5

Deaf Professional Mobility

Annelies Kusters

International deaf professional mobility takes a wide range of forms. Deaf athletes go to deaf international sports events such as the Deaflympics to compete against each other. Deaf youth from all over the world take part in the 9-month Frontrunners program, part of which entails living in Denmark for education about Deaf Studies, media, and sign language work. Deaf advocacy workers, educators, and researchers give presentations at a range of international conferences, such as the SIGN conference series, and World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) congresses and conferences. Deaf translators from various African countries (and beyond) gather in Kenya to translate Bible stories into their sign languages, staying from a few months to a few years.

Although these examples are varied, they have something in common: Deaf people engage in days, months, or even years of international mobility for knowledge exchange, competition, performing, creating materials, or skills development. They do this within the context of specific events, international workplaces, and educational centers. In such places and events, deaf people’s paths converge across nations on the basis of a shared profession, orientation, interest, mission, or passion. As discussed in Chapter 1, there are obviously links and overlaps between professional mobility and the other forms of mobility covered in this book; for example, many deaf professionals migrate to one or more other countries for several years, or they combine conference travel with tourism. The grouping together of these forms of mobility under the catchall term “professional mobility” is contingent on my primary research focus: the use of International Sign (IS) and other multilingual signing practices in these settings. Because of this focus, I wanted to include contexts of learning and, with them, student mobility; other definitions of professional mobility do not include these contexts. There are forms of deaf professional mobility that are not covered in this chapter, such as the mobility of deaf business owners or development workers.

My focus is not only on “the professionals” themselves but on the broader context of the international gatherings built around these professional activities. Local hosts and organizers make the events happen, often in collaboration with international committees and a team of (local) volunteers. Enthusiastic spectators travel to the Deaflympics to cheer on the athletes and to mingle with other deaf people. Delegates attend WFD congresses to gather new information. Presenters, performers, audiences, hosts, volunteers, and tourists have in common that they interact within this larger context of professional mobility.

By grouping an admittedly broad range of activities together under the term professional mobility, I was able to note patterns that cut across different settings. A key example of this, on which I focus in this chapter, is the production of scales. By this, I mean that terms such as international, global, regional, nation(al), and local (host) function as dominant frames of reference in discourse about these networks, events, and places, and the language practices within them. Labels of scale are often included in the structure, mission, or name of deaf organizations (e.g., World Federation of the Deaf; Ghanaian National Deaf Association; DOOR International), as well as in the names of sign languages and signing practices (International Sign, Kenyan Sign Language, village signs).

However, scales are not just categories that refer to the focus and reach of organizations or languages. I am interested in scaling as a process: Scales are produced through discourses and practices. In this regard, I am greatly influenced by Lefebvre’s (1991) paradigm-shifting perspective that social space, akin to scales, is not merely a given but is continuously produced and reproduced through social practices and relations. Similarly, the concept of scale can be understood not as a fixed hierarchy or a neutral framework, but as produced by social, political, and economic processes. For instance, the notion of a “local” scale is continually produced in relation to other scales that are also (re)produced in the process of defining a locale’s embeddedness in regions, nations, or global contexts. Similarly, a “transnational” scale is produced through transnational flows of people, goods, ideas, and capital, but also in contrast to and in relation to nations. So, in line with Lefebvre’s theory on space, scales are not just passive backgrounds for processes but are actively shaped by, and contribute to, those processes. As such, we should not study scales as preexisting hierarchical levels. Instead, we should understand them as changeable and contextual products of the processes of scaling, and focus not only on the products but also on these processes (Mansfield, 2005; Moore, 2008).

In this chapter, I explore the production of scales through deaf professional mobility. Scales materialize when deaf professionals, their entourages, and their audiences get together at events and/or establish organizations catering to their interests. Here, scaling (as in getting together “nationally” or “internationally”) shapes and influences the professional interactions that take place, and, produced by these interactions, scale-based organizations and workplaces are products of scaling. Thus, my focus encompasses these readily identifiable scales-as-products—that is, those implied by and in the names of various sign languages and organizations. But I am also fascinated by the reasons and mechanisms behind the process of producing scales. In pursuit of these, I make references to historical literature.

There are many useful examples to be found in deaf history showing how scales are produced and that they are not preexisting. By way of illustration, the WFD (the world’s oldest and largest international disability organization) was established in 1951, but Murray (2007) has shown how a deaf transnational scale (which he calls “sphere”) was produced long before international deaf organizations were established, through the actions of white deaf American and European men in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This transnational scale was produced through individual travel, the exchange of national periodicals, and a series of ad hoc conferences held on both sides of the Atlantic (see also Gulliver, 2015; Mottez, 1993). In these spaces, the white deaf men in attendance commemorated their history (e.g., the anniversaries of the establishment of influential deaf schools), celebrated signing and deaf networks, and shared experiences of, and strategies for, living as a deaf minority among a hearing majority. Participants returned from these conferences feeling recharged and with “energy and optimism for further battles back home” (Murray, 2007, p. 66).

“Back home” was often framed in terms of “the nation,” Murray (2007) writes. The events were often attended by the same (or an overlapping) group of white deaf middle-class males from Europe and the United States who were teachers, missionaries, or in other prestigious occupations, and who specialized in international deaf travel. These individuals formed a connection, or mediating position, between their respective national communities. Murray (2007) notes that the deaf Americans he studied “claimed the economic and social privileges of whiteness, using it as a baseline for their construction of a national identity that positioned sign language-using Deaf people as fully a part of the nation” (p. 39; my emphasis). In their quest to be part of the nation, white deaf men were able to center deafness because of their race and gender. African American deaf people in the American South went to segregated deaf schools, were often consigned to manual labor, and were not in a position to publicly contribute to these white-led national networks. This then led to black deaf people’s underrepresentation in international events. For example, at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, white deaf people organized a world congress, but African Americans were nearly completely excluded from the event. Additionally, where white deaf women attended similar congresses, they were typically not official delegates or presenters, and they did not always have voting rights: “If Deaf men dominated Deaf political life in a national setting, it would be Deaf men who would be chosen as international delegates” (Murray, 2007, p. 87; my emphasis). White women were involved in social events and humanitarian efforts, however: One example is their fundraising for deaf refugees of the First World War. National norms as to who participates in organized deaf activism are thus reflected on the transnational level.

From this, we see that the transnational scale was produced before most national deaf associations existed. In the 19th century, information about deaf education traveled more quickly between metropolitan cities, such as Paris, Edinburgh, London, and New York, than to other parts of each respective country (Cleall, 2015). It was often during international events that deaf people became inspired to establish new urban and national associations. For example, it was after a congress in Paris in 1889 that British delegates established what is now the British Deaf Association. Many national deaf associations were set up in response to the threat of oralism in deaf schools, which had also spurred an increase in transnational interaction due to the many issues in common for deaf people from different nations (Murray, 2007). National themes were thus central in the production of the transnational scale, and transnational discourse flowed back into nations. In the aftermath of the historical conferences documented by Murray, the deliberations were made accessible to women and working-class people through public lectures given by men who had attended them, and through accounts in periodicals. Where international travel was funded by local deaf clubs or associations, there was the expectation that knowledge would flow back to them at the local level. However, although information was distributed locally and nationally, and therefore (supposedly) made more broadly available, it is important to keep in mind that the themes discussed on the transnational scale were those identified as priorities by the people who represented the nations—that is, the white male leadership. This means that the issues of marginalized and underrepresented groups of deaf people were deemed of low priority. Transnational discourse at these congresses would undoubtedly have looked very different were, for example, more people of color, women, and working-class deaf people given the opportunity to push their agendas.

A second example of the interrelated production of local, national, and transnational scales are national and international sports associations. Traditionally, being strongly involved in deaf sports on a local scale (in schools or clubs), and then on a national scale, were the typical first steps toward international participation. This pathway was later formalized through organizations. For example, the Canadian Deaf Sports Association was established so that Canadian athletes could compete in the then World Games for the Deaf because participation was only permitted to athletes representing a national deaf sports organization (Stewart, 1991). In the book The Deaf Sport Movement in Europe (Mesch & Mesch, 2018), many more examples are included of the requirement for a hierarchical institutional structure to be established before participation in international deaf sports can take place. For instance, without a national deaf sports organization, a nation cannot be affiliated with the European Deaf Sports Organisation. Therefore, the production of a national scale is solidified through the formation of a national organization due to the perceived need for a hierarchical relationship between a national and a European organization. Another scale-related problem is that the statutes of the International Committee of Sports for the Deaf require federations to be deaf led, whereas in some instances (e.g., in the United Arab Emirates and France), deaf sports is classified under disability sports and is thus hearing led (Ammons & Eickman 2011).

