Out & About: Transnational Family Challenges
Out & About: Transnational Family Challenges
The story of young people interpreting for their family members in scenarios such as health appointments and school parents’ evenings is a well-known one. It has been a part of the migrant experience for many decades. Generally, young minds adapt fast, so younger people pick up new languages much more quickly than older generations. This mighty skill frequently becomes a family resource – something that families can rely on as they navigate the challenges of settling and living in a new place.
At MESH we were reminded of this longer history just recently, when preparing a new Learning Resource on this theme. Our team member Safina Arif speaks in an interview recorded as part of the resource about her experience when she was young, interpreting on the go for family members from the age of about 10. She speaks of the challenge of interpreting the words of her own teachers about her siblings’ performance at school for her mum, and later tackling the language of complex medical conditions for her dad – it is a family duty that has lasted into adulthood.
Our new learning resource on this issue has been prepared as part of our partnership in the Transnational Families in Europe: Care, Inequalities and Wellbeing research project, led by researchers at the Universities of Reading and Leeds. MESH recently presented the resource and took part in discussions at project dissemination events in Leeds and Manchester.
The project indicates that the issue of young people’s caring responsibilities have, if anything, become more complex in the contemporary world. Frequently, family members are spread across different countries as a result of displacement. The language challenge is posed transnationally, and through a variety of digital media. Visit the project pages to explore how these and other issues have been tackled by gathering transnational research data, and explore a range of short films generated from talking to families facing the challenge of maintaining family networks and bonds against the odds.
One of these films is at the heart of our learning resource, Family Challenges. Use the resource in the ESOL classroom for learning around family relationships and to generate discussion based on the lived experience of forced migrants settled in the UK as part of much broader transnational networks.
