Challenges of Multilingual Encounters in Interview Settings: Reflections on Translanguaging in Qualitative Migration Studies

Drawing on our own experience from an empirical study on refugee family reunification in France and Germany, we examine translanguaging in transnational interview settings. We conceptualise language both as a medium of communication and as a site of power, imbued with colonial legacies, institutional and language hierarchies and epistemic inequalities. Understanding participants as co-producers of knowledge, we show how translanguaging as a contextual social practice was used during fieldwork. Adopting an intersectional perspective, we explore the way linguistic practices are entangled with power asymmetries. These asymmetries are shaped by the languages, origins, legal status and further positionalities of participants and researchers. We argue that an intersectional perspective allows us to develop a more nuanced account of how communicative practices, epistemic authority and power asymmetries are negotiated in multilingual encounters. By treating translanguaging as an epistemic resource, we seek to contribute to the development of inclusive, context-sensitive and power-reflective methodologies in migration studies.