Translating welfare: language brokering and public benefit navigational capital

Abstract

Youth in immigrant households play a pivotal role in facilitating access to institutions for their parents and family members by acting as informal translators, a function understood as language brokering. While researchers have studied how language brokers facilitate institutional access for limited English-speaking adults in their household, little research examines brokers’ long-term outcomes, including the extent to which they can navigate and access institutions for themselves as adults. This study shifts the unit of analysis of language brokering and institutional access from the household to the individual and quantitatively tests the relationship between language brokering and navigational capital (Yosso Citation2005). Using original data among young adults ages 18–34 in a predominantly Latinx city in California, I conduct a logistic regression analysis to predict the likelihood of an individual receiving public benefits in adulthood. Results indicate that, net of controls, young adults who identify as language brokering serves as a significant indicator for facilitating access to public benefits for themselves. This research complicates the nature of language brokering by examining how language brokers may extend their brokering skills beyond their household level as a form of capital to demystify bureaucratic processes and institutions to access public benefits as a resource for themselves.

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