted a study focusing on professionals’ views on using children as translators. It also included the voices of adults who had acted as language brokers as children. Professionals in social services and health sectors, who took part in a survey and focus groups, expressed reluctance to using children as translators in planned and formal meetings. At the same time, they admitted being more willing to enrol children as translators in unplanned meetings with ‘less serious content’, especially when the parents requested children to translate. The adults who had experienced language brokering as children revealed that they had been asked to translate even in formal meetings. According to them, translation took up a major part of their time as children, with both positive and negative consequences.

Previous research advocates that language brokering needs to be understood within a continuum in which children who provide different care activities are important resources within families and communities, and not just dependants. To handle language brokering, the role of children and young people and their need for support must be acknowledged, including in the professional field of social work, which still pays little attention to the everyday care activities provided by children and young people within migrant families in Sweden.

Theorizing language brokering as acts of care

Theoretically, we depart from Bauer’s (2016) definition of language brokering as a relational care activity, in which the focus is on translation and interpretation. Following Orellana (2001), we extend this definition by including speaking and writing for others who do not have the linguistic competences to do so.

In accordance with García-Sánchez's (2018) theoretical discussion on child language brokering, our understanding of the concept of child language brokering is in line with the new sociology of childhood. Following this perspective, we see children and young people as active agents within their families and wider society and not only as receivers and dependents in relation to adults’ caring.

To highlight the caring aspect of language brokering, we find the concept of care circulation useful (Baldassar and Merla 2014). According to the authors, the concept includes different forms and directions of care giving and receiving over time and space within intergenerational relationships. The idea that care circulates between different generations in a family is referred to as the ‘inherently reciprocal and asymmetrical’ (Baldassar and Merla 2014, 7) nature of care exchanges. The concept of care circulation indicates that there may be an expectation of reciprocity during the life course and across a longer period of time, depending on the capacity of each family member to provide care. Being an actor in the circuits of care, as ongoing relational processes, children and young people have to negotiate with themselves and in relation to their surrounding networks and society about their feelings in relation to caring and how to act according to them.

As Becker (2007) suggests, we understand children’s activities in providing family and kinship care within a care continuum. Household tasks and caregiving, with consideration for the age and cultural appropriateness for the child, are performed by most children and can be placed at ‘the light end’ of a scale. Care activities that are not seen as age and culturally appropriate are placed at ‘the heavy end’ of the scale. At ‘the heavy end’ children may provide up to 50 hours of caring or more a week. From research conducted globally, Becker argues that young carers exist independently of the level of formal care provided by the state (Becker 2007, 378 in Becker 2007, 27). Language brokering per se may not necessarily place children at ‘the heavy end’ of caring, however, depending on the task and time spent on language brokering, and together with other caring responsibilities, it can contribute to a heavy burden for a child.

Methodology

In our research project, we met 18 participants from Poland (n = 12) and Romania (n = 6), resulting in 36 interviews. We interviewed most of them on two occasions, and some on one or three occasions between May 2019 and April 2021. To prioritize the issues that young migrants deem important to talk about, we used a combination of qualitative interviews and visual materials, such as life-lines, network maps, and drawings or photographs produced by the participants. The recruitment of interviewees took place through multiple channels, including mother-tongue language courses, Facebook posts, visits to Polish and Romanian churches, gatekeepers within Polish and Romanian communities in Gothenburg and snowballing. For the recruitment, we used information in three languages: Polish, Romanian and Swedish. The project was granted ethical approval by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority [Reg. No. 2019–02504]. Following the ethical guidelines, we ensured the participants’ anonymity and integrity by asking them to choose a fictitious name and carefully concealing other personal data to avoid easy identification.

In our sample, 16 participants arrived in Sweden under the age of 18 and two were just turning 18. A common pattern was that they, together with their mothers and siblings, joined their fathers, who came to work after Poland’s and Romania’s accession to the EU. At the time of the interview, their ages ranged from 16 to 29 years old (the majority were under 25); most lived in the Gothenburg region, some were enrolled in high school, others were studying at university or working. Some young people had arrived in Sweden 4 years previously, and others had lived there for 12 years. Thus, the participants’ stories contained both retrospective accounts and current events of their childhoods. All the interviews were conducted in Swedish and transcribed verbatim. The choice of language was a matter of negotiation; however, most of the respondents chose to speak Swedish.

