LIMINAL

The LIMINAL project focuses on the interactions and mediations between migrants and institutional, associative and informal actors in situations of migration and humanitarian crises, as they have been developing in France since 2015 (increasing number of refugee camps, refugee shelters and welcome centers). Although linguistic and intercultural interactions and mediations in the context of international migration and humanitarian emergency have major social impact, they have never been studied by national and international research programs. They are, however, in line with the priority challenges of the European Union (H2020). LIMINAL's multidisciplinary team brings together anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, linguists, sociolinguists and semioticians from three major research centers from the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) –The America, Africa and Asia Center for Social Sciences (CESSMA), the Center on Plurality of Languages and Identities: Didactics, Acquisition and Mediation (PLIDAM) and the Center for Studies and Research on Literatures and Oralities (CERLOM), to which are attached researchers specialized in migration and mediation from other French Centers (Triangle/ENS Lyon, URMIS and CRPMS from University Paris Diderot) and the SOAS (University of London). They will work together on the interactions and practices of mediation in five major languages: Urdu, Farsi, Dari, Amharic, and Arabic. The team will conduct field studies in pairs (anthropologists-sociologists and sociolinguists) in refugee camps and centers of three zones in France: Paris and suburbs, Hauts-de-France, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, as well as in two border towns (Dover and Ventimiglia). LIMINAL is thus an action-oriented research on sensitive fieldworks, requiring the respect of an ethical charter for the collection and exploitation of data. It is based on several theoretical hypotheses, including (i) the interest of questioning interactions and mediations for a better understanding of the strategies of the actors; (ii) the impact of institutional and informal contexts on mediation situations; (iii) key role of the interpreter-mediator in facilitating mediation with migrants (iv) the need to develop adequate training tools in response to the constant demands of the actors in the field. To answer these proposals, LIMINAL will develop an original and reflective methodology based on the collaboration between researchers and professional and associative actors, in particular Emmaüs Solidarité (Paris) and the Migrants Service Platform (network of 24 associations working on refugee camps in Hauts-de-France). Through the collection and analysis of verbal and non-verbal, textual, audio and audiovisual data, the LIMINAL project aims to (i) constitute a multilingual digital platform based on lexico-terminological data in order to document poorly known migrant populations and their use of languages in migration contexts (ii) produce an audio-visual corpus on key situations of interaction and mediation (iii) create scientific and pedagogical tools for the training of interpreters-mediators (development of training modules, proposal of glossaries and lexicons). These deliverables will be developed thanks to the expertise of members of the consortium working with the digital environment (audiovisual archives of research, HAL-INALCO, INALCO digital humanities presses) and external members (INA, TELECOM PARIS TECH). The LIMINAL project aims at responding in an innovative way to the understanding of migration issues and their treatment, focusing on the challenges of welcoming migrants in France and Europe.