In a third example of the interrelationship of scales, we see the tensions and shifts between nationalism and deaf transnationalism in deaf sports. In a study of the 19th Summer Deaflympics in 2001, Haualand (2007) notes that throughout the 2 weeks of the Deaflympics, there was a gradual orientational shift from nationalism to transnationalism across the event as a whole. Nationalism was visible during the opening ceremony as athletes filed behind their country’s flag and grouped accordingly; however, during the closing ceremony, they walked as one crowd. In the evenings, spectators and athletes from various nationalities mixed with the audience that had gathered beyond the national banners. Breivik (2002) reported an incident where deaf football (soccer) supporters of opposing national teams wanted to be able to mix across nationalities rather than sitting in separate areas in the stands; this led to a rebellion against the security guards in the stadium. Thus, the transnational scale (in the sense of transcending the national scale) was produced with increasing strength through the event, even while markers of nationality (flags, supporters’ outfits) remained omnipresent. Haualand (2002) reports a reordering of the hierarchy of belonging: “What had opened as an international event, in order to celebrate both outstanding sportsmanship and the spirit of brotherhood, had been fused into a transnational family” (p. 30). Fians (2021b) points out a similar process at the Universal Congress of Esperanto: “Esperantists draw lines distinguishing nationalities so that they can later cross these lines” (p. 118), and “elements—such as flags […]—that have been historically used to justify the existence of nations, nationalities and nation-states are mobilized here to ground an international community” (p. 97, my emphasis).

In summary, scholars focusing on deaf transnationalism (Murray, 2007; see also authors in Breivik et al., 2002, and in Friedner & Kusters, 2015a) have studied how deaf people cross national borders, “know no borders,” “are one family,” and are “citizens of the world.” This book’s focus on interrogating cosmopolitanism, inspired by these and other works, often backgrounds “the nation” in its analysis. Indeed, in my contributions to Chapters 7–10 of this book, I focus on international interactions, on experiences of crossing national borders. Yet, it is also clear from the previous examples that “the nation” is prominent in practices and discourses on deaf transnationalism and cosmopolitanism. Noting a similar prominence of “the nation” in the data I collected on deaf professional mobility, in this chapter I have been inspired to pay special attention to meanings given to “the nation,” “national identity,” and “national sign language.” I engage in this with an awareness of the danger of methodological nationalism (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002)—that is, nationalist thinking in research. Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2002) caution against “describing processes within nation-state boundaries as contrasted with those outside” (p. 307), because assuming that nation states are the “adequate entities for studying the international world” is problematic and reductionist (p. 304; original emphasis). Yet, they also acknowledge that it is just as important to remember the continued potency of nationalism because “nationalism is a powerful signifier that continues to make sense for different actors with different purposes and political implications” (pp. 326–327).

Thus, I asked the following questions when looking at my data: How are nations made visible or relevant in international deaf professional settings? Do national organizations act as gatekeepers to “the transnational scale”? In international settings, what does it mean for deaf people to be identified as being from a particular nation? What does it mean that politics in different nations are rendered commensurable or comparable in international events? What does it mean for national sign languages to be used alongside each other, and alongside IS? I focus on a series of events and workplaces where deaf people identified with a number of different nations have gathered in a professional setting. The main themes of my project were the practices and ideologies of IS in these contexts of professional mobility, but the focus of this chapter is wider. I have chosen five settings on which to focus, each of which also corresponds with a film in the series This Is IS. The settings are as follows: Frontrunners, a 9-month international deaf education and leadership course with IS as the language of tuition and communication (held in Hedensted, Denmark, with fieldwork conducted 2017–2018); DOOR International Africa, a campus where teams from different countries work on Bible translations (Nairobi, Kenya; 2019); SIGN8, a conference on sign language research (Florianopolis, Brazil; 2018); the XVIII WFD congress (Paris, France; 2019); and the 19th Winter Deaflympics (northern Italy; 2019). I also occasionally mention other settings in which I have done fieldwork for this study.

The chapter is structured in sections following the various ways that the concept of “nations” was prominent in my data: international mobility channeled through nations or limited by national identity; deaf people representing their nation abroad; deaf people using national sign languages in international professional gatherings where IS was the norm; deaf people trading in national stereotypes and essentialisms; the expectation that deaf professionals bring knowledge and materials back to enable national development; nations as hosts for international events; and the use of national sign languages in the context of hosting. In line with the rest of the book, I use the term “transnational” to describe contexts where national borders are “transcended”; “international” to talk about situations where national borders are crossed but kept intact (e.g., making comparisons between countries); and “multinational” to talk about contexts where deaf people from a number of nations gather. I use both of the partially overlapping terms “nation” and “country” in this chapter. “Nation” as a term tends to be associated more with a national community and culture than “country,” and “national sign language” is the usual term to talk about sign languages used within a country. However, when talking about nations in IS, deaf people often sign COUNTRY (Figure 5.1) or FLAG (Figure 5.2) with the mouthing “country” rather than “nation.” In my analysis of scale that follows, I more often use the term “nations” and “national” to juxtapose with “international,” “regional,” and “local.”

Figure 5.1. COUNTRY

Figure 5.2. FLAG

Nations as Channels or Containers

National organizations sometimes have the power to determine who is internationally mobile. When deaf people “go international” in the context of professional events and gatherings, there often are regulations in place as to who can access them or statements about for whom the events are organized. For example, to participate in the Deaflympics, athletes must be able to demonstrate a minimum of 55dB hearing loss, but they are not expected to know how to sign (see Chapter 9). At the SIGN8 conference (discussed later), presenters were expected to use IS or Brazilian Sign Language (Libras). In the Frontrunners program, participants are age restricted (18–35) and must be motivated to use IS.

There are other rules, however, that specifically relate to the national affiliation of an attendee. For example, only one national association can join the WFD as an Ordinary Member (OM). Up to two delegates from each OM can attend the General Assembly held before the WFD congresses. Individual delegates at such events thus represent national organizations, but only one organization on the national level has this link to the international level (although the WFD can make exceptions and extend this to more than one national organization). It also means that those participating at the international level in this space are almost certainly already in a leadership position at the national level. A similar structure is also in place for the camps organized by the World Federation of the Deaf Youth Section (WFDYS) and the European Union of the Deaf Youth (EUDY). Young people are usually selected through their national deaf (youth) organizations and thus benefit from having already been networked within their countries. There is a cap on the number of participants from the same country to ensure that no nationality is in the majority, irrespective of the size of the country. Thus, a small country like Belgium is rendered commensurable to much larger countries, such as India—effectively ensuring that deaf youth from India will statistically be much less likely to have the opportunity to participate in the camps. In the Frontrunners program, anyone can apply in the sense that there is no national go-between organization, but there is a similar cap on how many people from a single nation can participate (typically no more than two or three, although exceptions have been made).

In the sports world, the nations that are represented on the international level strongly vary depending on the sport. For example, at the 2019 Winter Deaflympics, for ice hockey there were only (exclusively male) teams from Finland, the United States, Canada, Russia, and Kazakhstan—all countries with a strong tradition of playing ice hockey. In the case of team sports, there need to be enough athletes to create a national team for the Deaflympics, which is a problem particularly in the case of some women’s sports teams (see Chapter 10). In individual sports, people compete as individuals and more nations tend to be represented. In the chess competitions, there were many chess players from Russia, Eastern European countries (i.e., post-Soviet states), and India. The relative popularity of particular sports in given countries, their availability in deaf schools, and the costs associated with playing all factor into which nations are represented in which sports competitions. Strong leadership on the national level is crucial as well, as Pavel, the Russian chess captain, told me in an interview:

I think what’s important is that you have charismatic leaders that others will flock to and follow. […] When you see a growth of interest in a country and investigate why, you will often find that this is the reason. For example, in America, there was nothing going on [in relation to deaf chess], there wasn’t anybody for the youth to follow but as soon as there was, you saw participation increase. The youth responded to this leader, and you can see similar examples of this all around the globe.

When one person from a country leads the way, others may follow and place a nation on the map for this sport, becoming agentive in the production of the transnational scale of deaf chess. This pattern is visible in the Frontrunners program as well: Several countries, such as Belgium, South Korea, and India, have “supplied” Frontrunners students over a number of years. Prospective students learn from previous Frontrunners about their experience, learn about the program, learn about ways to fundraise in their countries so as to attend the international program, and may even learn some IS. Hyemi, from Korea, described her experience of this:

[When I was growing up,] I thought that there were deaf people in Korea and nowhere else. I thought the rest of the world was hearing. Later, I met a [Korean] woman from Frontrunners 5. She signed in IS. I was so surprised when I learned that people in the world use IS. I gained information from her and that got me interested. After that I started to learn IS in Korea for 7 years. When I came here, I was surprised that it was not as easy to communicate in IS with people from other countries as when I used IS in Korea. […] So, I am trying to learn more IS here. (This Is IS: Episode 1, 00:13:02)¹

Even though Hyemi felt that the IS used in Europe was very different, her meeting with several former Korean Frontrunners over the years had exposed her to knowledge about the program and about the concept of IS, which helped her to prepare for the experience.

In other contexts, people go to international events as individuals, through a “flat” rather than hierarchical structure—that is, they can join without “passing through other scales” first and without there being a cap on the number of participants per nation. Examples include presenters and audience members at the SIGN8 conference and the WFD congress. Structural barriers—such as having caring duties, lack of access to funding, disabling environments (see Chapter 10), and struggles to belong (see Chapter 9)—may deter people from participating, as may events’ or organizations’ explicit or implied language policies, for example, the requirement to use IS (see Kusters, forthcoming). What is most relevant in the context of this chapter, though, is that national organizations are not the primary gatekeeper or main identifier for participation in these international events. The affiliated nation of each participant plays a lesser role in their access to the event. The existence of these events means that deaf people can socialize internationally even if they are not well connected in their home country or involved in national organizations. Given the large number of people who “arrive late” in deaf communities, some start to travel to international events at much the same time as their introduction to their local and national deaf communities, and they may learn to use their national sign language and IS (almost) simultaneously. Some people even participate more in international networks. In these contexts, deaf people do not necessarily “pass through scales” to participate in and (re)produce the international scale, and these forms of individual mobility are therefore less hierarchical than those mediated through national and international scale-based organizations.

