ABSTRACT
In this chapter, i describe why and how translation and migrations are linked. In the best of cases, translation is the very act of welcoming and asylum, both of persons and of pieces of writing. Translation is part of language, any language, as its intrinsic possibility. Translation doesn’t come after language, but within it. However, translation necessarily depends on a politics of translation (which may be hidden). Interests of different groups of people are difficult to translate to other groups, especially if they are opposed. This is where translation becomes clearly political, as language is, because it is shaped to express and translate specific interests and viewpoints. I show how the language of women and that of migrants share some commonality and interests in the sense that neither is hegemonic. Translating and constructing knowledge together contributes to the construction of the commons and of solidarity, reciprocal help and selfgoverning, of resistance, of a shared future, and of mutual understanding. But cases of misunderstanding or “mistranslation” are not uncommon, which means that translation may be violent too, that it may imply blockage and severing of relations, rejection, and expulsion, that it does not always contribute to configuring a shared space or polity. Many nationalist attitudes on the receiving end in the EU, and sometimes populist politics too, have contributed to such violence and closure.