Analysis of interviews and network maps

Following Ryan (2021), we analysed the narratives on social networks and relationships with regard to youths’ perceptions of the responsibilities that were appropriate for a child. These narratives were co-constructed in dialogue between the interviewer and the participants, facilitated by the visual methods. Using the network maps, the participants were asked to write down names of those who they identified as significant, including both living and dead people who they knew at the time and had known in the past. We used three concentric circles (with different degrees of closeness) and three quadrants with prescribed social domains (family and friends; friends and romantic relations; professional relations and other community members). We also prompted them to think of people from whom they received, but also provided with, care and social support. We were interested to know about the social meaning and content of these relationships, as well as the degree of reciprocity and circulation of care. By applying a life course perspective (Wingens et al. 2011), we analysed giving and receiving care and support across age, time and space within their family migration trajectories.

The narratives were analysed through coding and memo writing in line with the grounded theory approach (Charmaz 2015), supported by the NVivo software. Family relationship, indicated as important, was summarized and analysed more closely. A specific code related to the role of language emerged as a recurrent theme, with language brokering as a sub-theme. The stories about language brokering were also identified using a separate code on children’s agency, revealing situations in which young people were taking on an active role as carers and especially as language brokers for family members.

Findings

In the following, we present the results built on young people’s narratives on language brokering in relationships with parents and siblings. The results include young people’s narratives about acting as language brokers within their families in the context of changing caring dynamics after reunification in Sweden and about language brokering over time.

Language brokering activities and their functions in the context of changing caring dynamics

Language brokering as a mediating activity within the family setting

As indicated by Bauer (2016), it was the multilingual capacity of the children and young people in our study rather than their age that determined their responsibility for language brokering.

Half of our interviewees, nine young people, admitted that they had experience of carrying out caring activities, which we define as language brokering, in relationships with close family members, and especially in relation to parents. For some young people, language brokering was a continuing caring practice and for others it was a caring activity that had been performed during a certain period of their childhood upon arrival to Sweden. Few of the participants mentioned that they were receivers of language brokering from parents and siblings.

The need for child language brokering featured as a contributing factor to the changing care dynamics and circulation of care between generations after reunification in Sweden (Baldassar and Merla 2014). Arriving in a new country posed a number of challenges, and learning a new language was only one of them, pushing parents and children to sometimes rely on each other more than before.

Monica (23, came from Poland at the age of 11) is one of the three other young women who participated in our study and practiced different kinds of language brokering for their parents at the same time as being ‘an extra parent’ for their younger siblings. Monica moved to Sweden together with her mother and younger brother to reunite with the father, who had migrated first to work. Her family migration trajectory had a clear impact on her position in the family and on the family care dynamics as a whole:

We became much more dependent on each other. It felt like we were on our own; we did not know anyone around. […] In a sense we became […] tighter; we needed each other more. We had to help each other as there was no one else but us four. I learned the language much quicker than others in my family. In this way, I could help them read letters, answering emails and things like that. If they did not understand something I had to almost take on the role of an adult. […] In relation to some concerns, we had to share the responsibility equally in a sense. When I look back, I did not have the same free upbringing […]. There was always: my mom needs help with something, and then my dad needs help with something […]. It happened all the time. I got a responsibility, in a way, that I did not have before.

For Monica, and several other eldest siblings in the migrant families, language brokering became a new caring activity, in addition to a co-parental role in relation to younger siblings and household chores that they were used to doing prior to migration. A helping hand from them was needed and could be understood as an expectation within the familial care circulation (Baldassar and Merla 2014). Their parents worked long hours and there were no other kin around, contrary to what young migrants were used to in the small towns and villages in Poland and Romania where they grew up.

