Distinctions between ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ migrant populations based on fixed assumptions of migrant status fail to recognise the multiple internal and external attitudinal and structural factors which may preclude settled status. Berry (2005), Bhugra (2004) and Weisskirch (2017) have identified that symbolic markers which mark migrants as ‘other’ for example those associated with race and ethnicity may fuel resentment and hostility in some mainstream communities, particularly those with little experience of migration, thus stymieing attempts towards integration. Furthermore, the introduction of the ‘Hostile Environment’ in 2016, sowed further division between host and migrating communities, particularly through the ‘deputising’ of migrant status monitoring to public servants, including teachers and health care professionals (Griffiths and Yeo, 2020; SSAHE, 2020). Research from Crafter and Iqbal (2020, 2021) demonstrates that young children from migrant communities are sensitive to the way in which their family is perceived by mainstream institutions and assume complex meta-linguistic and cultural negotiation roles as cultural and linguistic brokers during interactions between their parents and mainstream professionals in order to navigate access to services and provision. Positioning Bioecological Systems Theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 1998, 2006) as a sociological framework for analysis, and using Biographical Narrative Interpretive Method (Chamberlayne, Rustin and WEngraf, 2002; Wengraf, 2004) as a methodology, my research explored the retrospective narratives of child cultural and linguistic brokers, who arrived in the UK as migrants with their families, identifying shifting positionalities and fluid identities.

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