New Immigrant Youth Interpreting in White Public Space

Abstract

ABSTRACT Bilingual children are frequently called on to use their linguistic and communicative virtuosity to interpret for monolingual speakers. In this article, we theorize child interpreters’ positionalities within the interstices of several borderlands: as children; as interpreters and translators interpreting different languages, registers, and discourses; and as immigrants seeking services within white public space. We analyze how youths are positioned to provide service and surveillance within overdetermined interpreter‐mediated practices. In examining these practices, we raise to consciousness some of the social and ideological conditions that circumscribe working‐class Latino/a and new Mexican immigrant children within inherently unequal subject positions. [Keywords: interpreter‐mediated interactions, childhood, Mexican new immigrants, racialization, white public space]