Supporting migrant inclusion: the role of linguistic diversity in community-led organisations

ABSTRACT

This empirical study explores migrant inclusion in the linguistically diverse city of Glasgow. The particular focus is on the minoritisation of emergent speakers of English, who can find it especially difficult to access support. The research involved in-depth interviews with professionals at third-sector organisations supporting people with a refugee or migrant background. Interviewees gave examples of flexible communicative practices that support migrant inclusion. Such communicative practices can be understood in terms of translanguaging: the way that speakers fluidly draw on their full linguistic repertoires to make meaning. The analysis indicates that language minoritisation can be reduced when services better reflect the linguistic diversity of community members who access them. The examples given show how organisations can embrace linguistic diversity in ways that appear to enable inclusion, valuing the linguistic and cultural resources of recently arrived and settled community members. The article concludes that organisations which are more community led and linguistically diverse can better support the inclusion of language-minoritised migrants.

KEYWORDS:

• Social inclusion
• language minoritisation
• language barriers
• translanguaging
• refugee and migrant community organisations

Introduction

Many people in Scotland are speakers of languages other than English. 2022 census data indicate that over 11% of people in Glasgow identify their main language as one associated with migrant communities, for example Polish. Such linguistic diversity can be met in a variety of ways: it has been described as an enriching social and cultural resource, as well as a cause of social segregation (Hult and Hornberger 2016). Devaluing linguistic diversity can lead to the exclusion of emergent speakers of English, for example making it harder to access health and social care (Piller 2016).

Recent research into the work of refugee community organisations has suggested some of the ways in which linguistic diversity can be an important social and cultural resource. For example, Wilkins (2023, 1851) – investigating the role of Vietnamese refugee community organisations in London – links speaking Vietnamese to the concept of ‘social anchoring’, in which settled community members draw on their bilingual resources to help new arrivals from Vietnam gain ‘footholds’ in UK society. While such research has focused on the support provided by refugee community organisations, the findings suggest that other service providers may benefit from drawing on the linguistic resources of refugees and other migrants.

This empirical study seeks to contribute to the literature on migrant inclusion from a sociolinguistic perspective. It focuses on the language minoritisation experienced by emergent speakers of English, who can find it especially difficult to access many services in Scotland (McKelvey 2021). The research aimed to learn from those working in refugee- and migrant-support organisations, who can develop inclusive communicative practices through regular contact with language-minoritised speakers, combined with a favourable disposition towards linguistic diversity (Calvert 2021). The study is therefore based on semi-structured interviews with third-sector professionals in Glasgow, who reported on communicative practices at their organisations. The research questions were as follows:

1. What do refugee- and migrant-support groups in Glasgow view as the enablers of inclusion for language-minoritised speakers inside or outside their organisation?

2. What challenges do these organisations see regarding the inclusion of language-minoritised speakers?

This article begins by reviewing the literature on refugee and migrant third-sector organisations in the UK, theorising how inclusion can be understood in relation to language minoritisation, and exploring the linguistic enablers of inclusion. After setting out the research methods used, the article then presents reflexive thematic analysis that was both inductive and deductive: presenting themes that draw on the meaning making of research participants alongside a theoretical understanding of inclusive communication.

Refugee and migrant third-sector organisations in the UK

This research focuses on the communicative practices that occur within refugee- and migrant-support organisations, a broad category encompassing a diverse range of groups and people. In their survey of refugee-support services in the UK, Mayblin and James (2019, 378) use the term ‘refugee third-sector organisations’ (RTSOs) to refer to groups ‘of any size who specifically focus their charitable work on supporting those who have been, or are going through, the asylum system’. RTSOs take many forms, including smaller refugee community organisations led by people with a refugee background, often based on a single national, ethnic or faith group (Wilkins 2023). Additionally, the UK third sector includes ‘community-led organisations’ run by and for migrants who do not have a refugee background (Turcatti 2021).

Refugee community organisations contribute to inclusion in a variety of ways. Gonzalez Benson et al. (2022) set out a framework of five broad categories of support: case management (e.g. helping individuals to access housing benefits); outreach (e.g. sharing health advice in accessible ways); programming (e.g. providing English classes for speakers of other languages); cultural/social activities; and advocacy (e.g. raising issues experienced by community members with service providers). Economic analysis by Mayblin and James (2019) concludes that RTSOs in the UK are faced with increasing demand and diminishing sources of funding. As a result, they are unable to fill essential gaps in support left by successive governments.

Although refugee- and migrant-support organisations offer many kinds of support, a feature they hold in common is that they frequently work with community members who are emergent speakers of English (Calo, Montgomery, and Baglioni 2022). Blommaert, Collins, and Slembrouck (2005, 198) describe how language minoritisation occurs when ‘the environment organizes a particular regime of language, a regime which incapacitates individuals’ (emphases in the original). In Australia, for example, Piller (2016) found that language minoritisation can occur when support is offered to migrants only in the medium of English. Research in the UK suggests that language minoritisation can detrimentally affect people’s access to support. Strang, Baillot, and Mignard (2018), researching the experiences of newly arrived refugees in Scotland, found that people struggled to access welfare benefits and housing support due to a lack of language interpreting. It is for this reason that Ager and Strang (2008) emphasise the responsibility of service providers to support emergent speakers of English by making their services more linguistically accessible. More recently, the Commission on the Integration of Refugees (2024) identified ‘language barriers’ as a key factor limiting people’s access to healthcare and their understanding of complex systems, for example the UK education system.

