Immigrants in Catalonia: Effective communication with the public services?

This article presents the results of part of the research carried out between 2009 and 2010 by the MIRAS research group from Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. The aim of the research was to define the profile of the translator and interpreter in the Catalan public services by means of data obtained from semi-open questionnaires aimed at (1) translator- interpreters, (2) public service providers, and (3) public service users. The last ones are the focus of the analysis whose results are presented here. The conclusions of the study confirm that at present there is a lack of effective communication between a large number of non-Spanish-speaking users of the Catalan public services and the front-line providers of those services. The study also identifies the principal communication problems experienced by users when they come into contact with public services, what kind of support services they receive and what their opinion is of the various types of "mediators" who have assisted them.