Having mastered a new language faster than her parents, Monica embraced new responsibilities as mediator between the parents and Swedish society. The mediating activities included translation and interpretation, writing letters, filling in forms and making phone calls. These activities were mainly provided in the home, which echoes the stories of other participants and previous research (Orellana 2009). Similarly to other language brokers, Monica noted that for her it was a mundane ‘responsibility’, including translating and interpreting letters that came to her parents ‘into the post-box’. A friend of her family was also there to support them with language brokering, at least in the beginning, indicating that she was not left alone with this responsibility.

Monica:

They asked me to double-check things, for instance their application for Swedish courses and the like. [These] were not very big, serious kinds of issues. It was not like that.

Interviewer:

Did it also involve accompanying them to hospitals or public healthcare services and those kinds of places or parental meetings for your brother?

Monica:

No, no such things, [it was mainly helping out with language] when we were at home.

Monica’s story corroborates the findings by Gustafsson, Norström and Höglund (2019) on reluctance expressed among professionals in Sweden to rely on children as translators in formal and planned meetings. Monica talked with some ambivalence about her caring tasks. Her expression about almost taking on an adult role by helping her parents with Swedish interfered with her free time as a teenager and her perception of what was appropriate for a child to do.

At the time of the interview, Monica’s parents no longer needed her language brokering mediation. Her mother had completed Swedish for immigrants, and later took a university degree to enable her to work in her current profession. Reflecting on the consequences of the language brokering in her childhood, Monica admits that despite being a distracting activity for her as a teenager, the support she provided to her parents was, in line with Bauer (2016), an essential resource enabling her family’s settlement in Sweden.

At the age of 23, Monica told us about a role reversal related to language brokering. As a young adult, she now turns to her mother, who masters spoken and written Polish language better than she does. It is now her mother who helps Monica with her spelling and finding the right words when writing letters to a close relative back in Poland. This is an example of how language brokering, as part of the care exchanged between family members, may circulate (Baldassar and Merla 2014), depending on who has the best language competences needed in local as well as transnational social settings.

Giving the parent ‘a voice’

Another type of language brokering we came across in the stories of young migrants was speaking for a parent’s rights. This kind of act was not frequent in the material, but still important as an act of care, according to Bauer’s (2016) findings. Taya (21, came from Romania at the age of 16) moved to Sweden together with her mother and younger sister to reunite with the father. She studied Swedish at high school as well as introductory courses in Swedish as a second language. In addition, Taya worked part-time and was engaged in different civil society activities early after her arrival. Besides language brokering activities of translation and interpretation in the home settings, Tanya, on her own initiative, spoke for her parents in meetings with the housing cooperative and helped friends of her parents with translation. Below is an example of Taya advocating for her mother’s rights as a patient. She does it partly because her mother declines a professional translator, and avoids disclosing her health problems to a stranger, and partly because Taya wanted to be there for her mother.

She does not want to disclose anything [to strangers]. [When the doctor] says: ‘there is nothing wrong with you, you can just go home’. Then she knows that I won't be quiet and that I will say: ‘she must not go home when she is so unwell’. So, she likes that I'm a little overconfident in some way. She thinks it is good that I am with her because she cannot speak for herself. […]then she does not know what the rules [in the Swedish medical services] are. She tells me : ‘You work in care, you know what rules apply, you know about it because you learn about it at school. You study about it in your spare time’. She knows that I know what applies and what does not. And if someone says: ‘you do not have the rights to this’, she looks at me. Then I may confirm: ‘no, you do not’ or I will say: ‘yes, she certainly has’. In this way she feels safer when I am with her.

Taya’s quotation illustrates how her mother trusts her as a knowledgeable person with resources both in the Swedish language and about the Swedish medical system, capacities that are important for advocating rights as a citizen and a patient. By advocating for her mother’s rights in meetings with the medical services, she is a trusted mediator between her mother and the medical health services, and in line with Bauer (2016), Taya gives her mother ‘a voice’. For Taya, advocating for her mother does not seem to be a burden. Rather, she appreciates being more useful than before when they lived in Romania. Now her mother turns to her and her younger sister for guidance, as in the case of Monica, there are no other close relatives in their physical proximity.