Reconceptualising inclusion

Literature on inclusion has proposed ways to address language minoritisation. Musgrave and Bradshaw (2014, 198) define inclusion as a policy-making activity that has the goal of ‘ensuring that all sectors of the community, particularly marginalised groups, ha[ve] access to the support and services needed to allow them to function effectively in society’. McKelvey (2021) investigated inclusion policies for language-minoritised speakers in Scottish public services. Her findings were that service providers, including health boards and local authorities, should seek interpreting and translation support for emergent speakers of English.

As well as interpreting and translation, the provision of ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) is foremost among inclusion measures proposed for language-minoritised adults (Simpson 2019). It has been argued however that inclusion policy based primarily on ESOL provision is flawed both practically and conceptually. In practical terms, Stella and Kay (2023) report long waiting lists for adult ESOL classes in Scotland, and even when places become available, access can be limited by a lack of other inclusion measures such as childcare provision. Furthermore, ESOL learning can be disrupted by numerous factors affecting people who have been forcibly displaced, not least the effects of trauma that hinder language acquisition (Capstick 2020). Ager and Strang (2008) point out that language-minoritised speakers have the need – and indeed the right – to access services during the months or years it can take to develop English language proficiency.

In addition to these practical issues, the emphasis that inclusion policy places on acquiring English has been critiqued at a conceptual level. Chiefly, it has prompted the question: ‘inclusion into what?’ (Otsuji and Pennycook 2011, 414). Musgrave and Bradshaw (2014, 199) argue that policymaking for inclusion reflects a top-down approach seeking to bring people into a non-negotiable, ‘normatively defined mainstream’. In the case of countries such as the UK and Australia, this normative mainstream is taken to be monolingual English speaking (Otsuji and Pennycook 2011). An example in the UK context can be found in a report from the Commission on the Integration of Refugees (2024, 48), which states: ‘Language learning involves providing refugees with the opportunity to learn the language of their host country’, adding that ‘access to some information in a variety of languages can be vital in the early stages post arrival in order that refugees and asylum seekers can access services and navigate the system.’ The phrase ‘learn the language of their host country’ depicts the UK as monolingual environment, with the result that interpreting and translation are framed as short-term fixes for refugees going through the longer-term process of becoming proficient speakers of English. Such discourse indexes a monolingual ideology: the belief that migrants cannot belong to the UK without learning English, ‘the sine qua non of integration and social cohesion’ (Simpson 2019, 31).

Inclusion policy based on monolingual ideology has been critiqued both for its theoretical underpinning and practical effects. Strang, Baillot, and Mignard (2018) point out that refugees entering the UK will encounter an environment that is not monolingual but highly linguistically diverse. As such, adopting a monolingual ideology overlooks the way that people can form connections and gain support using their multilingual resources (Simpson 2019). Moreover, the experience of monolingualism is not entirely welcomed by refugees themselves. For example, Baillot, Kerlaff, and Espinoza (2022, 17) interviewed people about their experiences of social and economic inclusion in Scotland, a country in which some refugees described ‘a ‘process of unbecoming’, whereby people feel obliged to lose some or all of their previous identities in an attempt to integrate’.

Responding to problematic conceptualisations of inclusion for language-minoritised speakers, sociolinguists have proposed alternatives that account for the diverse linguistic resources of people with a refugee or migrant background. Looking beyond top-down inclusion policy, Musgrave and Bradshaw (2014, 199) explore ‘small-scale, bottom-up social inclusion processes’, including ways in which migrants create ‘networks of solidarity’ based on their linguistic repertoires. For example, Han (2011) studied communicative practices at a Chinese Christian church community in Toronto, Canada, finding that the church supported ‘old-timers’ to engage in language learning, thereby enabling them to welcome migrant ‘newcomers’ who wished to join. Han concludes that people from any background can ‘contribute’ to social inclusion through this flexibility and openness towards linguistic diversity. Such an approach is evident in the most recent iteration of Scotland’s refugee integration strategy (Scottish Government 2024, 20), which states that ‘Integration is a multilingual process. This means that the many languages spoken by New Scots are welcomed and included as part of processes of integration. Successful integration includes practices to support multidirectional sharing of culture and language in communities across Scotland as New Scots resettle there.’ Once integration is understood as a multilingual process, other examples of small-scale, bottom-up inclusion become apparent. For instance, Phipps, Aldegheri, and Fisher (2022, 88) highlight third-sector initiatives in Scotland that enable newly arrived and settled groups to build social connections, for example through the annual Refugee Festival that features language-exchange, arts, food and sporting events.

