Finding Pocahontas in Contemporary Europe: Migration Research Meets Historical Studies on Cultural Brokerage

Historical anthropology and ethnohistory have complicated the narration of encounters between on the one hand settler and colonial communities and on the other hand indigenous societies, by discussing the complex role of so-called ‘cultural brokers’ or go-betweens, who interpreted and negotiated between the two ‘camps’. Most famously these include Pocahontas in the US and Malinche in Mexico, but cultural brokers have been documented in various geographical areas across different colonies and settler communities. Some historical scholars have attributed the surging interest in the study of colonial cultural mediators that started in the 1990s, to the increasing pluralisation of contemporary societies through migration. Migration sociologists have so far, however, failed to draw on these rich historical case studies and conceptualisations in developing contemporary research agendas.

In this paper, I will draw on an empirical study about the positionalities of ethnic minority and migrant staff of mainstream non-governmental organisations, which provide services to migrant clients in the UK, the Netherlands and Austria, to illustrate the relevance of the insights of historical research for the sociology of migration. I will argue that the discipline of history disrupts the supposed newness of diversity programmes in organisations, by demonstrating that ‘difference’ has already been used as a ‘resource’, for example in terms of language skills and intercultural competences, in the colonial era and that an understanding of these continuities is constructive in challenging the celebratory language of diversity politics as it uncovers the power dynamics at play. Moreover, I will propose that contestations in historiography, which critically consider how to write about cultural brokers without reproducing gender and ‘racial’ stereotypes and how to go beyond the traitor/translator logic, should inform the ethics and presentation of findings of contemporary sociological empirical research.