Kerremans, Koen; Cox, Antoon; De Wilde, July; El Hahaoui, Karima; Guaus, Aline; Maryns, Katrijn
When persons seeking international protection arrive in Belgium, they need to register their application at the Arrival Centre of Federal Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers in Brussels. The registration process involves, amongst others, a medical screening and social intake. This registration is a challenge in a context where multilingualism, intercultural diversity, and time pressure are the rule rather than the exception. For instance, applicants sometimes receive a vaccine without being properly informed and have to undress (for the chest scan) without knowing what is going to happen. This is a violation of the Belgian patient rights.
This paper discusses the results and experiences of the AMICA project on multilingual needs and practices in the context of the Belgian reception of applicants. Particular attention is paid to the linguistic and communicative needs of people with vulnerable linguistic profiles (i.e. low literate people as well as people only speaking languages for which it is difficult to find language support in the Belgian context, such as Somali or Pashto).
In the scope of this paper, our focus will be on the setting of the Arrival Centre. We present a research-action framework aimed at developing language solutions to better inform applicants during the intake flow. These solutions involve a series of multilingual information videos pertaining to different steps in the intake flow as well as a web application, featuring audio-recorded questions and answers in several languages, to assist service providers during social intakes. Both types of language solutions (available in more than 10 languages) have been developed based on ethnographic observations and interviews with stakeholders.
The project allows us to study how applicants and service providers experience the intake flow. It also allows us to involve the (busy) staff of the centre, who saw the language solutions as relevant to their work.
Keywords: language solutions, linguistic rights, language app, multilingual information videos, Belgian asylum reception.