Inclusive communicative practices

In the past two decades there has been a ‘multilingual turn’ in research concerned with flexible language use in linguistically diverse schools and cities (May 2014). The predominant term for these flexible communicative practices is ‘translanguaging’, describing the ways that diverse speakers fluidly draw on their full linguistic repertoires ‘without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named languages’ (Otheguy, García, and Reid 2015, 281). Translanguaging also encompasses multimodal communication, including the use of verbal modes such as speech and text, but also the use of non-verbal modes such as image and gesture (García and Li 2014). García, Johnson, and Seltzer (2017, 17) argue that linguistically diverse classrooms have a ‘translanguaging corriente’: a riverlike current of communication that teachers can draw on to support language-minoritised learners.

According to translanguaging theory, speakers have a unitary repertoire of linguistic features commonly associated with named language varieties such as ‘British English’ or ‘Modern Standard Arabic’ (García and Li 2014). An individual’s repertoire consists of linguistic features added over the course of their lifetime. In linguistically diverse environments, speakers fluidly draw on these bilingual or multilingual repertoires. For example, Capstick and Delaney (2016) explore how maintaining and developing refugees’ home languages can support resilience, defined as the ability of individuals and communities to cope with and recover from crisis. In a case study of Syrian children in Lebanese schools, Capstick and Delaney (2016) found that the refugee students drew on Syrian Arabic to help them learn Lebanese Arabic. Capstick and Delaney recommend that teachers encourage these translanguaging practices to help refugee learners adapt to a new learning environment, as well as affirming their minoritised cultural identity.

Looking beyond the classroom, empirical research has argued that translanguaging is especially valuable in settings where speakers’ linguistic repertoires overlap very little. For example, Creese and Blackledge (2019) conducted a linguistic ethnographic study of interactions at a library information desk in Birmingham, England. They found that a library assistant from Hong Kong used linguistic features associated with Spanish and Italian to communicate with a Portuguese-speaking service user who wished to register at the library. The library assistant also slowed and simplified her use of English, helping the service user to recognise a few key words she already knew, or to identify words similar in English and Portuguese. Additionally, Adami’s (2018) linguistic ethnography in a Leeds marketplace found that a butcher enabled non-verbal communication in various ways, for example by displaying posters with illustrations of beef and lamb cuts that emergent speakers of English could point to when placing an order. In such service encounters, mutual comprehension takes priority over the kind of grammatical accuracy or spoken fluency associated with an idealised notion of ‘native’ or ‘first language’ usage (Creese and Blackledge 2019).

Other linguistic ethnographic research suggests that translanguaging cannot be assumed to be beneficial in all contexts. For example, Brooks (2022) study of translanguaging at an antenatal clinic in London identified misunderstandings that midwives did not detect because they did not share the linguistic resources of patients and interpreters. By not paying translanguaging sufficient attention, the hospital risked adverse clinical outcomes for patients. Indeed, researchers have warned against claiming that translanguaging is inherently beneficial, a claim that risks discrediting translanguaging theory when empirical evidence shows less than beneficial effects (Jaspers 2017).

What this literature review makes clear is that translanguaging is a context-specific practice drawing on the communicative repertoires of particular speakers. As such, it is important to investigate situated of examples of translanguaging within the context of empirical research. The context of this research is the work of refugee- and migrant-support organisations in Scotland. While it cannot be assumed that translanguaging is beneficial under all circumstances, it appears that flexible communicative practices reflecting the linguistic diversity of migrant communities have the potential to reduce language minoritisation. The analysis below explores situated examples of inclusive communication, considering the effects of a diverse range of translanguaging practices. First however, this article turns to the research methods used to collect and analyse data.

Research methods

The research methodology is located within a social constructionist paradigm, adopting the ontological view that realities exist in the form of ‘socially and experientially based, local and specific’ mental constructions (Guba 1990 cited in Lincoln et al. 2018, 114). What follows from this constructionist ontology is the epistemological understanding that knowledge is produced interactionally between researcher and research participants. Any meaning generated through analysis is therefore socially constructed, contextually dependent and subjective (Lincoln et al. 2018). Guided by my epistemological orientation, I chose semi-structured interviewing as a way of co-constructing knowledge of participants’ local and specific realities in a flexible, open way (Mason 2002). While the research did not include participant observation methods, an advantage of collecting data through interviews was that I could explore a range of communicative practices that it would have been difficult to observe so extensively.

Six staff members from five organisations in Glasgow took part in research interviews. Interviewees were all staff at refugee- or migrant-support organisations that work with language-minoritised speakers. Each organisation provides services for people with a refugee or migrant background, as well as supporting people to access services outside their organisation. Taken together, participants met the selection criteria for the research: all were experienced professionals with a mixture of frontline and management roles; most identified as bilingual or multilingual; and most worked for organisations led by refugees or migrants themselves. As such, the interviews provided rich data for analysis.

Following Mason (2002), I organised the interviews around topic-based questions (see Table 1 below for examples). I flexibly adapted this interview schedule during interviews themselves, responding to participants’ perspectives while also keeping in mind the aims of my research.

Table 1. interview topics and example questions.

