Supporting the communication of unserved and underserved humanitarian migrants

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to inform country leaders, professional organizations, and institutions of the communication needs of people from humanitarian migrant backgrounds. A humanitarian migrant is someone who has been forcibly displaced from their home country and subsequently migrated to a new host country for refuge or asylum. In the host country, these migrants are those who have been granted some form of protection (Boese, van Kooy, & Bowman, 2018). There are two types of communication barriers that may be faced by humanitarian migrants. One is the inability to speak the language of their host society and the other is the possible presence of a communication disorder. The inability to speak the language of the host country is not a communication disorder; however, it does present many challenges for newly resettled humanitarian migrants. For those with communication disorders. the barriers to accessing support and participating in society may be further exacerbated by a lack of proficiency in the language of their new host country. This chapter discusses the factors that impact upon the language competence of humanitarian migrants and strategies to support positive communication outcomes for this population. The focus of this is not on second language learning but rather supporting communicative competence as a whole across all languages spoken by a person. Humanitarian migrants may arrive in their new host country speaking one or multiple languages and then acquire the societal language of their host country. Humanitarian migrants should be supported to maintain their heritage language(s) in addition to acquiring the language skills they will need to flourish in their new environment (Verdon, 2017).