Gender, Cultural Diversity, and Multilingual Deliberation about the Refugee Crisis

The paper explores the politics of multilingual deliberation and intersectional gendered inclusion in arenas of social movements and local citizen participation involving immigrants, refugees and linguistic minorities. There has been a large theoretical debate on the equality and inclusivity in deliberative democracy but much less empirical work on the conditions that make for democratic dialogue across intersecting gendered, ethnic/cultural, and linguistic differences. The paper will explore the relevance that activists’ innovative practices of intersectional political translation, developed for transnational participatory publics in social movements, can have for civic education and deliberative democracy experiments at the local level, to include different linguistic groups and minorities in democratic public dialogue. Political translation, distinct from linguistic translation, is a set of social practices developed by global justice activists, and grassroots community organizers in Europe and the US in order to address inequities hindering democratic deliberation and to work together more inclusively with disempowered groups including immigrants and minorities. I focus on ongoing immigrant and refugee protests in Germany which take place in a challenging, multilingual and often highly informal and adhoc context of political negotiation and deliberation involving refugees, immigrants, and German social movement groups, NGO supporters, and local political decision-makers. My study will highlight the practical responses to this crisis by progressive social movements, decision-makers and NGOs and activists working on gender, cultural diversity, and the social inclusion of immigrants and refugees in the local context of Berlin.