Currently, I´m working in a three-year research project about community interpreters. The purpose is to analyse the significance of interpretation for legal security and integration with special focus on the reception of separated children. My previous research is about migration and integration, especially concerning issues of education and fundamental values. My dissertation is about an independent religious school.
I am currently working on two research projects: “The interpreter: a cultural intermediary” and the sub-project “Behind closed doors – the significance of interpreting for legal security and integration with emphasis on the reception of separated minors and children”. On a general level, my research deals with interpreting services in Sweden. With the interpreter as a starting point, the research project investigates what happens in meetings that take place through an interpreter between health care staff, teachers, police officers, social welfare officers, lawyers, administrators and others on the one hand and individuals who do not speak Swedish on the other. We raise questions about power, loyalty, ethics and rights. What is the significance of interpreting for integration? What does it mean to be able to say only what one can say and not all one wants to say? Interpreting is also a question of legal security. Can one speak at all with an interpreter present? Does the interpreter have the qualifications and the professional ethics required in the form of professional secrecy, neutrality and impartiality?
Kristina Gustafsson
Division of Ethnology
Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences
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