Facilitating mutual language learning

Another way to strengthen the position of a parent in a new society is to contribute to learning Swedish. Bogdan (17, came from Romania at the age of 12) reunited with his father in Sweden together with his mother. He indicated the date that his mother took her exam in the course Swedish for immigrants, as an important life event in the family migration trajectory:

I could speak better Swedish than her and I had to help her a lot with her own studies. [It was great] to see that she managed so well, she got a pretty high grade at her exam. Both of us were really happy to realize that all that work we put in turned out to be good for both me and her.

By helping his mother to learn the Swedish language, Bogdan cared for his mother and her educational needs. They were able to share the joy of her completing her Swedish exam, while it was also a ‘relief’ for Bogdan as he no longer needed to perform language brokering. For a short period of time, he had to help his mother a great deal. Simultaneously, he was a learner of a new third language, himself. Facilitating his mother’s language learning felt manageable because in his family they ‘cared about each other’ (e.g. Baldassar and Merla 2014; Weisskirch 2007, 2013).

Another way of facilitating multi-lingual competences within the family circle and between friends was switching between different languages, sometimes during the same conversation. Antoni (25, came from Poland at the age of 18) stayed in Poland with his grandparents, his uncle and aunt, while his brother, who is 10 years younger, went to Sweden together with Antoni’s parents already at the age of 2. Both the age gap and the geographical distance hindered the siblings in building their relationship. While in Sweden, Antoni seized opportunities to become closer to his brother by asking his parents to be involved in caring for him. On some occasions, Antoni took his younger brother to the appointments with medical doctors and while driving they took the chance to talk to each other:

One day I was off work and was able to accompany my brother to the doctors, as my parents were busy. In the car there was only the two of us and we had a chance to talk. It is fun because we usually speak Swedish to each other. It may however sound awkward and interesting at the same time. [My brother] grew up here, so he speaks the language fluently, like a Swede. It is barely noticeable that he is a foreigner, and speaking Swedish feels natural for him. When he enters the car, he starts speaking Swedish to me even though he knows that we are Poles and can speak Polish. He does the same with our cousins, who grew up here. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I want to speak Polish with him, so he can learn, but on the other, I go along with speaking Swedish because in that way I can improve my Swedish. Sometimes, we can quickly switch into English, he is very talented at languages. He watches various movies on YouTube in English, in order to improve his knowledge and I don’t mind doing the same, so I just follow the language he speaks.

By using Polish, Swedish and English in the same conversation, Antoni and his brother engage in mutual multilingual learning. While his brother is more fluent in Swedish, Antoni uses every opportunity to improve his Swedish, while he continues to care about his brother not forgetting their mother tongue – Polish. It seems that switching between languages becomes a natural way of everyday communication among family members. It may or may not have an intentional language brokering function by strengthening language competences in the mother tongue, the majority language in the new society and a third language such as English.

Similarly, Taya, introduced above, says that she uses both Romanian and Swedish in conversations with her mother, but only Romanian with her father.

[…]I talk to my father in pure Romanian, while my sister and I succeeded in ‘infecting’ our mother with some Swedish, some mixture anyway. We have not yet succeeded with our father.

When Taya justifies using Swedish in conversations with her mother and father, she refers to this practice using words such as ‘pure’, ‘infect’ and ‘succeed’, indicating that switching between languages is an intentional language brokering act. She has also recommended that her father change jobs in order to strengthen his language competences in Swedish. We found other examples of intentional switching between languages between close friends. Märta (17, came from Poland at the age of 10) describes how she and her best friend, who was also born in Poland, intentionally switch between Polish and Swedish to strengthen each other’s bilingual language competences. When they first met, they tried to speak Swedish with each other as much as possible to pick up new words. After some time, Märta intentionally switched from Swedish into Polish to prevent her friend losing her competence in their mother tongue.

