Cross-cultural Brokering in the Legal, Institutional and Normative Domains: Intercultural Mediators Managing Immigration in Catalonia

Abstract

Intercultural mediation programs have recently been set up in Catalonia in order to manage growing foreign immigration flows. Intercultural mediators, usually immigrants working for local governmental entities and NGOs and brokering in the relationships between immigrants and their new social, cultural and legal setting, accomplish a very wide variety of roles aimed at facilitating the social inclusion of immigrant groups. This article, moving beyond classic approaches to immigrant acculturation and on the basis of ethnographic fieldwork, examines the activities of intercultural mediators as normative and institutional brokers who bridge the gaps between newcomers and the institutions, professionals and the population at large of the host society, in both conflictual and non-conflictual settings. The article examines how intercultural mediators behave as interfaces or entry points to the legal, normative and institutional systems of the host society, as transmitters and enforcers of legal and social norms, as promoters of welfare services and human rights and, more broadly stated, as mediators between different normative, institutional and cultural backgrounds. Its aim is to understand and make better known the work of these emerging actors, who, facilitating the integration of the newly arrived, provide an insightful example of cross-cultural normative brokering. The analysis of this bridging activity, in turn, provides some insights on the nature of their immigrant integration practices, their management of cross-cultural conflict, the impact of their approach to the laws and norms of the host society and the questionable suitability of the mediation label to describe their interventions.