In Italy, there are more than 5 million foreign residents in the country (Caritas Migrantes 2016). Among this population are many children who migrated to or are born in Italy to foreign parents. Because of attendance in school and participation in out-of-school play, both of which require and enable Italian language fluency, children of migrant families often quickly learn Italian. While these children engage in Italian outside the home, they often communicate with their families in their language(s) of origin at home, rendering them bilingual or multilingual. With these children and adolescents’ linguistic and cultural proficiency both in Italian culture as well as their culture(s) of origin, they sometimes become language brokers (LB). A LB is a person from a migrant family who translates, interprets, mediates, etc. in a broad variety of situations for others who have a limited facility of the host language (Corona et al, 2012; Cline et al, 2014). A child language broker (CLB) is a child who occupies this role. Prevailing CLB research has concentrated on children functioning as language brokers in their families. Most existing CLB research focuses on the experiences of brokers translating or interpreting for older relatives, most frequently parents, and other adults (Antonini, 2011, 2015; Martinez et al, 2009). Studies have explored CLB’s experiences translating between their parents and public services such as government, healthcare, legal, and other social services (Chao, 2006; Ekiaka-Oblazamengo et al., 2014; Katz, 2014). The predominant research has examined how the occurrence of language brokering affects numerous dimensions of the parent-child relationship, including communication, role reversal, and conflict (Katz, 2014). The research has often scrutinized the shifts in power that may result when children act as mediators between their parents and speakers of the host language. These studies have concluded that children acting as language brokers, therefore cultural brokers, for their parents often render parents less dominant and children less dependent in the parent-child relationship.

Significantly less research, however, exists that focuses on children acting as language brokers in the classroom. In Italian schools, a shortage of resources is particularly demonstrated in the lack of language services being provided in the variety of languages represented by newly arriving migrant pupils. This often positions children as the providers of these services. This paper focuses on examining peer-to-peer and pupil-to-teacher language brokering in multicultural and multilingual classrooms. It specifically explores the experience of CLBs who simultaneously occupy the positions of pupil and translator in classrooms because of their fluency in Italian and their belongingness in the same linguistic community as non-Italian speaking new arrival classmates. Using a qualitative approach involving ethnographic participant observation, pupil’s autonomous reflection through journal entries, and interviews, this research is guided by the following research questions: Do CLBS reflect on their experience as brokers and if so, what are their thoughts/feelings on occupying the role of both pupil and translator between their peers and teachers in the classroom? What are non CLB’s perceptions of how live language brokering during class time impacts the dynamics of the classroom?

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