Representing a Nation Internationally

In the previous section, I established that national organizations, and a person’s nationality, can play a larger or lesser role in their ability to access an international professional gathering as a delegate, presenter, athlete, or student. However, when I did participant observation at these gatherings, it was immediately obvious that national identities invariably played a central role as an identifier. Often, one of the first questions attendees were asked was “Where you are from?” in the sense of which nation or country; this was a key part of people’s introductions. For example, when Ian, a deaf acquaintance from Scotland, introduced me to people at the International Chess Olympiad in Manchester in 2018, he would point to chess players and tell me the country they were from, rather than their name. This is perhaps to be expected in deaf sports, where athletes are usually representing their nation, but this pattern was also observed in situations where people were not national delegates. For example, at the World Association of Sign Language Interpreters (WASLI) conference in Paris, some people who came to the stage to comment during a panel only introduced themselves using their nation: “I am from Iran,” “I am from Uganda” (This Is IS: Episode 5, 00:20:08).² Similarly, in the film series This Is IS, people are introduced in the captions by name, nation, and sometimes their function (e.g., as “director,” “interpreter”).

In another example, when the new Frontrunners arrived in Castberggaard, the building complex in Hedensted where the program takes place, they typically introduced themselves to those they did not yet know with their name and their nation (or, in some instances, two nations), using both fingerspelling and sign names (This Is IS: Episode 1, 00:14:14).³ Some other important identifiers (e.g., race or ethnicity, approximate age, coming from a deaf or hearing family, class, sexual orientation) were observed or suspected on first meeting, whereas others were learned later. In the subsequent days, I observed how people remembered which country the others came from before they remembered personal sign names and the spelling of each other’s names. On the morning of day 4, one of the Frontrunners asked who had the key to the shared accommodation; someone responded, “Spain.” Esther, from Catalonia in Spain, saw this and responded, “I have a name!” It was clear that she felt it was time that they knew each other’s names, instead of just using a (potentially contested) national label. This will be discussed later.

The Frontrunners group of 2017–2018 consisted of 17 students, of whom there was no more than one student per nation for all except Belgium (which had three) and France (two). This diversity probably contributed to the inclination to remember a person’s nationality rather than their personal name. In larger events like the Deaflympics, there were typically more people present from each nation. The opening of the 2019 Winter Deaflympics was in Sondrio, a city in northern Italy (Figures 5.3–5.8). After the opening ceremony, the athletes were split over three different, smaller towns, each of which had specific facilities for hosting the various sports competitions: Chiavenna for chess and ice hockey; Madesimo for curling; and Santa Caterina di Valfurva, high in the mountains, for skiing (alpine and cross-country) and snowboarding. However, during the opening ceremony, the national teams for the different sports had not yet dispersed, and thus gathered as one crowd behind their national flag, together with the support staff for each nation. Before the opening ceremony, delegations had arrived in Sondrio on buses and stood in groups, wearing jackets (and sometimes hats) that displayed the name, and often also the flag, of their nation.

Figure 5.3. Nations lining up for the opening parade, starting with France and then alphabetically.

Figure 5.4. Some Russians in the opening parade, part of a very large crowd of Russians.

The opening ceremony started with a parade of the various countries’ delegations through the streets of snowy Sondrio. France was in the lead (see Figure 5.3), as the country that had hosted the first Deaflympics in 1924; other delegations followed in alphabetical order. Arriving under a big tent that blocked the snow, attendees sat in national delegations during the opening ceremony (Figure 5.7). Some delegations, such as those from Russia (Figure 5.4) and the United States, which had brought teams to compete in several sports, were huge and took up a lot of space in the parade and under the shelter. Other nations were represented by only a few people, such as the Brazilian delegation of chess players (Figure 5.5). The size of the delegation was largely considered irrelevant, however; a single delegate meant that the nation was represented and thus “included” at the event. The nations’ flags were displayed at the central square in Santa Caterina, where the medals for the ski and snowboard competitions were announced every day (Figure 5.8). “The nation” thus became visible (and countable) in terms of flags, and, whereas some nations became more visible at the event because of the size of their delegation, small delegations were also made visible and relevant.

Figure 5.5. The whole Brazilian delegation (chess players).

Figure 5.6. Supporters waving flags in the audience of the opening parade.

Figure 5.7. The opening ceremony of the 2019 Deaflympics where groups of people were sat in national groups. The Canadian team can be seen from the back.

Figure 5.8. Some flags of participating countries in the square in Santa Caterina.

This was the rhetoric adopted in discourse on the (Winter) Deaflympics, as evidenced in the following interview with Urban Mesch, a Swedish deaf sports historian:

Four years ago, in Russia [the 18th Winter Deaflympics in Khanty-Mansiysk], that was huge, but here in Italy, it’s the biggest yet. Thirty-four countries are represented here and it’s inspiring to see all those nations’ flags flying together, including flags from countries we have never seen at these games before, including Pakistan and Brazil, and yet they are here at these games. To see all those new flags makes me feel good about the growing future of deaf sports. The Summer Deaflympics are even larger! They’ve grown to an enormous scale to the point where they had 116 participating countries at their most recent edition. So, the Deaflympics has grown and grown throughout all the years that I’ve been involved, and that’s terrific. […] In the past, we didn’t get competitors from countries that used to be in the Soviet bloc, in the east of Europe, or from China. The sports world was smaller, traditionally being confined to Europe and the United States with not much happening in South America. Australia and Japan were involved, but other parts of the world weren’t, such as Africa. There has been some work in this area, and we’ve seen athletes from South America and Africa who take part a lot more in the summer games, but not so much in the winter games. Countries like Australia and New Zealand, and the Asian countries, however, have become much more involved. At these games you can see competitors from China and Korea, even though it is winter sports here. Previously they never used to attend, so it’s good to see the world opening up, less exclusion and more inclusion, allowing athletes from across the globe to compete with one another. (This Is IS: Episode 6, 00:01:03)⁴

Growth and inclusion in the Deaflympics are measured in terms of the number of nations competing. Urban emphasized that this has been a process over many years, and that the representation of nations at the Deaflympics is highly dependent on deaf leadership and on government funding. He gave the example of Russia and Ukraine (see Chapter 10), both of which got strong government support in 2019. His narrative above zooms in and out of geographical scales, going from individual countries’ flags to whole continents, which illustrates the ways in which scales are (re)produced in discourse depending on the points people want to make. Urban pointed out the leadership of individuals in getting nations and regions to become more involved in sport. He also discussed the financial side and pointed out that African nations had been unable to send delegates to the 2019 International Committee of Sports for the Deaf (ICSD) Congress, as opposed to the 2019 WFD congress (at which many African nations were represented): “For sports,” he said, “there is no money.”

Nations were also made visible in other contexts and settings. At the 47th ICSD Congress (which was held just before the 2019 Winter Deaflympics, in the same area; see Figures 5.9–5.11), national delegates sat together behind a sign with their country name and flag. Also at the ICSD congress, a row of flags flanked the room. A common practice at international deaf conferences is that the participants’ respective nations are introduced one by one from the stage, with people in the audience raising their arms or cheering when their country is announced; this is another example of the nation being made visible. At the opening of the 2019 WFD congress in Paris, a video clip was shown where the names of nations (I assume the nations of the Ordinary Members) were listed in English along with their sign names (sometimes a sign name for the country that was internationally used, otherwise in French Sign Language [LSF]), which were signed by people wearing stereotypically “French” attire (see Figure 5.11).

Figure 5.9. The room where the ICSD’s 2019 congress was held, taken during a break. The room is lined with flags.

Figure 5.10. An example of a national marker at the ICSD congress.

Figure 5.11. Announcing Belgium at the WFD congress.

The previous examples show how nations can become literally visible at international conferences, although in a different way than during the Deaflympics parade. The presence of others from the same nation can lead to expressions of pride and self-confidence, and a sense of pride did appear to be in the air during the opening parade of the 2019 Winter Deaflympics and also at the 2019 WFD congress. Johanna Balaguera, a presenter from Colombia, said to me, “A friend from Columbia, a deaf person, told me welcome! I assumed no one from Columbia would be here, only international people. When I saw a deaf Columbian, they gave me confidence.”

Grouping people by nation as the foremost identifier does have certain implications and brings some challenges. In sports, national teams often recruit players, trainers, or coaches from other nations, and there are Deaflympic athletes and coaches who have represented more than one nation throughout their career. More broadly, using nation as identifier in transnational events disregards the fact that deaf people may have moved between countries and/or may have multiple nationalities. Indeed, many deaf people do not live or work in the country in which they were born. This can lead to conundrums as to which of these nations they should affiliate themselves. At the 2019 Winter Deaflympics, people regularly asked Dawn Jani Birley, who worked as my research assistant at the events (see Chapter 2), whether she supported the Finnish or Canadian ice hockey team; Dawn had grown up in Canada but had been living in Finland for 20 years. Their interest in her affiliation reflected the fact that, for many, ice hockey was “the” sport of the Winter Deaflympics. It is an exciting, fast-paced team sport, with the ice hockey final traditionally marking the end of the tournament. Dawn responded that she supported the Finnish team because they were strong signers, whereas there were too many people in the Canadian team who could not sign. The sense that there was an overpresence of nonsigning athletes was often discussed at the Deaflympics, and it overlapped with the question of nation. In the context of an international deaf multisport event, certain nations tend to be associated with a higher presence of nonsigning deaf and hard of hearing people, who are observed using speech with each other (see Breivik et al., 2002; see also Chapter 9). Dawn’s self-affiliation with Finland should be understood within this context.

