Language and migration: Reflections on mother tongue and political action from Hannah Arendt and Jacques Derrida

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to reflect on the consequences of migration on language and how it affects political action in the host community amidst successive migratory crises. Drawing from the perspectives of Hannah Arendt and Jacques Derrida on mother tongue, the central argument posits that diasporic communities encounter three possible forms of political action. The first involves a loss of identification, understood by Arendt as assimilation. Secondly, there is resentment, hindering the formation of new social bonds. The third entails living with the irreducible tension of not belonging to either the native language world or that of the host community’s language. Although new communities are formed, the mother tongue, following Derrida, persists in its absence. Arendt conceptualizes this phenomenon as the conscious pariah, while Derrida terms it the marrano, both representing a state of being one-in-two, existing in a liminal space between two worlds without fully belonging to either. It is argued that this situation is transitional and gradually diminishes across successive generations. However, it is most evident in the second generation, as the first typically socializes in the home country, while the third often attains citizenship in the host state. The notable aspect of the irreducible tension of being one-in-two, an experience shared by Arendt and Derrida, is that it serves as a potent source for instituting and fostering interdependent bonds by having two consequences: greater sensitivity to hermeneutical injustices and an increased capacity for exclusion by perceiving where inequalities are occurring within democratic regimes.