“We Explain”: Interaction and Becoming a Family in Migration

Abstract

This paper applies the lens of child language brokering to explore parent–child everyday interaction as an Afghan migrant family re-grounds itself in the new linguistic and social context of Denmark. Whereas brokering is often seen as children's translating, this ethnographic study shows that children contribute with explaining, rather than only translating. Drawing on linguistic ethnographic data analysis, the study presents that these explaining activities are occasions for children and their parents to re/define their own role relations and for parents to display family ideologies about the quality of family relations to self and others, conveying that this family is thriving.