As these examples show, a particularly interesting issue encountered at international gatherings is the apparent need to affiliate to one country exclusively. A potent symbol of this, in some gatherings, is the use of name tags. At the 2019 WFD congress, I observed that people’s eyes constantly went to other people’s badges, to “place” them. The WFD badge showed the congress’ logo, the delegate’s name, their country affiliation, a barcode, and the label “participant” or “press.” A person’s country of residence and country of origin were often conflated and/or presumed to correspond to their nationality (Fians, 2021b). Thus, although many people were personally affiliated to more than one country, the congress name tags usually listed only one. It is typically the organizers of the congress who arrange the badges, and it is usually the case that only one country can be listed by the delegate during the registration process. If someone goes to an event representing an institution (as is commonly the case at conferences), the country in which that institution is located is likely to be listed, which may not correspond with the nationality or the country of residence of the delegate. For example, a British-born and British-resident deaf man had “Kosovo” on his WFD badge (I believe that he was employed as a freelancer by a Kosovar company at the time of the congress). There were, unsurprisingly, many brief conversations about national affiliations. Danny, from Belgium, had “Finland” on his badge because he worked and lived there; he said that people he encountered had remarked that his name did not sound Finnish. My own participant badge said “U.K.” because I had registered through my workplace; when people looked at my badge to check which country I was from, I was quick to say, “I am from Belgium.” Sujit worked with me as a research assistant at the WFD congress; his badge said “India,” based on his nationality. He told me that he had thought it necessary to clarify to people that he did not live there at the moment. That people (myself included) feel the impulse, often preemptively, to correct (mis)conceptions about affiliation(s) to place (whether of birth, residence, heritage, and so on) indicates the importance placed on these affiliations. Yet, examples such as Dawn’s show that these affiliations are not fixed but can be deliberately and strategically shifted according to context. It is in these practices and discourses that the national scale is reinforced by using the nation as a central frame of reference.

Conference badges, in their rigidity and fixity, clash with this fluidity of affiliation; so, too, do group photos where “nation” is made visible. A popular activity at deaf international events is to take group photos. At the WFD congress, people who had attended the same WFDYS camp 25 years ago or who had participated in one of the Frontrunners programs assembled to take group photos together. At the Deaf Academics conference in Iceland, we took a group photo with people who had, at some point in the past 20 years, studied at the Center for Deaf Studies at the University of Bristol. Additionally, people take group photos with others from the same nation, and it can be interesting to observe who is included or not. When photos of Belgians were being taken, for example, sometimes people from Flanders (the northern part of Belgium) would take a “Flanders photo” rather than a “Belgian photo,” and I also noted hesitation about whether to include people who had only recently migrated to the country. With some exceptions, these people were generally not included, whereas some people who had moved out of Belgium 20 years ago were still included in the group photos. On one occasion, I noted the inclusion of people who had a Belgian passport or parent but who had never lived there themselves. The concept of international events as a “family of nations” is here deployed by participants “to legitimate their own versions of national identity and to exclude or problematize others who are out-of-category” (Malkki, 1994, p. 61). Using “the nation” as the basis for inclusion or exclusion in ad hoc groupings appears, on the surface, to be a straightforward framework, but it is ambiguous at best, as these examples show.

Another issue with “representing the nation” is that people may not identify strongly with any given nation, but with a family of nations (e.g., the Gulf area) or with a region hoping to break away from a nation (e.g., Catalonia). People may identify particularly strongly with (minority) ethnic, cultural, or identity groups, or with regions rather than a nationality. Stein (2015) gives the example of Chile, where deaf individuals “pledge allegiance first to their local (urban) deaf association and then to the Chilean deaf community as a whole” (p. 177), and explains that attempts to create a national confederation of associations were in vain. In other words, the solidification of the national scale in the form of a nation-based organization failed. This leads us to a different problem than the ambiguity of national affiliations. The diversity of an audience is typically measured in terms of the number of nations represented and not in terms of gender, or race/ethnicity, or other variables. Nations can be important categories of identification, but people may also (and more strongly) identify with region, religion, class, ethnicity, gender, or language (Holliday, 2010). At the 2019 WFD congress, one could see racial and ethnic diversity, and also cultural diversity: People wearing traditional attire associated with particular cultures gave the event a visual appearance of diversity. However, “forms of diversity [are] subsumed under the label ‘national’” (Fians, 2021b, p. 98). This can obfuscate who is present from each specific nation and who is not. For example, people from minoritized and underrepresented groups, such as Indigenous people, people of color, and deafdisabled people, may face systemic barriers to attending international events. Learning that 50 people from the United Kingdom attended the event does not tell us anything about the backgrounds of these 50 people. Furthermore, the people who came to WFD may have been very diverse, but representation on the stage was not always seen as diverse. During the closing ceremony, people in the audience complained that most people on the stage were white men, who were giving prizes to other white men, and then handing over the organization of the XIX congress to the next organizational committee, fronted by three South Korean men. If participation on the international scale is, in the first instance, measured in terms of the number of nations that attend, then other forms of diversity can be overlooked, as well as diversity within leadership. The act of counting nations allows it to be made visible how whole regions are included or left behind, as in Urban’s example above, but also can render invisible that whole groups of deaf people are underrepresented in events or on the stage.

National Sign Languages in International Settings

The nation is not merely an identifier or category. It also can be the main basis of socialization and communication during an international event. In the other chapters of this book, we have mostly focused on socialization between and across nations; in this section, I wish to show that people also stay in national groups when in international settings. At some events, such as camps, people from different nations and regions (i.e., groups of neighboring countries) may be explicitly instructed to mingle, by way of the design of the activities. At the WFDY camp in Durban in 2011, for example, Merricks (2015) reports that mixed activities challenged (to some extent) the tendency of participants to bond and group with others from the same continent, especially at the beginning. At other events, however, the opposite is true. The activities do not preclude sticking together within national groups, and separation by nation can even be systematic. To give some examples of national clustering at international events, at the Clin d’Oeil deaf cultural festival in 2019, I observed a group of deaf people from an East Asian country being directed to a designated place by someone walking in front holding a paper in the air to lead the group. At the 2019 WFD congress, people from one nation were often observed sticking together for the whole or parts of the event and using their national sign language with each other. Groups of people from the same nation (e.g., groups of friends, colleagues, or family members) often stayed in the same accommodation, with this arrangement extending beyond that space into experiencing some, or all, of the event program together.

Some of the reasons for staying mostly with people from the same nation include not knowing other people at the international event, and/or not knowing IS. Sticking with the nation group during a conference, for example, and using a national sign language during lunch breaks and the evening social events can also function as a way to recharge from the exhaustion of meeting new people and using IS. Conferences are also places where people from the same nation, but who do not see each other often, can reconnect. At the 2019 WFD congress, there were regular pub and restaurant gatherings of a group of deaf people from India that mostly comprised those living in India and those who had moved out of India in their own lifetime.

Sometimes, certain people from a nation stick together because there are hearing people in the group, such as hearing parents who have come to a sports event to support their children. These hearing people may be signers and know the national sign language, but they may not be confident in IS. Another example is the hearing colleagues of deaf people. At the SIGN8 conference in Brazil, I met two deaf academics from European countries, each with a hearing colleague under their wing. Another attendee, the previously mentioned Danny from Belgium (who had also been at the WFD congress), observed them and remarked to me: “If my hearing colleague from Finland was also here, I’d spend more time with him, which would mean I’d spend less time with deaf international people.” In international deaf gatherings, hearing people can (often inadvertently) prevent deaf people from their nation from socializing more internationally, and this can increase the use of national sign languages in the wider environment of the event.

Sometimes, a national group attends an international event with interpreters; typically, these groups stick together more than groups from other nations who come without interpreters. For example, at the 2019 WFD congress, a group of deaf Norwegians and their seven (hearing) interpreters moved through the event and ate together. Hilde, another deaf Norwegian woman, told me she felt uncomfortable being expected to socialize with them as well: “In Norway, I can meet Norwegian deaf people; at international events, I want to meet international people.” She commented that she preferred to experience the international event through IS rather than through the lens of Norwegian Sign Language (NTS), via interpreters, and by socializing predominantly with Norwegian people.