Constructing experiences of language brokering over time

Being a migrant child, struggling with learning a new language and making friends in a new cultural setting is demanding. Being expected to act as a language broker at the same time is an even greater challenge. Anna (16, came from Poland at the age of 12), reunited with her father, who was working in Sweden. As the youngest child in her family, Anna used to be taken care of by her parents, siblings and relatives who lived near their home in Poland. After having moved to Sweden, Anna was the only person in the family who learned Swedish at school. Below, Anna deliberates with herself on how she felt obliged to take on a language broker role in her family over a longer period of time:

There was no other way; I simply had to make phone calls here and there. I did not see it as a problem, obviously, I am always ready to help my family. But I understand, and I talk about it with my parents quite often, that it feels wrong that I am always the one who has to try to solve the issues that I should not have to. I probably would not even need to know about these things. […] Anyway, for me it is not a problem, no problem at all. […] I even learn things along the way. This ‘know-how’ can come in handy when I grow up. I will not have any problem calling a bank or solving other issues. Many people of my age, who I know, don’t dare to make a call or to ask questions. I don’t have such a problem, because I don’t have a choice. […] If I don’t do it, no one else will.

Anna continues explaining that her language brokering was initially emotionally demanding:

In the beginning, when I was new to the Swedish language myself, I felt under pressure to understand every single word, but I couldn’t [...] I felt like everyone was annoyed with me because I couldn’t find the right words to explain […]

Interviewer: Who was annoyed with you?

Well, […] as soon as someone in my family, my sister, my brother or my parents, asked me to make a call, they expected me to tell them straight afterwards what I had found out. But I didn’t always understand every word in the conversation. […] So, I only passed on to my family what I thought I had understood. There were obviously gaps in these communications. […] Every time it happened, I felt as if my relatives were annoyed with me […]. The fact is that they weren’t, but I believed they were, and I was mainly annoyed with myself because I didn’t fully grasp the conversation.

The interaction above shows that Anna’s feelings, similar to Monica’s, were imbued with ambivalence when negotiating the expectations her family had and not yet having fully developed her competence in the Swedish language. Anna was also negotiating between her love and solidarity towards her family members and her understanding that she was performing tasks that according to her were supposed to be done by adults. At the time of the interview, Anna spoke Swedish fluently, but she admitted that her Polish language lagged behind, especially when it came to administrative vocabulary. After all, having gained competence by taking on a mediator role for her parents, she is convinced that the skills she acquired can be used in advocating for her own rights as a teenager as well as an adult in the future. Thus, in retrospect, Anna sees her language brokering role as an opportunity, rather than as a problem. She indicates that at times it is joyful to ‘play an adult role’ and to feel ‘almost like an adult’. Her child language brokering is an example of the positive consequences that learning and acquiring useful competence may have (e.g. Orellana 2009; Delgado 2020). Young people, like Anna, who enjoy the support and love of their family while acting as a language broker, as the previous research shows (Weisskirch 2013), may handle a demanding caring role better.

Antonina (29, came from Poland at the age of 16) also told us about how her experiences of language brokering changed over time. During her first years in Sweden and as the only sibling living in Sweden, she managed to solve her tasks by turning to a friend for her own language brokering support:

There were some situations, you know, let us say a letter from a tax authority or a doctor, that contained some very difficult words in Swedish or some instructions that I did not understand as a young person […]. I was confused; how can I explain this to my parents? It was difficult. I Googled, of course. But I could also ask a friend, she had lived in Sweden one year longer than me. She also had to help her parents, so I had her to ask for advice if she knew how to solve this and that. Even if it was not easy, you find a way.

Antonina experienced difficulties mediating as a language broker for her parents, especially during her first years in Sweden and before she had learned the Swedish language herself. Having a friend who was bilingual in Polish and Swedish, and a language broker for own parents, helped Antonina to cope with the role. Together with her friend, whom she met in a religious community, Antonina was able to share mutual and ambivalent experiences about assisting parents. Similarly to Anna, Antonina felt emotionally attached to her parents as they cared for her well-being. Even as a grown-up, the circulation of care between Antonina and her parents continues through the exchange of different kinds of caring activities (Baldassar and Merla 2014). Antonina’s parents welcomed her to live in their home when she had to return from work abroad during the pandemic in 2019. They also helped her to find a new job in the Polish-speaking community in Sweden. Antonina, on the other hand, continues to be ‘a link’ to the Swedish society, as she described it, assisting her parents with translating and interpreting as well as providing technical support.