Interview topic	Example interview question
1. Service-level communicative practices (focusing on the interviewees’ role)	What’s your approach to communicating with speakers of other languages in the services you deliver?
2. Situational questions based on interviewees’ work with language-minoritised speakers	Can you tell me about a time when a person or group new to English successfully accessed a service inside or outside your organisation?
3. Organisation-level measures (focusing on the interviewees’ organisation)	Does your organisation consider the languages people speak as part of the recruitment process for staff or volunteers? In what ways?

Once I had collected data, the analytic method I adopted was reflexive thematic analysis (‘reflexive TA’), which Braun and Clarke (2022) define as a way of interpreting patterns of meaning across a dataset. Braun and Clarke argue that such interpretation involves the researcher in critical reflection on the subjective, situated nature of their research. As such, reflexive TA fitted well within my social constructionist paradigm. Following Braun and Clarke’s six phases of reflexive TA, I began with data familiarisation, reading the interview transcripts many times over and noting how participants made sense of the communicative practices they were describing. These familiarisation notes supported initial coding, in which I used NVivo 20 to assign codes to data extracts, codes that interpreted the data in relation to my research questions. For example, one interviewee talked about the facilitators of an art group at her organisation: ‘One speaks Arabic, one speaks Farsi, and I think that was quite a good way of welcoming new people that had not spoken a lot of English, with a tutor that speaks their own language.’ I coded this extract as ‘giving welcome’, inductively interpreting how the interviewee made sense of the communication she observed. By the time I had completed initial coding, I had applied the code ‘giving welcome’ to data extracts across nearly all transcripts. At this point, the code label had developed from ‘giving welcome’ to ‘translanguaging offers welcome and conviviality’. This code development illustrates Braun and Clarke’s (2022) point that coding is an iterative process that often becomes more deductive as the researcher engages with data on a more conceptual level.

Reviewing and visually mapping my codes, I began organising them around initial themes or ‘central organising concepts’ within the analysis (Braun and Clarke 2022). For example, the code ‘translanguaging offers welcome and conviviality’ became part of the first theme, ‘translanguaging brings people together’, which summarises the broader effects of the communicative practices that interviewees described. To ensure a rigorous engagement with the data, I reviewed my analysis by returning to the transcripts, checking the fit between coded data extracts and themes. I then set about naming each theme. For the analysis below, I revisited the coded extracts and identified two examples of situated communication to illustrate each theme.

I collected data after obtaining ethical approval from the University of Stirling’s General University Ethics Panel, assessed at a faculty level (approval ID: GUEP 2022 12083 8550). Participants signed written consent forms and are named with pseudonymous acronyms. The analysis and discussion sections that follow report on three of the four main themes that my analysis generated. The final theme (‘More ESOL provision is needed’) has been omitted here, as this article focuses on inclusion measures that go beyond learning the dominant language.

Analysis

Reflexive thematic analysis generated the following themes that explore factors enabling the inclusion of language-minoritised speakers, as well as the challenges regarding such inclusion.

Theme 1: Translanguaging brings people together

The following two examples describe ways in which interviewees supported inclusion by drawing on the communicative resources available, including participants’ full linguistic repertoires.

Example 1: Translanguaging in a registration meeting

PW works at a third-sector organisation in Glasgow specialising in the provision of ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages). His role includes training and supervising volunteer ESOL tutors, as well as registering and assessing new students. PW identified as a speaker of English and Spanish, adding that he had also learned some Arabic and Pashto at the organisation. Asked to describe a time when he had supported an emergent speaker of English to access a service, PW gave the example of meeting a pre-literate Arabic speaker who wanted to register for ESOL classes. Both PW and the Arabic speaker fluidly drew on their linguistic repertoires to complete the registration process, for example when PW used basic Arabic to elicit information such as the man’s name and phone number. Drawing on his training as an ESOL teacher, PW also used simplified English, which he combined with physical gesture, for example when asking, ‘Where do you live? In Glasgow? Here in Glasgow? ((points downwards with his finger))’ Baynham and Lee (2019, 59) would consider PW’s ‘strategically simplified English’ a form of ‘intralingual translanguaging’, as it involved the selection of linguistic features that an emergent speaker of English would be more likely to understand. PW also made use of visual modalities, for example by showing a photo of a local college while asking, ‘Do you go to college?’

The communicative practices in PW’s example can be interpreted as a form of translanguaging in which two speakers fluidly combined a range of semiotic resources, including gesture, imagery and linguistic features associated with English and Arabic. Furthermore, the translanguaging that PW described can be understood as enabling inclusion, as it supported a language-minoritised speaker to complete a registration meeting, thereby gaining access to ESOL classes. PW evaluated his translanguaging in a way that indexed language ideology: ‘I speak kind of broken Arabic, but it’s better than nothing, they’re able to kind of understand it at least.’ A phrase such as ‘broken Arabic’ could be used to negatively evaluate a speaker’s linguistic deficiency, yet PW evaluates his use of Arabic in broadly positive terms. I would argue that what is ‘broken’ in this example is the normative belief that language should be used in a ‘native-like’ manner. Creese and Blackledge (2019) have described this as the ‘centrifugal’ pull of translanguaging away from standard language ideology. Reflecting on the registration meeting, PW observed:

People I think do generally try to understand you, even if your grammar is a bit off, or you’re not using things in an idiomatic way, and I was able to also pick out verbs from what he told me, so I might not know everything […] but at least I get the gist of it.