National sign languages are thus used socially and by national sign language interpreters in the context of interpreting. With regard to the organization of the 2019 WFD congress, there were tensions surrounding its language policy (see This Is IS: Episode 5). The congress had two official sign languages, IS and LSF, the latter because France was the host country. Presentations at this congress could only be delivered in LSF, IS, English (the official working language of the WFD), or French. There were about 40 national sign language interpreters, including from Nigeria, Malawi, Oman, Jordan, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Germany. The WFD bolsters support for education and services in national sign languages within nations; however, at the 2019 congress in Paris, IS was positioned as the global signed lingua franca to be used on an international stage, even though many deaf people struggled to use and/or understand it. What is more, presenting in one’s own national sign language was discouraged at the Paris congress, even if presenters brought national sign language interpreter(s) with them. This is not uniformly the case for WFD congresses: notably, the policy of the XIX congress in 2023, held in Jeju, South Korea, was that presenters could use national sign languages other than Korean Sign Language on stage if they were to arrange for interpreters themselves. However, the larger context here is that IS is increasingly being used on the WFD stage by deaf professionals, and the increased quality, provision, and professionalization of IS interpreting services runs in parallel with a noticeable decrease of national sign language interpreting services at the WFD congresses (Nilsson, 2020). To illustrate this, compare my observations of the XV WFD congress in Madrid in 2007 with the XVIII congress in Paris in 2019. In Madrid, I noted that deaf people from the same country sat together in an area marked by the flag of that country, with the size of the area calculated based on the size of the country’s delegation, from which they could view their national sign language interpreter(s). The situation at the 2019 congress was very different, with no designated areas, and deaf people from different nations being spread throughout the audience, and with most national sign language interpreters being positioned within the audience (Figure 5.12) or in the aisles.

Figure 5.12. National sign language interpreter (standing) positioned within the audience.

In an ethnographic study of the 102nd Universal Congress of Esperanto, Fians (2021b) noted that:

as Esperantists from across the world are regarded as carriers of differences perceived through the scope of nationality, Esperanto becomes the mediator that forges stereotyped perceptions of alterity to, then, overcome them and partially turn congress participants from national Others into fellow Esperantists. (p. 90)

Although Esperanto and IS have very different histories and characteristics, there are similarities in the ways in which their uses in international conferences are described. Fians (2021b) shows that, in the context of the Universal Congress of Esperanto, “a specific grammar of national diversity is highlighted and addressed, examining how this community emerges in constant tension via an internationalism that simultaneously embraces nationalities and rejects nationalisms” (p. 90). Similarly, whereas national sign languages were represented and used at the 2019 WFD congress, both within the audience and in the larger event setting, their use was discouraged on the WFD stage itself, even while the number of distinct nations present was emphasized and celebrated on the very same stage.

National Stereotypes and Essentialisms

In the previous sections, I have explored the ways in which people are perceived as representing nations at international events and how they may also socialize within nation groups, using their national sign languages to do so. In this section, I briefly expand on this issue of “representation” in international contexts by exploring how visitors to events may be seen as a sample of a national variety (Malkki, 1994). International communities can be imagined as a “family of nations,” where “globality is understood to be constituted by interrelations among discrete ‘nations’” (Malkki, 1994, p. 41). In this context, “nationness” is reinforced, legitimated, and naturalized—and produced as a scale—in the pursuit of the “international”; there cannot be “internationalism” without nations. I came across myriad examples of this in my study, finding that people were not only seen as “tokens” of (national) “types” but also that these “types” were stereotypes.

As an example, international deaf events often organize a “national” evening, in which national attire or colors are worn, flags are displayed, national snacks and treats are put out for sampling, and national dances are shown. Sometimes, the organization or delegation representing the host country does this as part of the opening ceremony and/or reception, and at youth camps a row of tables may be put next to each other, with each national delegation showing what they have brought, such as Belgian speculaas or Indian laddoos. In this way, nations can be “sampled” next to each other, through a form of essentialized cultural consumption. Nations are expected to each have a distinctive culture, spirit, and even contribution to humanity. In other words, culture is likened to nation and to identity, and boundaries between cultures are seen as boundaries between nations (Brubaker, 2010). National diversity is foregrounded (and the national scale (re)produced), as “the proxy of difference to be valued and celebrated by particular forms of cosmopolitan openness” (Fians, 2021b, p. 90). However, it is demonstrably true that dietary cultures and folklore are often not easily ascribed to a single nation, and that nations often have a very wide variability within them (consider the diversity contained within the vast nation of India, for example). Furthermore, this does not even consider further cultural diversity resulting from migration. In these events, deaf people are trading in widely circulating nationalist essentialisms by bringing things from their preferred region or culture to deaf events where people can savor them as “samples” of their nation.

In this type of activity, people not only engage in essentialized representations of “national” cultures, but also these nations are rendered commensurable. Malkki (1994) compares this to the Disneyland ride “It’s a Small World,” in which visitors are drawn along past displays of more than a hundred nations—and where inequalities are erased and differences between nations are rendered superficial and uniform. In the same vein, Friedner and Kusters (2015b) discuss a well-known video clip created by Joel Barish in 2010, called “We Are Deaf,”⁵ which shows deaf people in national attire standing in front of iconic architecture or nature, signing “I am deaf” and “no barriers” with subtitles in the national languages of each country. Here, differences between national units are not only rendered equidistant, but also dehistoricized, depoliticized, and homogenized. In Malkki’s (1994) words:

[R]elationships between countries like Belgium and Burundi, say, or the United States and the Dominican Republic are represented not as continuing neocolonial relations conceived in radical political inequality, but as relations between separate, equal entities of the same type—such that the differences between these nationalities appear homologous with quaint taxonomic differences between their national flags and costumes. (pp. 57–58)

Indeed, the expectation is one of “discrete peoples whose relations are ideally ones of diplomacy, complementarity, and cooperation, and who from time to time come together to celebrate their common humanity” (Malkki, 1994, p. 61). The themes of several previous and upcoming WFD congresses underscore these aims: “Securing Human Rights in Times of Crisis” (2023), “Sign Language Rights for All” (2019), “Strengthening Human Diversity (2015), “Human Rights through Sign Languages” (2007), and “Towards Human Rights” (1995).

Although deaf individuals and organizations do draw on “generalized” national essentialisms that circulate widely (i.e., in “hearing” spaces), there is also a repertoire of stereotypes based on observations of how groups from various countries behave at international deaf events. For example, I was often told that British and American deaf people are—in general terms—less experienced at (and less interested in) interacting internationally; reasons given included an island mentality (in the case of the United Kingdom), an imperialist history (both), and a proud history of using ASL/BSL. Some other nations were known for sticking together at sports events more than others, leading to stereotypes. At the 2019 Winter Deaflympics, the Indian delegation was mentioned to me several times as being “stuck together” and communicating minimally with people from other countries, instead using Indian Sign Language (ISL) with each other; I observed this as well. Similarly, at the curling competition where I tried (in vain) to interview Chinese deaf people, I was told by non-Chinese athletes that “communicating with people from China is difficult because they only focus on their country.” Furthermore, as mentioned previously, some country groups at the Deaflympics (such as the Canadian ice hockey players) had more deaf nonsigners, or nonfluent signers, which also contributed to the people in the group sticking together. Sticking with the nation group “too much” was often commented on in a disapproving way. Staying in a group associated with a national sign language, and using that national sign language in the group, thus leads to generalized national stereotypes.

Given the existence of various types of comparisons, essentialisms, and stereotypes, it is not surprising that people may feel the pressure of representing their nation, especially if they are the only person from their country present in a given space. This was the case for several students in the Frontrunners course. I did fieldwork and made recordings with a camera team for This Is IS: Episode 1 with the 2017–2018 Frontrunners group twice: in their first week and during a week toward the end of the 9-month program. During the second visit, I showed a montage of recordings from their first week, including their interactions with each other, as well as interview quotes and excerpts of class discussions. After showing this recording in the group, a discussion ensued, and the theme of “representing the nation” emerged. Several of the students stated that they felt they had to represent their nation in a certain way; Hyemi, for example, had felt reluctant to ask for clarification of unfamiliar IS signs at the beginning of the program because she thought it would reflect badly on all Korean people (see Chapter 8). She became more confident to ask questions when she saw other Frontrunners do the same.

Another student, David, remarked he did not want his personality to be seen as representative of deaf people across the whole of the United States: “Right, if I sign what I am doing, people would respond ‘Ah … American.’ I wonder why, because I am not representing all of America, it is only my personality.” Hyemi explained that she felt the same regarding her country: “All the responsibility is on my shoulders. I have to show myself as nice and charismatic.” Fie, from Norway, added that people were also expected to be experts about their countries. A guest lecturer had directed her: “Norwegian, explain about the political system there!” Such questions made her feel uncomfortable: “I don’t have a degree in it. I felt pressure then, I am not an expert, I am only Fie.” Lara, from Flanders (North Belgium), had felt that she needed to defend her region when mocked by a Frontrunner from Wallonia (South Belgium). Esther, from Spain, said, “When people look at me, they see the south [of Europe]. It has happened many times, if I come in late they say: ‘Ah Southerners.’ Why is that? That is only me. I came back late.” In summary, these Frontrunners felt that they were expected to represent their nation through their behavior and assumed expertise on their country’s political systems and histories. Although this expectation usually went along national lines, there was also focus on regions within a country (Wallonia) and on multinational regions (Southern Europe).

Such stereotypes are mobilized when people are outside their nation (Kelly & Lusis, 2006). Through these stereotypical expectations, nationality becomes the main salient feature of the person, at the expense of their other characteristics; only through getting to know each other are these stereotypes overcome (Fians, 2021b). At the same time, the desire to be known by name (as shown in the earlier example of Esther’s response to being called “Spain”), and as an individual, was in constant tension with wanting to represent their country. The Frontrunners wanted to see their country represented well and for it to be clear which country they came from—especially if their origins were often confused or contested. At Frontrunners, although Esther did sometimes describe herself as being from Spain, she also repeatedly pointed out that she is from Catalonia, a contested region. Hyemi emphasized that she is from Korea, and not from Japan: “Everyone always thinks of Japan first, not Korea. I want to change that.” People also resisted being labeled “the wrong country” because they were sensitive to stereotypes relating to that country or did not want to be associated with it due to a relationship of conflict, competition, or mockery between neighboring countries or regions (e.g., between Flanders and Wallonia, Flanders and the Netherlands, and Wallonia and France).

