Comments on: Covid-19 exposes language and migration tensions in Denmark

By: Różnorodność językowa w sytuacji kryzysowej – Językozaur

Różnorodność językowa w sytuacji kryzysowej – Językozaur — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 12:06:26 +0000

[…] Covid-19 exposes language and migration tensions in Denmark […]

By: Martha Karrebæk

Martha Karrebæk — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 12:25:16 +0000

Thank you, Chris, Han & Claire. One thing is not providing information, another thing is the lack of insight into the needs of the minority language communities, and a third thing is the blame game which just adds to the already existing xenophobia. We appreciate your comments!

By: Claire

Claire — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 11:44:50 +0000

Thank you for this fascinating insight into Denmark’s response to Covid-19. I was struck by the Danish Prime Minister’s comment that “no one can be in any doubt about how to behave in relation to Covid-19.” Without knowing much about the particulars of Danish politics, this seems like a fairly neat way of side-stepping responsibility for an inadequate provision of public health information. By placing the onus of ‘staying informed’ on Danish residents, any breakdown in communication that does occur can be framed as wilful misunderstanding on the part of individuals, rather than a failure by authorities to meet the needs of linguistically diverse communities.

I also particularly liked this article’s observation that creating appropriate public health content in multiple languages only goes halfway to solving the problem, and that much of the challenge lies in delivering the right resources to the right community groups. This certainly rings true in Sydney, where the highly varied linguistic needs of different communities aren’t necessarily being reflected in current public health strategies (Piller, 2020).

By: Chris Skottun

Chris Skottun — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 01:51:13 +0000

Being from Scandinavia myself, this is very relatable to my own experiences and thoughts about how immigration has affected the Scandinavian countries, as well as how Covid has affected these trends.
Scandinavian countries are quite homogeneous, many Scandinavians struggle with the integration of new cultures and people into their countries. This is because other cultures clash with the traditional Scandinavian ways, which might in turn make it difficult to be integrated into these societies. Putting this through the perspective of immigrants’ higher rate of infection by Covid; whether it is through poor living conditions in the refugee camps or the travelling trends through high-risk areas, it is an issue that definitely needs to be stressed more in today’s conditions.

By: Ingrid Piller

Ingrid Piller — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 09:54:13 +0000

In reply to Han.

Thanks, Han! Have you seen the special issue of Multilingua devoted to language challenges of the pandemic in the Chinese world? It’s at https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/mult/39/5/mult.39.issue-5.xml

By: Han

Han — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 08:42:33 +0000

Thanks for providing this topic. During this epidemic, I guess many countries realized that the virus brings huge challenges on not only economy and medical facilities but also linguistic diversity. This blog reminds me of that China also has a similar predicament. For example, old people who are not used to logging in social media and live alone cannot obtain the updated news effective. They would confuse about why every store shuts down overnight and where to gain the medical resources, such as masks. Furthermore, some linguistic minorities who cannot understand Mandarin would have communication obstacle to get medical support timely. How to inform the minorities about the COVID-19 is worth thinking. This situation should be drawn attention by administrators and anyone who concerns about public health.

By: Martha Karrebæk

Martha Karrebæk — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 20:09:00 +0000

Thank you for your appreciative comment to our work! We agree entirely with your point about the need for training and certification.
Martha

By: Robert Phillipson

Robert Phillipson — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 07:09:43 +0000

As an immigrant to Denmark in 1973, with a strong interest in language policy and justice issues, it is very reassuring to read this profound analysis of many dimensions of Covid-19 and whether the diverse needs of residents in Denmark are being met. This work is extremely important in the Danish context because of the structural racism that is deeply embedded in the majority population and its representatives, and hostile official policies to the cultures and languages of immigrants. For instance there is virtually no interpreter training in Denmark, apart from a small elite programme aiming at employment in EU institutions at the University of Århus. This research strengthens the case for establishing interpreter training for all the major immigrant languages as well as for several ‘international’ languages. This could be one part of a policy to rescue foreign language learning in the country, which has been neglected for decades as regards all languages other than English.