PW’s description of two speakers working towards mutual comprehension points to the belief that anyone – whether ‘emergent bilingual’ or ‘experienced bilingual’ – can and should engage ‘their entire language repertoire to make meaning’ (García and Li 2014, 85). PW also believed that his willingness to use bits and pieces of Arabic and other languages helped him build rapport and affirm the linguistic identity of ESOL learners: ‘They feel like you’re taking an interest in their own language, and it builds a bit of connection with the students as well, so I like that.’ PW describes translanguaging as bringing people together through the shared experience of language learning, momentarily placing himself on a comparable footing to ESOL learners by becoming a student of the languages they speak. His approach mirrors the way that the library assistant in Creese and Blackledge (2019, 800) engaged in informal language-learning exchanges with emergent speakers of English to create ‘interactions of inclusion and welcome’.

Example 2: Creating a shared experience of translanguaging

KF works for a migrant-led organisation that engages in creative projects, skills training and campaigning on migrant-related issues in Glasgow and other UK cities. Having previously migrated to Scotland herself, KF identifies as a speaker of many languages, including Polish, English, Russian, Persian, Arabic and Spanish. KF said,

I came across this word [translanguaging] many years ago, and I wasn’t really looking into the definition, but to me it is like, ‘use whatever you’ve got at your disposal to actually communicate whatever it is’, so that’s how I see that, and that’s what I use and I live by. I’ve got my own experience of coming here [to Scotland] not speaking English, so that’s what makes it very easy for me to empathise and to understand the person and their needs.

Here KF values her experience of language minoritisation for the way it enabled her to develop empathy, understanding and a willingness to translanguage. Translanguaging is something that KF has incorporated into her identity, something she ‘lives by’, and she gave an example of how she seeks to foster an openness to translanguaging in others. KF’s example involved an event she ran at a museum – attended by recently arrived migrants alongside people from the UK – in which her organisation launched an arts project exploring ways that migrants have contributed to life in Glasgow. KF made a quiz for the event, creating a sheet with sentences in different languages. Participants had to guess the language each sentence was written in, then make a translation with help from others at the event. KF explained, ‘For me it’s about creating this fun atmosphere where […] everybody’s equally imperfect in their knowledge of something […] You can be like, ‘OK, we’re all at the same level, on the same boat, OK, let’s have fun’.’ I would further suggest that KF frames the quiz as a way for English speakers to better empathise with the (perhaps unfamiliar) experience of language minoritisation in a spirit of conviviality.

KF’s example can be seen as bringing people together through a shared experience of translanguaging, with participants using all the linguistic resources at their disposal to find the answers to a quiz. KF believed that privileging knowledge of other languages could shift an unequal power dynamic that typically favours speakers of English. KF’s view of translanguaging can be described as inclusive, valuing diverse linguistic repertoires. Informed by her own identity as a migrant with experience of language minoritisation, KF playfully uses a multilingual quiz to enact what Li (2011, 1223) calls a ‘translanguaging space’ based on ‘creativity and criticality’.

Theme 2: Community-led services are more inclusive

In addition to the translanguaging practices explored in the first theme, interviewees described ways to deepen the inclusion of language-minoritised speakers by increasing the extent to which services are led by refugees and migrants who speak community languages.

Example 3: A community-led advice service

JT works at a national refugee charity with offices in Glasgow. His role includes community development with the aim of supporting refugee integration in Scotland. When a new wave of refugees left Afghanistan in 2021, many people arrived in Glasgow through the UK government’s Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme. During this period, JT explained how settled members of the Afghan community in Glasgow approached his organisation wishing to support their recently arrived compatriots. JT’s organisation supported this community group with funding and logistics to set up a telephone advice service. The service was staffed by Afghans who used community languages – chiefly Dari and Pashto – to advise callers on topics such as housing, education and local amenities. Emergent speakers of English calling the advice service did not experience language minoritisation, as they could draw on their full linguistic repertoires while speaking with advisors.

While the telephone advice service did not give legal or immigration advice, JT explained that call handlers advised on topics such as getting to know the local area, finding work and registering for health services. JT gave the example of a caller who had arrived in Glasgow with his family in the middle of the academic year. The caller was unhappy that the local authority had placed his three children in two different schools. JT described how the advisor responded, explaining how the situation had arisen from a shortage of school places in Glasgow at that time. JT observed, ‘Call handlers always will try and help the families to understand how things work, will try and make sure to give people reassurances.’ The advisor concluded the call by referring the family to a caseworker who could support with finding all three children a place at the same school at the start of the next academic year. JT added:

Not having the information and knowledge about how the [education] system works can create anxiety and stress, because in one way you’re concerned and worried about what is happening, but on the other hand you want some solutions as well [… The telephone advice service is] helping them about which is the way to go about things, and at the end of the day it’s about understanding how life works and operates in general […] The decision might not be something you like, […] but the priority is about having a kid in school.