Discussion and conclusions

This article set out to analyse the retrospective and ongoing narratives on language brokering by young people from Poland and Romania, who were reunited with one or both parents, who had migrated to Sweden for work after EU accession in 2004 and 2007 respectively. We designated language brokering as part of informal caring activities, circulating between the young people and their parents and siblings (Baldassar and Merla 2014). Language brokering activities are new commitments for both the givers and the receivers of language support following their family migration trajectory.

Half of our 18 respondents talked about language brokering within their families. In most cases, young migrants were the givers of language brokering care to their parents and in some cases to their siblings. When they were receivers, most often it was a mutual exchange of language competences between siblings and only occasionally they talked about their parents helping them express themselves in their mother tongue.

Young people constructed their experiences as part of the changing care dynamics in the family after reunification in Sweden, where family members were more dependent on each other. On several occasions, language brokering was crucial for their parents in managing their adult duties. In the absence of extended families, young Poles and Romanians felt a stronger interdependence between themselves, their parents and siblings. The eldest siblings, in particular, took on more responsibilities as extra parents and for doing household chores.

Their new role as language brokers included translating and interpreting, communication with societal institutions on the phone and occasionally physical visits. On a few occasions, young migrants took on the role of advocates by giving the parent ‘a voice’ (Bauer 2016) in negotiating their rights to access services as a patient and citizen. Advocating could be done not only due to their multilingual competence but also due to competence such as the patient’s rights.

Young people construct their experience of language brokering in relation to the way they perceive what are age-appropriate activities in the society where they live. Some participants reflect on their language brokering as an act normally provided by adults and therefore as a task related to the ‘heavy end’ of the child care continuum scale (Becker 2007). By performing these adult activities, young people expressed that they felt almost like adults, and more equal in relation to their parents and older siblings. Initially, these adult-like activities felt like activities they were not fully able to handle. Young people described feelings of being annoyed and frustrated but also of being treated in an unfair way compared with other children of their age, who had more free time to do what they wanted.

Language brokering was sometimes perceived as a responsibility that some of the participants felt obliged to take on as nobody else could do it. By analysing language brokering within a child care continuum, we underline the importance of understanding care as part of the care circulation within their family as a whole. When they acted as language brokers for their parents, some activities might have been emotionally challenging; however, as previous research indicates, receiving care, love and appreciation from both parents and siblings helped them to cope with the role (Weisskirch 2013, 2007). In retrospect, we can observe that the young people constructed their language brokering as something that strengthened their parents’ abilities to handle the adaptation to a new society as well as their own capacity to act as citizens. Parents who had had the time and opportunity to take Swedish for immigrants courses gained competence in Swedish that released the children from language brokering.

An important implication of this research is that language training for newly arrived migrant parents is crucial to ease the burden for children and young people who may otherwise take on a language brokering role over a long period of time. Against the backdrop of the current political debates in Sweden, it is important to preserve and further develop the structures for Swedish language training as well as the right to professional interpreters and language brokering support. As our results reveal, language training helps to maintain the capacity of parents to practice their adult and parenting responsibilities and to understand and navigate the societal system and advocate for the rights and well-being of their children. For social workers meeting children practicing language brokering in their everyday life, we suggest acknowledging a collaborative nature of family relationships and the fact that in some contexts, language brokering is an inappropriate activity for a child. If a child or a young person practicing language brokering receives emotional and practical care and feels appreciated for their care work, their contribution should not only be regarded as a burden. Their activities may strengthen their capacities as citizens and their feelings of being important and valued in the family and society.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life, and Welfare Forte [2018–00369].

Notes

1. The project ‘Transnational Childhoods: Building of Significant Relationships among Polish and Romanian Migrant Children after Reunification with Parents in Sweden’ [2018–00369] is funded by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life, and Welfare Forte, (2019–2023). The project leader is Professor Ingrid Höjer. The project was granted ethical approval by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority [Reg. No. 2019–02504].