Child Language Brokering: L'esperienza mediata dal ricordo di giovani ex-mediatori

This paper will look at the issue of Child Language Brokering, with particular regard for the point of view of former child mediators. Over the past few decades, migration trends in Italy have changed: migration now involves predominantly families with long-term projects. As they attend schools with their Italian peers, many foreign-born or second-generation children master the Italian language much better than their parents or caretakers. At the same time, service accessibility for migrants has not reached an optimal level in Italy. On the contrary, despite the existing regulations public interpreting or translation services are scarce, badly organised and poorly advertised to both service users and providers. In this context, the need for non-professional language brokering arises, and that includes minors as well. This paper will therefore focus on Child Language Brokering, i.e. the language mediation carried out by children and teenagers. Chapter One will offer an overview of the current trends in migration in Italy, with particular regard to immigrant or second-generation children, and of the measures needed to facilitate service access for migrants. Chapter Two well be dedicated to the methods employed to carry out the present research, i.e. semi-structured interviews and qualitative analysis. The strengths and limits of each method shall be discussed. In Chapter Three, the data collected will be categorised in order to elaborate on the following points: where the former child language brokers have interpreted or translated and for whom; how they felt about Child Language Brokering; what long lasting effects this activity had on them; and, finally, what could have been done to facilitate their task. The full transcriptions of all interviews are to be found in the Appendixes.