JT felt it was significant that the advice was given in the caller’s expert language: ‘When you hear somebody on the other line that talks your language, suddenly it makes it easier, it makes you relax a little bit more […] I think there is almost a bond of trust which can be established straight away, just because of the language, and that gives people confidence.’ JT’s example illustrates how it is not only a shared language but a shared national identity and refugee experience that helped with developing this ‘bond of trust’ between advisor and caller. The communication that occurs in such service encounters can be described as enabling inclusion, as it supports emergent speakers of English to access mainstream services.

Example 4: A community-led employment service

EL manages a Roma-led organisation in a diverse Glasgow neighbourhood where many Roma community members live. EL, alongside other staff at his organisation, speak Roma community languages such as Czech, Slovak, Polish and Romanes. His organisation provides a variety of services that support local Roma people with inclusion through employment, housing and benefits. EL gave the example of working with a client who wanted to start his own painting and decorating business. An emergent speaker of English, the client could not complete the form to register as self-employed with the tax office, which required a high level of proficiency in written English. EL provided the client with flexible bilingual support, completing self-employment registration with the client. EL then worked with the client to produce marketing materials for his business, including leaflets, posters and business cards: ‘We create everything together, we support him start to finish, and even after he can still come. We just booked him for next week to do the first tax return […] He’s now getting money through, so he’s happy he’s getting money.’ EL viewed registering for self-employment as an inaccessible process for emergent speakers of English, as it involves the use of specialised formal English.

EL described how attending his organisation’s employment-support service enabled clients to leave exploitative work, which many migrant workers in the UK have little choice but to accept (Boelman et al. 2023). EL argued that the organisation draws on both the linguistic and cultural expertise of staff:

People like me and the other workers [at the organisation] already went through everything what some new arrivals are going through. We faced discrimination in our countries, we faced discrimination in this country as well, so we know how hard it is for some people, so we always try to create more welcoming space for people.

Research literature supports EL’s view that Roma people in Glasgow may be distrustful of mainstream services due to previous experiences of discrimination (Clark 2014). I would argue therefore that EL’s example supports the case made by Gonzalez Benson, Routte, and Yoshihima (2023, 13) that community-led organisations can play the role of ‘cultural brokers and linguistic mediators’, supporting newcomers to build confidence and adapt to living in a new country. In this way, the cultural and linguistic expertise of staff at EL’s organisation enabled the economic inclusion of language-minoritised speakers.

Theme 3: Interpreting and translation are only part of the solution

Interviewees viewed interpreting and translation as important enablers of inclusion for language-minoritised speakers, however in most cases their organisations could not afford to pay for professional interpreters and translators. Instead, their organisations turned to the linguistic resources of staff and volunteers to provide informal interpreting and translation.

Example 5: Interpreting and translation in a community consultation session

KF (first introduced in Example 2 above) described running consultation meetings in her previous role as a community development worker in one of Glasgow’s most diverse neighbourhoods. KF described these consultations as a series of ‘community conversations’ hosted at the local housing association. Held monthly over the course of a year and half, each consultation addressed a topic such as housing or the local environment. KF said that between 25 and 50 people attended each meeting:

We had a Romanian table, a Slovak table […] and then we had everybody else at two or three other tables, BUT people were always welcome to sit with the Slovak community or Romanian community if they wanted, and they would be translated for, and there were a few people who always chose that.

KF and her co-facilitators offered informal interpreting between Romanian, Slovak and English, enabling language-minoritised speakers to contribute to the discussion, for example by describing initiatives taken by local authorities in Romania and Slovakia to encourage recycling. Facilitators noted participants’ main points on flipchart paper, later summarising them for others at the meeting. A projector screen displayed questions on the topic at hand, for example littering. KF explained:

We were translating those questions [into Romanian and Slovak], simplifying them or just making them more relevant to [participants], so instead of asking more general questions about the system, we were just asking, ‘Do you have any problems in your close or in your backyard?’ So we would ask about simple, much more tangible things, and then everybody can relate and everybody can have a voice.

While KF describes these communicative practices as ‘translating’, they can also be conceptualised as a form of translanguaging, ‘a practice that involves dynamic and functionally integrated use of different languages and language varieties, but more importantly a process of knowledge construction that goes beyond language(s) […] to a linguistics of participation’ (Li 2018, 15). Baynham and Lee (2019, 35) describe this dynamic practice as ‘giving translating a translanguaging turn’. In KF’s example, the integrated use of different languages leads to knowledge construction around environmental issues, but also to a linguistics of participation in which language-minoritised speakers are included in the consultations.

KF commented that facilitating the discussions required considerable skill in community development, as they often provoked strong feelings and debate. Nonetheless, KF viewed the interpreting and translation practices as enabling participants from diverse backgrounds to learn from each other. When asked about the outcomes of the consultation meetings, KF responded:

Awareness of other people’s points of view […] getting to know people, then saying ‘hi’ in the streets […] making connections and maybe easing the tensions between ethnic groups […] and I think I would say feeling empowered as well, for certain people, because for example now you realise somebody’s interested in your culture or in what you have to say, maybe that’s the first time ever you are being asked to a public meeting and […] seeing your words on the screen and then later in a [consultation] document, and so on […] this awareness of being a collective voice.

