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Abstract
Public spending reductions across the advanced capitalist world are creating new professions that have a ‘hybrid’ status and/or role. However, research on professional learning has paid little attention to them. This qualitative study of one such profession, public service interpreting (PSI), addresses that lacuna. The paper focuses on interpreters’ interactions with other professionals and with migrants using public services. It evokes Bourdieu’s important but neglected concept of illusio – the extent to which players invest commitment in the stakes of a field – to frame the analysis. This highlights the lack of autonomy for PSI, interpreters’ own ambiguous illusio, and their conflicts with the illusio of more powerful professions with which they must work. We conclude that there is a need for more research on the power relations between new hybrid professions and established professions, and that Bourdieu’s illusio is a potent analytical concept for this task.
Acknowledgements
The empirical research discussed here was funded by a doctoral studentship for Frédérique Guéry from Manchester Metropolitan University. Dr Guéry is grateful to her various supervisors over the years, Nigel Hall, Charlotte Chadderton, Helen Colley, Yvette Solomon, and Harry Torrance for their support.
The authors are grateful to the referees of this journal and the editors of the special issue for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
Their thanks are due to the public service interpreters who gave their time to participate in this research and share their experiences.