The discussion in the paper will focus on the role of Multilingual Teaching Assistants (MTAs) in supporting the educational inclusion of refugee students with English as Additional Language (EAL). The analysis is based on interviews with students, teachers and MTAs on their experiences from supporting refugee children and on the challenges in performing their role. Research has already shown that MTAs are often marginalized within schools (Dávila, 2018) and that their role is poorly defined (Tucker, 2009; Warren, 2017). As a result, MTAs tend to ‘fill multiple official and unofficial roles within the school, while simultaneously feeling peripheral to curricular planning and pedagogy’ (Dávila, 2018: 964). The findings from the research in this paper draw a similar picture. Their direct and exclusive interaction with students with EAL, and in some cases their familiarity with the students’ experiences (some MTAs in this study are second generation migrants), allows MTAs to have in-depth understanding of student’s history and to develop relationships with them which are based on trust and care (Rueda, Monzo and Higareda, 2004). From within these relationships MTAs perform multiple roles, which allow them to offer individualised support that is particularly valuable for vulnerable students, such as refugees. One of their main roles is that of the linguistic and cultural translator. MTAs report that they invest most of their time in the classroom in the translation of teachers’ instructions, the interpretation of these instructions and of the curriculum in ways that correspond to students’ previous educational experiences and in explaining the school’s expectations to students and their parents. In performing this role, MTAs apply a form of flexible bilingualism which allows the unintentional implementation of a translanguaging pedagogy in the classroom (García-Mateus & Palmer, 2017). Such pedagogy can provide a safe space for children who come from varying backgrounds, enabling them to discuss sensitive issues (García-Mateus & Palmer, 2017: 249) and it can potentially transform relationships between students, teachers, and the curriculum (Li Wei, 2011). Such spaces are particularly significant for vulnerable students, including refugees. Allowing translation and negotiation to occur (Bhabha 1996), they function as Third Spaces, which allow students to exercise a level of control and power, to collaborate with staff and to co-construct hybrid cultures. The recognition and the expansion of such places could be a project for inclusive education “based on recognition, […] concerning foundational friendships, trust among partners and sources of esteem” (Felder, 2018: 68).

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