The interpreting and translation KF described can be seen supporting settled and migrant community members to form social connections, fostering inclusion that extended beyond the meetings to subsequent encounters on the street. It is therefore possible to interpret the consultations as a form of intercultural dialogue between social groups, dialogue that can ‘promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development’ (UNESCO cited in Phipps, Aldegheri, and Fisher 2022, 10).

Example 6: Interpreting and translation at a refugee community organisation

LT has worked in a management role at a refugee community organisation in Glasgow for many years. Based in a diverse neighbourhood, the organisation mostly consists of staff and volunteers with a refugee background from over 40 countries, including Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Iran and Eritrea. The organisation provides activities that support refugee integration, including social groups and ESOL classes. LT explained that while the organisation does not have the financial resources to pay for professional interpreting and translation, staff and volunteers ‘act as informal interpreters and translators’. LT felt that this informal support was sufficient for the organisation:

We’re not dealing with really important information around casework or things like that. We’re dealing with things like, ‘What time is the group on? When does it start? Is there a creche?’, things like that, [which we] can usually translate, or people can pick up with the with the kind of English that they’ve got.

LT explained that her staff and volunteer team were sufficiently diverse that someone was usually available to offer ad hoc interpreting support in the relevant language. One reason for this diversity on the team, LT argued, was that many staff and volunteers started out as service users, ‘and then they want to be a volunteer to help people who have previously been through the same situation that they had a few months or years ago […] I think we rely on people more in terms of staff and volunteers supporting each other.’ I would suggest that LT’s point illustrates Turcatti’s (2021, 664) argument that migrant-led organisations can foster reciprocal communities of care distinct from conventional models of ‘unidirectional’ support from provider to service user.

The informal interpreting offered at LT’s organisation has at times become the subject of debate. LT gave the example of the women’s group, which was joined by several Kurdish women who were emergent speakers of English. During an evaluation session attended by staff, volunteers and members of the women’s group, LT described a difference of opinion about whether informal interpreting should take place. One participant said that

‘We should have interpreters for the women, because some of them don’t always understand what’s being said’ […] and then other people were like, ‘But how are they going to learn English if they have interpreters all the time?’ and, ‘Is this the right group to have interpreters?’ [and,] ‘Do we want to spend half the time having things translated back and forth? Because it takes up double the amount of time.’ So it was quite an interesting chat around that, and I think […] the women themselves were not really keen for [interpreting] at all, and we could notice as well that they definitely have got better at speaking English, and their English has improved a lot.

In this example, LT uses reported speech to voice differences of opinion within the women’s group. LT’s re-enactment of the discussion indexes two contrasting discourses about the inclusion of language-minoritised speakers introduced in the literature review above. One discourse relates to enabling inclusion through multilingual communication, while the other relates to achieving inclusion through learning the dominant language. LT’s example demonstrates how these contrasting approaches to inclusion can coexist in the same context, with group members negotiating a balance between the two. Previous research on translanguaging suggests that English is not necessarily in competition with other languages in the way that participants in LT’s example suggest (Calvert 2021). Instead, making use of a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire – for example by translating to an expert language – can support understanding of a new language and ultimately help with learning English.

Discussion

The analysis above considers migrant inclusion in relation to the communicative practices of refugee- and migrant-support organisations in Scotland. I have theorised these inclusive communicative practices in terms of translanguaging, as they involve staff and volunteers fluidly drawing on their bilingual or multilingual repertoires to work towards the inclusion of emergent speakers of English. The examples span a diverse range of interviewees and organisations, reflected in the diversity of translanguaging practices described. JT and EL discussed translanguaging in community-led services in Glasgow, where staff made use of their full linguistic repertoires to advise and support language-minoritised speakers in a trusting relationship based on shared national or ethnic identity. Such community-led services have been linked to the concept of ‘social anchoring’, in which refugees and other migrants support each other to gain ‘footholds’ in a new society, helping to develop their practical knowledge and sense of stability (Wilkins 2023, 1851). The two examples demonstrated how translanguaging led to the inclusion of an Afghan family in the Scottish education system, and the economic inclusion of a Roma entrepreneur wishing to start his own business.

PW’s example differs from those of JT and EL, as his organisation supports anyone in Glasgow with a migrant background. PW could not be expected to speak all the languages of ESOL learners at his organisation, yet his organisation could not afford to use interpreters. As a result, PW’s example shows him taking a pragmatic approach, combining bits and pieces of Arabic and simplified English with multimodal features such as gesture and image in order to complete a registration meeting with a language-minoritised speaker. PW’s example builds on the findings of Creese and Blackledge (2019, 810), who describe a library assistant translanguaging in a way that ‘strategically ignored linguistic correctness and standard forms’. Like PW, the library assistant learned bits and pieces of other languages from service users, a practice that worked as a ‘resource for social inclusion’ (Creese and Blackledge 2019, 811).

