Migrants’ Relational Experiences with the Welfare State at the Street Level: A Focus on the Role of Language

While previous research has highlighted the significant role of language in conditioningmigrants'access to key institutions of the welfare state, the question of how individualmigrants experience linguistic disadvantage has been less in focus. Drawing on a relationalapproach, the article moves beyond the idea of language barriers as a static structure of(in)equality or a matter of individual shortcomings. It demonstrates how language policiesand language ideologies, and their entanglements with more general trends in welfarepolicies and ideologies, shape migrants'relational experiences with the welfare states andtheir representatives, and what are the implications of such interactions-or the lack ofinteraction. Empirically, it builds on qualitative data collected in Belgium and Finland,showing how language barriers and discrimination can result in Kafkaesque administrativeprocesses that produce both material and affective hardship for migrants in these nationalcontexts.