I noted similar examples of people challenging national stereotypes at DOOR International Africa, in Kenya, a setting which I discuss further in subsequent sections. During an after-dinner conversation with Charles (from Burundi), Rahul (India), and Eric (Kenya) about cultural differences and differences between sign languages, Charles (who had studied in New Delhi) said that many people there had thought he was Nigerian and that, as a result, vendors often tried to overcharge him. The stereotype about Nigerians in New Delhi is that they are cocaine traders who “throw money around.” In the same conversation, I explained that many white Europeans see it as an insult if they are mistaken for Americans in international settings—for example, when deaf people in African countries equate “white” with “American.” Eric’s reaction to this was one of surprise, but Rahul said he had observed this, adding that hating Americans is typical of Europeans, and it is also related to hating ASL (see Chapter 8, and also This Is IS: Episode 2, 00:43:01).⁶ Rahul had even encountered a European who had raised their middle finger at him when Rahul mistook them for American. From his perspective (as neither a European nor an American), Rahul found this “European hate” for Americans odd and exaggerated.

Conversations about national and regional stereotypes, and challenging such stereotypes, frequently occur in international deaf encounters on the transnational scale. By talking about differences between nations, people engage in scaling; people are “tokens” of national “types,” entailing a shift from the individual to the national scale (Gal, 2016). By engaging in practices of scaling, deaf interlocutors may challenge the idea that individuals are simply tokens of (national or regional) types, but they also maintain and redefine the “types” by engaging in comparisons and by replacing national stereotypes with other generalizations.

Bringing Resources Back to the Nation

As “specimens of nations,” mobile people are often (implicitly or explicitly) expected to “bring back” things to their nation, be it information, new knowledge, leadership skills, or materials. Doing this, they are engaging in processes of scaling, transposing models from other nations or international organizations to their own national and local contexts. Many international deaf events bring together deaf leaders and may educate these leaders—both through the exchange and refinement of discourse around deaf participation in wider society and by building and strengthening the transnational bonds between deaf leaders, who may be each other’s peers, mentors, and/or role models. By visiting transnational events, or deaf places of work and study that are “more advanced” or “more strong,” deaf people may have a “wake up” experience, as De Clerck (2007) called it. De Clerck studied the experiences of a cohort of (mostly white male) Flemish deaf leaders and professionals, such as people working in the Flemish deaf association, and found that such international visits had been turning points for them. They learned about so-called “barrier-free” environments in all-signing settings, such as Gallaudet University and the Center for Deaf Studies at the University of Bristol, and also about “strong” deaf associations, such as those in the Nordic countries. In other words, they were inspired by making evidence-based comparisons with countries or institutions that they perceived to be “more advanced.” They were also offered what De Clerck called “a rhetoric of equal opportunities, rights, participation, oppression, deaf culture, emancipation, integration” (p. 9)—new conceptual tools with which to advocate for change. The people who had “woken up” then applied what they had learned to their own country—installing an all-deaf board in the deaf association, for example. The visits abroad thus offered a combination of comparisons with examples of “best practice” and the empowering rhetoric to support it, which could then be applied in order to achieve what was (now) aspired to.

Other examples of activities and events designed to “empower” are the regular WFDYS camps, which offer a mix of educational and fun activities. For example, the educational activities at the 2011 WFDYS camp program in Durban (South Africa) consisted of presentations about the WFD and WFDYS; presentations by inspiring deaf leaders who had done community work and advocacy; workshops about themes that resonate internationally, such as the closure of deaf schools; national delegations sharing “country reports” about their youth organizations; and a culture-themed night, where participants brought their national flags and “introduced” their country through food, clothes, dances, and so forth (Merricks, 2015). In such programs, there is a strong emphasis on inspiring and promoting leadership in local and national communities, coupled with intercultural learning through drawing on generalizations and stereotypes, doing team-building activities, and the processes of international communication.

Although not always the explicit goal, “comparing” nations is an undercurrent in many such activities. Comparing as an activity is prevalent in international deaf spaces (see Murray, 2007, for historical examples, and also Chapter 1), whether in formal settings, such as conference presentations and work meetings, or in international conversations (Breivik, 2005; De Meulder, 2015; Kusters et al., 2015). Information gathered through comparison is then often generalized (upscaled) to a “national” level (or memorized as belonging to a “nation”), even when it may relate only to a particular institution, city, or region. As explored in Chapter 8, comparing the signs of different national sign languages is also a central activity in deaf transnational encounters, even if national sign languages may themselves show considerable internal variation. Using the nation as a comparative framework can lead to disregarding inequalities and differences within nations, such as regional signing variants, urban–rural divides, and complexity of national histories. Another consequence is that, through the repeated comparison of ideas, practices, policies and signs, certain perspectives on or approaches regarding “the right way to be deaf” become ingrained in international deaf discourse (Haualand et al., 2015; see Chapter 1). The perspectives of the people who initiate or dominate the comparing and scaling activities in transnational encounters get foregrounded, and their priorities gain traction. For example, Friedner and Kusters (2014) discuss a brief “exchange” program in which deaf people from the United States went to India to “empower” deaf Indians. During the program, deaf Americans replicated widespread beliefs about the United States being “more advanced” regarding deaf rights. Without having much knowledge about India, they painted India as a “deaf hell” in comparison to the United States—for example, by highlighting that sign language interpreting services are not well established in India. The interventions of people from the United States, who saw themselves as trying to “wake up” (De Clerck, 2007) the deaf Indians, were justified by predetermined ideas of what constitutes “good ways” of living deaf lives, based on international comparisons made in the contexts described previously, and against which deaf lives in other locations were compared and measured. Such comparisons often happen on national levels, and they may disregard or be unaware of contexts in which deaf people thrive or urgent problems that are not discussed openly (such as sexual education).

Returning to the youth camps and Frontrunners programs, the expectation is that participants would bring the knowledge acquired back to apply in their home countries afterward, perhaps in the form of presentations to home audiences, a written article in a deaf magazine, or through activism, entrepreneurship, and advocacy. In countries without national deaf youth associations, WFDYS camp participants are encouraged to establish them (Merricks, 2015); similarly, it was former Frontrunners who established a national youth deaf association in India. During a class discussion recorded during my second visit to Frontrunners, Majdi (from Jordan) stated that he was inspired to set up a youth organization for the Arab area: “I will focus on Jordan first and then think about the Arab countries. I want a strong Arabic network, like the one in Europe” (This Is IS: Episode 1, 1:07:34).⁷ In so doing, he underscores his commitment to his region and nation, aiming to facilitate the production of a regional scale (“Arab countries”) by strengthening networks and building a robust organization.

However inspiring participants such as Majdi may have found such programs, it must be acknowledged that the flow of “knowledge” about “how to develop” is most often contained within the Global North, or unilinear from the Global North to the Global South—in the latter cases, offered in the form of “crash courses,” as in the U.S.–Indian “exchange” program mentioned previously. This has implications for the participants. In the film, Majdi is shown in a brainstorming session with Frontrunners from the Czech Republic, Italy, France, and Belgium; we see him looking back and forth between the others, and sinking down in his seat when he does not understand (This Is IS: Episode 1, 1:04:27).⁸

Such experiences of exclusion set Majdi and the three other students from the Global South apart from the European and American Frontrunners. When I interviewed him in the first week of the Frontrunners program, Majdi explained that he fell behind in group conversations because of the huge cultural distance between them. He felt the Europeans and the American were able to understand each other more quickly using IS; they had had more opportunities to network internationally before joining the Frontrunners program, and the themes of discussion and frames of reference were Europe dominated. Even when Majdi understood the signs people were using, he often did not understand the specifics of what they were referring to. He seemed hopeful that it would improve over time. During my second fieldwork visit toward the end of the course, Majdi was clearly more active in similar group interactions. When he was shown the images of the brainstorm session and his interview from the first week, and was asked to reflect on how his experience had changed, he said:

I still don’t understand everything, just half of what is signed. I was wondering why I didn’t understand everything. All I learned in Jordan was about rights. Deafhood, Deaf Gain, sign language, linguistics, etc., I did not learn that there. Here at Frontrunners, I learned many new things, but I lack the basis for these issues. Frontrunners doesn’t give me a foundation to build up these different topics, they rather select themes, assuming a basis is in place. That’s why I only half understood the whole thing. I did not learn such topics in Jordan.

