BEYOND LINGUISTIC SYMPATHY: Access to Justice for Minoritized Language speakers in Mainstream Court Settings - Dr. Jessica López-Espino
This talk draws on ethnographic research conducted in a California child welfare court with Spanish-dominant Latinx speakers navigating English-dominant court proceedings. I discuss a range of issues that reproduce what I call experiences of linguistic marginalization, where language practices operate in relationship to relative inclusion and marginalization depending on the context and particularities of the experience. I argue that providing well-trained, well-compensated, and certified interpreters is but one of many important interventions that need to be made to increase access to justice for minoritized language speakers in legal settings.
Additionally, I show how discussions focusing on sympathetic concerns with linguistic marginalization and interpreting as an antidote are insufficient strategies for contending with the systematic reproduction of linguistic marginalization.
Jessica López-Espino is a legal and linguistic anthropologist who has conducted ethnographic research with Latinx parents in a California child welfare court and the attorneys, social workers, and judges working on processing their child custody and parental rights cases. Her book in progress, Re-Hearing Child Welfare: Latinx Parent Voices in a California Juvenile Dependency Court, offers a rare view into the perspectives and narratives of Latinx parents participating in child welfare proceedings and the legal and linguistic practices that shape their ability to maintain or regain custody of their children. The book is based on qualitative research funded by the National Science Foundation. She was a recent fellow in Law and Inequality at the American Bar Foundation and is currently completing a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC Irvine.