Cultural Brokering Stresses Students, Families

April 9, 2012

When families immigrate to the U.S. with limited English skills, parents often ask their children to translate newspapers, bills, rental agreements, and notes from school. Children often help parents find information about potential jobs or manage family finances. In their role as “cultural broker,” children help their families survive in the new culture. The acts of translating and interpreting may help students academically. But the responsibilities of translating and interpreting can create stress for children and also lead to tension among family members. Under some conditions this tension can lower children’s performance in school. WCER researcher Curtis Jones found that families were more likely to use their children as cultural brokers when the parents had less English proficiency, lower status jobs, and lived in neighborhoods with more families speaking the language of the home country. Jones’s study points to the need for using an ecological framework to understand the role of the cultural broker in the lives of immigrant and refugee families. More information is available here.