Language, Culture and Maternity Care: <i>‘Troubling’ Interpretation in an Institutional Context</i>

Abstract

This article analyses language interpretation in the context of maternity health care. By scrutinising how maternity health care staff reflects upon their experiences from the everyday institutional setting, the article shows that they are caught between a discourse on language interpretation as migrants' rights and a racialised discourse where language is intertwined with notions of 'otherness'. As such, language interpretation becomes subsumed into a range of different practices that seek to discipline migrant women to meet the demands from Swedish society. In the article, therefore, the everyday practice by the health care staff is looked upon as a form of citizenship-making, and the article emphasises how racialised discourses take different shapes in different institutional contexts. Thus, the article shows that the practice of language interpretation cannot, in this context, be fully understood without including the larger socio-political context.

Swedish citizenship through multicultural parenting: parental support as a learning practice for migrant parents in Sweden

“…The success of this strategy would be measured by the transformation of the habits of the parents with migrant backgrounds from risky parents into stable and responsible citizen parents. This can be understood in terms of neo-assimilation where the focus is on increased cultural assimilation of certain imagined Swedish or 'universal' values, rather than on social inequalities (see Bredström, 2008;Bredström & Gruber, 2015) At the same time, however, it could also be understood as diminishing the impact of socio-economic inequalities between groups of parents, as expressed in material effects in the suburb such as insecure housing and high levels of transience.…”

“…Homogenising civic practices are expressed by homogenising culture and ethnicity in collective expressions, and social and cultural rankings between 'Swedes' and 'immigrants' (Ålund & Alinia, 2011). For example, Bredström (2008) and Bredström and Gruber (2015) explore how immigrant Swedes, through information provided about sex and cohabitation in Sweden as part of an introduction to Swedish society, create beliefs about us and them in which Swedish values are made desirable and universal. Bredström (2008) conceptualises this as a neoassimilation into Swedish values and Swedish culture through lectures on Swedish equality, views on gender, and so on.…”

Trust, Vacillation ad Neglect: <i>Refugee women’s experiences regarding pregnancy and birth giving in Finland</i>

“…Additionally, a lack of interpreters who would know medical terminology was perceived as an obstacle in communication with the Somali women (Degni et al 2012: 330-339). The data of the present study indicates that the interpretation service within Finnish maternity care is not systematically organised, which is not surprising considering the heterogeneity of the service in Sweden (see Bredström & Gruber 2015).…”

Street-Level Engagements: <i>Migrated Families Encountering the Local Welfare State</i>

“…By exploring contemporary welfare and integration policy through the lens of street-level engagement, we found that social ties often are at the core of citizenisation. The local welfare state that the migrant encounters neglects or misinterprets the meaning of strong ties, such as the family and kin (Bredström & Gruber 2015;Heino & Veistilä 2015). This is problematic as the weak ties in the form of street-level worker interaction do not constitute a basis for migrants to interact with street-level bureaucrats as equals.…”

“…Only then can members of society 'interact with each other as peers' (Fraser 2013: 164). A joint conclusion of the studies, having looked at refugees as well as other categories of migrants, is that the welfare state to some extent caters for income redistribution while the redistribution of power and knowledge remains weak (Bredström & Gruber 2015;Heino & Veistilä 2015;Intke-Hernandes & Holm 2015, Lillrank 2015Nordberg 2015).…”