Invisible Policy Brokers: The Political Roles of Interpreters in Educational Policy Negotiations With Language Minoritized Mothers

Abstract

Educational interpreters are not neutral mediators of messages. In education, they are policy brokers whose translations can reflect their own social identities and often align with larger social power dynamics, including deficit perspectives of racialized multilingual people. In U.S. schools, language minoritized parents have the right to make decisions about their children’s education; yet current theory does not account for their power to shape educational policies—or the political roles of interpreters who represent their negotiations. I propose a theory of interpreters as invisible policy brokers and identity mediators. I employ an approach that centers the questions and agency of newly arrived, predominantly Spanish-speaking mothers in a Midwest school district with growing demographics of language minoritized students.