In the Frontrunners program, Modules 1 and 3 take place on campus in Denmark, whereas Module 2 consists of an internship. During Module 2, most Frontrunners visited deaf professionals and organizations in countries other than their own. Majdi went back to Jordan for his internship, during which time he experienced contrasts between what he knew, as opposed to what others in Jordan knew:

I did build up skills here that I can bring to Jordan. During Module 1, I felt that I didn’t catch anything or learn much, but during Module 2, I returned to Jordan [for my internship]. There I realized that I actually had learned a lot in Module 1. I was really happy. I’ve built up my knowledge. I was able to explain a lot to the people there. […] I gave lectures. I met people there and explained to them. I also met important, senior people there, and was able to keep up with them. Before, it was not possible, but now I can talk to them and discuss or explain. Through this, I have realized I can do it. (This Is IS: Episode 1, 01:07:10)⁹

Majdi thus reported feeling split: He felt that he still could not keep up with the Europeans, but at the same time, through his participation in Frontrunners, he had gained new knowledge, which he said helped him in his country. By comparing himself with other Jordanians, rather than with his Frontrunners peers, he saw what he could offer. What is learned, and what is brought back to the nation, is very much dependent on how much the person can relate to the dominant frames of reference in international settings and whether they feel they can apply this knowledge in their country.

A second example of an international activity that aims for participants to bring resources back to the nation is the missionary work done by DOOR International. At the DOOR campus in Nairobi, Kenya, teams from different countries work on Chronological Bible Storytelling (a type of Bible translation) into their national sign languages. KSL, as the host national sign language, serves as a bridge to other national sign languages. When I was at DOOR, teams from Mozambique, South Sudan, Kenya, and Russia were working there. John, from South Sudan, explained how he had been recruited within his country:

Paul [the director of DOOR International Africa] came to our town, and I met with him at deaf church. He chose some people, including myself, to come here to Kenya. I learned KSL for the first time. Deaf people were signing the Bible. In South Sudan we do not have the Bible translated into sign language. I am learning to do it for the first time. Once I am finished and bring it back to them, deaf people will be happy to see it in sign language. That is what I think.

John explained that he had grown up using village signs (see Chapter 8) because he never went to school; later, he acquired the signs used in a town in South Sudan, and then KSL in Kenya (This Is IS: Episode 2, 00:10:37).¹⁰ His task while in Kenya was not just to translate the KSL Bible into South Sudanese Sign Language, but to then bring it back to South Sudan. Translators worked in offices with others from their nation (see Figure 5.13, the South Sudanese translation team in their office), in contrast to the Frontrunners group who were treated as one international group. The national teams were not only allowed to, but also supposed to, carry on communicating in their national sign language in order “not to forget it”; they needed to use it for their translations. Note the contrast with the IS settings of the Frontrunners course and the WFD congress, where people were supposed to represent their nation, but not necessarily their national sign language.

Figure 5.13. South Sudanese translators.

In this context, it becomes clear that national sign languages are strategic essentialisms, most clearly evidenced by the work that the South Sudanese team is doing. George, from Kenya, was a consultant for the South Sudanese team and explained that, having worked in six other African countries, he found the South Sudanese team the hardest to work with “because they have no original sign language” (see Chapter 8, and This Is IS: Episode 2, 00:15:53).¹¹ He explained that they were documenting South Sudanese Sign Language, which consisted of local signs as well as numerous foreign influences, through the translation work. This shows that the expectation is for a nation to have its own sign language, or to work toward having a national sign language.

Through the work at DOOR, translators were engaging in producing the national scale in the form of national sign language materials. The translators used national sign language translations as templates for other national sign language translations, rendering the different translations commensurable, even for countries where there “is no original sign language.” This was with the aim to create materials for the nation, in the national sign language but by following an internationalized template; they were working from a similar source text, and they had the shared aim of disseminating the target texts far and beyond. Although the work done at DOOR was very much along national lines, this is not dissimilar from the Frontrunners example, where terms such as “linguicism” (see Chapter 8), or the value of the establishment of youth associations, can be learned and then be “brought back” to the country.

Nations as Hosts for International Events

Deaf international physical events happen in geographical places, which are, of course, within nations. The hosts of deaf international events are disproportionately nations in the Global North. There are often a lot of barriers to organizing events in the Global South, including political instability, insufficient networks, lack of access to local or government funding, and, in the case of sports events, the correct facilities for a very wide range of sports. Where events are held does matter, however. International events are often seen as occurrences that will make an impression on local or national organizations and even governments (see Gulliver, 2015, and Murray, 2007, for historical examples). They enhance the visibility and status of the local and international deaf community, and they are often attended by sponsors, press, and officials. Host governments can work with deaf organizations to raise the host location’s international profile, as well as to support, develop, and diversify local businesses and services (Harrison, 2014). In addition, international events are typically more accessible to locals—not only the events themselves, but also the side events open to non-attendees, which can be attended by local deaf people. For example, some of the Deaf Academics conferences have involved events in local deaf clubs. Side events also include informal gatherings in hospitality venues such as pubs, cafés, and food joints, and there is often a general “deafening” of the space around the event, attracting further attendees and tourists (see Chapter 7). An event branded as national can also be experienced as transnational if it is attended by many foreigners. For example, many of the earliest deaf congresses were not branded “international,” yet the “All-German Deaf-Mute Congresses” were attended by people from outside Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire, and deaf people from other countries were invited to attend the 1897 London congress (Murray, 2007).

A congress branded as, or promoted as, an international congress can also feel “too local” or “too national.” This can be because of its chosen themes or because of its mostly local or national attendance. Murray (2007) gives the examples of the 1911 Rome congress, which mostly focused on controversies between Italian deaf people and Italian teachers of the deaf, and the 1910 World Congress of the Deaf, which was held in Colorado and attended by only two non-U.S. participants. Branding a national event as “international” can be a strategy employed to attract more international participants, but “a name does not an international congress make” (Murray, 2007, p. 62). To this day, there are international conferences and international deaf expos with only a few delegates from other countries than the host country. One example of this was the SIGN8 conference in 2018, which was held in Brazil and at which the majority of the 300 attendees were Brazilians. Although the small number of international visitors did appear to interact with Brazilians during breaks, presentations, poster sessions, meals, and so on, because the majority of people present were Brazilians using Libras with each other, some of the international participants (including me) gravitated toward each other. Several of the international participants knew each other already, whereas they did not know many Brazilians. I observed a similar pattern among international attendees during the SIGN6 conference in India, where the majority of attendees were Indians.

The SIGN conference series attracts an audience from a larger number of nations when organized in Europe, but then it attracts mostly national audiences when organized outside of Europe, leading to a more “host nation-flavored” conference experience for the international visitors. This can result in a deeper learning experience about the host nation because of the number of presentations given by people from that country, the presence of the host country’s national sign language, and the immersive experience of meeting many locals and potentially picking up bits of the hosts’ sign language (see This Is IS: Episode 3). Yet, it can also mean that there is less contact between host country participants and internationals, and that internationals feel “drowned out.” A conference can also be experienced as (or expected to be) “too local” for people from other countries who attend primarily for the international aspect of the event, and only secondarily to encounter a local deaf community different from the ones they know (i.e., to “see how they live”; see Chapter 6). I illustrate this with another example.

In Europe, international parties are popular among the youth, including New Year celebrations, Oktoberfest, and the evening parties at Clin d’Oeil. Parties are “low-threshold” social events and are sometimes organized in combination with workshops. I observed Frontrunners planning a “Frontrunners party” in the Czech Republic, in cooperation with the Czech deaf youth association. They discussed concerns about the low number of registrations and thought that it was probably because people expected that the party would be attended by only a small number of international participants, and would consist of mostly Czech deaf people using Czech Sign Language with each other. One of the Frontrunners, Esther, from Spain, made a comparison with an event in France that was “sold” as an international event, but almost everyone there was from France and used LSF in conversations with each other. France is a big country, she explained, and it is understandable that people who do not see each other regularly would use an “international” event in their country to catch up with French people from other regions. If information about an event is presented in a bilingual way (e.g., in Czech Sign Language and IS), Esther reasoned, it can give the impression that it is, in the first place, a national event, even if it is presented as an international one. She emphasizes that an international scale can be produced by properly branding an event as international—for example, by disseminating information only in IS. An example of this can be seen in the Deaf Academics conferences, which make exclusive use of IS and do not necessarily attract a high number of attendees from the host country.

There can, therefore, be a precarious balance to maintain. Where more people from local deaf communities attend, the transnational scale becomes more accessible to them. People who may not be able to travel abroad to meet deaf internationals can meet them in their own country (see Chapter 10). Locals may benefit from reduced participation rates, and even if they do not participate in the conference itself, locals may dip into the side events. Local audiences can experience impact for many years through the networks built up during an international event. The SIGN6 conference held in India, for example, has led to several international marriages between deaf Indians and non-Indians who met each other at the conference, and the event was even referred to several times during my fieldwork at DOOR in Kenya, because both Rahul (from India) and Charles (from Burundi) had attended the conference. For many Indians, including Rahul, SIGN6 provided them with major exposure both to IS and to foreign deaf people, and it was an important part of the collective memory of deaf sign language professionals in India, where I lived at the time the conference was organized.

However, hosting international events, such as the 2027 WFD congress, can involve significant controversy, exemplified by the discussions about the United Arab Emirates’ bid to host. In light of the nation’s anti-LGBTQIA+ laws, concerns have been raised about LGBTQIA+ rights and safety, especially regarding conference discussions on related topics. This presents a conflict between the WFD’s international mission to champion deaf rights, including deaf LGBTQIA+ rights, and the prospective host nation’s laws. These concerns were chiefly raised by individuals and organizations from Western countries where LGBTQIA+ rights are generally acknowledged. This opposition, vital for advocating LGBTQIA+ rights, has unfortunately collided with the goal of enhancing participation in the WFD congresses by deaf communities from different (underrepresented) regions. The selection of the host nation can drastically boost national and regional event inclusion, as the predominantly Asian attendance at the 2023 congress in South Korea clearly showed. The ensuing debate has regrettably ignited expressions of homophobia and Islamophobia, both at the 2023 congress and via social media. Organizations like the WFD are confronted with the delicate task of accommodating various group needs without creating marginalization, while also addressing intersectional issues and redressing historical imbalances in global representation.

