“Say It in Broken English”: The Languages of Border Crossing and Hospitality

Abstract

Drawing on Derrida’s and Ricoeur’s theories of language and hospitality, the author takes up the problem of the hostility embedded in the discourses of welcome when it comes to migrants’ experiences of border regimes and border practices. “Broken English,” in this context, represents a site of conflict: a vehicular language to be avoided or overcome, a “language of refuge,” even a means of forming a community. To explore language as alternative terrain to be policed or an opening to be exploited, the author considers how civil-society art projects involving immigrants and refugees might enable new civic relationships. Focusing on the Shoe Project, a storytelling and performance workshop for immigrant and refugee women, the author asks to what extent the project is about helping the stranger speak like “us” and to what extent it can open space for a different kind of immigration story from those imposed by the legal languages of immigration.