‘Language and Migration’ symposium explores critical issue of ‘language justice’

Language is a vital, but underexplored, factor in the lives of migrants, immigrants and refugees. It has a direct impact on the experiences and choices of individuals displaced by war, terror or natural disasters. Language justice refers to the right everyone has to communicate in the language in which they feel most comfortable.

Over 525 participants from 52 countries on six continents attended “Language and Migration: Experience and Memory,” an interdisciplinary symposium that convened humanists, social scientists, field-workers, policy-makers, artists and writers to think together about migrants as resourceful users, interpreters and creators of language. The virtual symposium took place Monday, April 19 through Saturday, May 1. 

The conference’s seven panels — spread out over two weeks to avoid “Zoom fatigue” — covered an array of topics, including multilingual education, linguistic human rights, asylee narratives and xenophobic language.

“Language is underexplored when it comes to migration; it doesn’t get articulated as an issue when it’s such a pervasive issue,” said Esther Schor, the Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor of American Jewish Studies, professor of English and co-director of the Migration Lab at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS). “Seventy million people today are far from home. For every single act of immigration, someone makes a momentous choice.”  

“We live in a globalized world, and what could be more important to people who are moving from countries of origin to countries of destination than language?” said Patricia Fernández-Kelly, professor of sociology, associate director of the Program in American Studies and co-director of PIIRS’ Migration Lab. “How people interpret words in different language may be a question of life and death.”