While PW’s organisation supports anyone with a migrant background living in Glasgow, LT’s organisation focuses its support on anyone with experience of forced migration. As a result, her organisation prioritised the recruitment of staff and volunteers from refugee communities in Glasgow. LT demonstrated how becoming more community led and linguistically diverse meant that her staff and volunteer team spoke the same languages as services users. For PW’s organisation, paid interpreters were a desirable but unaffordable resource, whereas LT’s organisation had staff and volunteers on hand to provide informal interpreting when needed. Blackledge and Creese (2021, 1) quote Sherry Simon in describing such informal interpreters as ‘the anonymous heroes of communication’ who make ‘social space more habitable’. In LT’s example this freely available interpreting resource is evaluated somewhat differently. On the one hand, LT commented how interpreting enabled inclusion by allowing emergent speakers of English to participate in the women’s group more fully. On the other hand, some members of the women’s group described interpreting as a time-consuming process that got in the way of English language learning. The latter view arguably indexes a monolingual ideology, in which learning English is regarded as integral to inclusion (Simpson 2019). By contrast, KF’s examples reflect a translanguaging ideology, emphasising speakers’ diverse linguistic repertoires. As a community development worker, KF and her colleagues took on interpreting roles during consultation meetings. These consultations brought together diverse communities to discuss local issues. Within this context, KF viewed interpreting as a way of supporting people from different backgrounds to listen to each other’s point of view. KF interpreted the personal connections made during these ‘community conversations’ as a form of social inclusion that spread beyond the meetings to everyday encounters on the street.

Following Creese and Blackledge (2019, 804), I argue that this example from KF can be considered a form of translanguaging, ‘the communicative practices in which people engage as they bring into contact different biographies, histories, and linguistic backgrounds.’ KF engaged in translanguaging by drawing on the multilingual repertoire she had developed throughout her life and work with migrant communities. KF’s own experience of language minoritisation motivated her to foster a more inclusive environment for emergent speakers of English. As a result, KF playfully sought to foster an openness to translanguaging in others, devising a multilingual quiz in which speakers of other languages had the upper hand.

Conclusion

Musgrave and Bradshaw (2014, 199) argue that ‘when a society is super-diverse […] the realm of small-scale, bottom-up social inclusion processes is an area where sociolinguistic research can make important contributions.’ The sociolinguistic analysis presented in this research proposes translanguaging as a diverse set of communicative practices that can contribute to small-scale, bottom-up social inclusion.

The situated examples analysed above show Glasgow-based refugee- and migrant-support organisations engaged in various kinds of translanguaging to achieve inclusion. Some examples presented bilingual professionals drawing on their full linguistic repertoires to give advice in the expert languages of community members. A different example illustrated how staff can find ways to communicate even when they do not share an expert language with a service user. In such a case, inclusive communication can involve the fluid combination of simplified English, bits and pieces of other languages and multimodal features such as gesture and image. Finally, the examples show organisations recruiting multilingual staff and volunteers who provide interpreting and translation support that enable emergent speakers of English to participate in activities. To describe these communicative practices as ‘small scale’ and ‘bottom up’ is not to diminish their significance for migrant inclusion. The examples have shown translanguaging play a role in giving a language-minoritised speaker access to much needed ESOL classes, guiding a worried parent through the complex education system, supporting an entrepreneur to start his own business, fostering reciprocal care in a women’s group, and enabling intercultural dialogue in a highly diverse neighbourhood.

Uniting the six examples is what García, Johnson, and Seltzer (2017, 17) call the ‘translanguaging corriente’: a riverlike current of multilingual communication that teachers – and by extension other professionals – can strategically use when working with linguistically diverse community members. This research takes the idea of a translanguaging corriente, originally situated in an education context, and shows how it applies to situations outside the classroom. The analysis has suggested that service providers would benefit from a greater awareness of this translanguaging current, which may be readily apparent or else flowing beneath the surface at their organisations. Crucially, the analysis has argued that language minoritisation can be reduced when services better reflect the linguistic diversity of community members who access them. For example, when organisations are community led – employing staff and volunteers with a migrant background – they can readily engage in translanguaging to better support emergent speakers of English.

The analysis has also considered the use of interpreting and translation as inclusion measures for language-minoritised speakers. In practical terms, professional interpreting and translation are beyond the budgets of many third-sector organisations. Moreover, I have argued that such inclusion measures are problematic if they adopt the normative premise that services will continue to be delivered in English, with peripheral adjustments made for language-minoritised speakers. By contrast, this research proposes that inclusion should be premised on service delivery becoming much more linguistically diverse. When organisations are led by staff and volunteers who speak community languages and engage in translanguaging, the need for costly interpreting and translation services can be reduced.

This research was limited to data from semi-structured interviews, which allowed participants to reconstruct and conceptualise their experiences of inclusive communication. From the linguistic ethnographic perspective often adopted in empirical studies of translanguaging, the sole use of interviews would be considered a methodological limitation, as people’s accounts of how they communicate can differ from what they do in practice (Martínez, Hikida, and Duran 2015). Given this limitation, a recommendation for future research would be to combine interview data with ethnographic observation of how inclusive communication occurs in linguistically diverse refugee- and migrant-support organisations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/P000681/1].