National Sign Languages in Host Countries

A theme that is often raised in relation to host countries is the presence of the national sign language at international events. Its presence can be limited, as at the Deaf Academics conferences and at Frontrunners, where IS is used and no interpretation into the host country’s national sign language is provided. In contrast, it was made very clear at DOOR that KSL was the language to be used because it was the language of the host country. Learned through immersion and socialization, basic KSL was seen as the campus lingua franca, with the KSL translation of the Bible often used as a model for other translations. Most international employees stayed on campus, interacting socially during meals and in the evenings; KSL was used alongside other sign languages, which were often mixed with each other. People working as consultants for the Bible translations took responsibility for using or learning both KSL and the sign language of the translators (see Chapter 8). It became clear to me that the expectation that people who work together will learn each other’s national sign language is strongly present at DOOR, and this further confirms their focus on the nation(al sign language) as the basis of socialization, translation, and evangelism. In short, at DOOR, the international scale serves to create resources for national use, in order to spread global messages that respect the uniqueness of each nation’s sign language.

Another example where the role of the host’s sign language was discussed was at the 2019 WFD congress in Paris. As mentioned previously, presentations in (nonhost) national sign languages were not allowed, even if the presenters brought their own interpreters to voice into English or French. French people could present in their national sign language, however. Emi, from France, decided to present her doctoral research in LSF. Episode 5 of This Is IS (00:40:50)¹² shows how Emi afterward was approached by a few friends, who challenged her about her language choice. In an interview afterward, she explained her reasoning:

I decided on LSF because I can express myself better and deliver all that I want to say. I can sign smoother in LSF, and my topic is very political and academic. I can express all my points that way. In IS, I can deliver less information because IS is not an official language. It has poor vocabulary—I mean limited. I think I made the wrong choice. LSF was good for the French LSF users as it gave them full access, but it was not so great for those using IS. Those people received the information through IS interpretation. In order to get to IS, it had to go through a chain of interpretation in three languages. I was signing in LSF, then it went into spoken French, then spoken English, and lastly IS. I was told that the IS interpretation was delayed and not exactly equivalent to what I was saying. […] It was off track from the intended meaning. […] This has been a powerful experience. […] I thought that it was important to represent France and to show I come from here rather than another country. When an international event happens, all deaf people are equal, so IS should be signed regardless of where an individual [is from] so that all feel welcome. Also, other speakers didn’t have an opportunity to present in their national sign language. It is not fair that I could sign in my language. I was more privileged being in my own country of France. I have decided from now on to always use IS!

Emi chose the national sign language over IS because she wanted to benefit from her fluency and to represent her country (which was also the host country). She realized that by doing so, she had an advantage over many other presenters who were presenting in a second language, and that this also meant that she could only really reach people from her own nation. Additionally, the way the interpretation process was organized disprivileged the host country’s sign language, despite LSF being one of the two official sign languages of the conference. She lost her international audience.

The converse can also occur: it can feel jarring, or even “wrong,” to use IS in one’s own country. At SIGN8 in Brazil, some Brazilians struggled with using IS. Libras and IS were listed as conference languages in parallel, which led to the interesting situation in which people could choose a conference language but no interpretation was organized between the languages. Separate preconference workshops were organized in Libras and IS, lasting a few hours each. Flaviane, who was part of the organizing committee, explained that initially they had received a lot of questions about the language policy:

I’ve worked three days at this congress, organizing. I’ve had so many requests from people saying “Please, please, I need an interpreter.” And I’ve had to say, “sorry, we’re not providing one. I understand your right to have 100% access. Just be patient and keep pushing through over one or two days, and that way you will take it in.” In this way I try to encourage them, and the deaf people reluctantly accept. And then, a few days later, they came back again and say, “Thank you so much, I’m learning so much IS,” and I’m really pleased. It’s better to give them guidance in this way, and steer them into understanding over a few days, and they’ll get better. (This Is IS: Episode 3, 00:50:17)¹³

Many presenters adapted their signing by using Libras in their IS or moving their Libras toward IS, combining the two languages of the conference. This Is IS: Episode 3 shows how international guest presenters learned Libras signs, being aware that the audience was mostly Brazilian, and incorporated some of these signs in their presentations, such as MOTHER, FATHER, and THANK YOU. This did not occur without resistance. Flaviane told me that some internationals complained about not understanding presentations that were heavily Libras dominant. Additionally, some of the Brazilians I talked with felt torn about using IS in their own country. One of these was Leticia, who gave a workshop in IS:

It’s hard, because I am Brazilian myself and there are other Brazilian deaf people. I do understand that for the global deaf community, IS is necessary. I do try and use IS, I feel I’m making a good effort. I can see that some deaf Brazilians don’t really understand. After my workshop finished, they came up to me and said “I don’t understand. You’re using IS. You are Brazilian yourself and I am Brazilian. Why do you do this?” And I found that really hard to answer. I was lost for words. But I also knew that in the workshop, there were also Germans and I’m mindful of that. That’s why I use IS, but yes, it’s hard. It’s hard to use IS in a direct conversation with a fellow Brazilian. Libras is much smoother. (This Is IS: Episode 3, 00:27:53)¹⁴

Yet, as was clear from Flaviane’s quote, in the end the conference was a positive learning experience for many participants. This conference was a powerful example of how the national scale (i.e., “the nation”) can be assertively produced within an international event, both in terms of the size of the host country delegation and the use of the national sign language, and how this can lead to tensions for both internationals and nationals.

Conclusion

There has been a turning away from “the nation” in much of the scholarship of transnationalism, “re-scaling” attention to address the subnational (local, urban, regional) and supranational (continental, global) scales. However, “the nation” is still a central frame of reference (Mansfield, 2005). Studies of transnationalism or internationalism need to include the national, albeit not as a “container” or a fixed unitary entity. Mansfield (2005) acknowledges that the national needs to be “decentered,” but “in such a way that helps us understand its ongoing importance” (p. 460). This chapter has uncovered many ways in which the national scale is produced in deaf international professional gatherings, counterbalancing the ways in which “the nation” has been decentered in other parts of this book.

In this chapter, I have shown how nations, national organizations, and/or national identities can be made prominent in international settings. Nations serve as identifiers and are subject to essentializations and stereotypes, with national identities tokenized, projected, or contested according to context. National organizations function as mediators of access to the transnational or international, are “targets” for resources, serve as hosts for international gatherings, and function as the basis of “nationalized” comparisons; they, and nation-as-identifier, also serve as the basis of socialization (which can further feed national stereotypes). Mobility to international deaf professional events can be channeled by national organizations, and/or nations are seen as “containers” limiting the size of “delegations.” When people arrive at the international gathering, nation is often a primary identifier—a phenomenon that is very visible in the Deaflympics (in terms of flags and uniforms) but is also relevant in other settings. People in international settings may experience tensions about representing a nation (and thus reproducing “the nation”), because they may identify with several nations or not strongly identify with “nation” in contrast to the other bases on which they construct belonging (see Chapter 9). They may also feel under pressure to represent their nation, rather than being present as an individual.

Although the range of nations represented at international deaf events is often overtly celebrated by the organizers and attendees, the position of national sign languages at these events can be more ambivalent. In some contexts, people may wish to use their national sign language at international events (such as through national sign language interpreters), but they may be discouraged or prevented from doing so, with IS elevated by a “no barriers” rhetoric. Yet, the use of IS favors those who have been previously exposed to it; language practices may vary among attendees, with spaces of national socialization carved out within the international event. Attendees may also combine the use of their own national sign language with what they have learned of the host country sign language, with other sign languages or with IS. Indeed, the development of resources in national sign languages may even be the explicit target of international gatherings, as in the example of DOOR; in this context, those present must balance maintaining fluency in their national sign language with international languaging practices.

This account of deaf professional mobility into multinational settings shows how the national, and the nation, is always implicated in other scaled activities, that “it is in multiscaled interactions that the national gains its significance and gives significance to other scales” (Mansfield, 2005, p. 460). In addition to being cosmopolitan (explored in other chapters in this book), deaf professionals are seen as, or present themselves as, products of their nations, producers of their nations, the faces of their nations, and the producers and receivers of national sign languages.

1. https://vimeo.com/686852215#t=13m02s

2. https://vimeo.com/783318465#t=20m21s

3. https://vimeo.com/686852215#t=14m14s

4. https://vimeo.com/809000011#t=1m3s

5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qymfHrKdLLw

6. https://vimeo.com/728777656#t=43m1s

7. https://vimeo.com/686852215#t=1h7m34s

8. https://vimeo.com/686852215#t=1h4m27s

9. https://vimeo.com/686852215#t=1h7m10s

10. https://vimeo.com/728777656#t=10m37s

11. https://vimeo.com/728777656#t=15m53s

12. https://vimeo.com/783318465#t=40m50s

13. https://vimeo.com/744266936#t=50m17s

14. https://vimeo.com/744266936#t=27m53s