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Approximately 42 million people worldwide are displaced due to persecution, war or natural disaster (UNHCR, 2008). Many seek refuge in countries far from their own. Where host countries supply refugee mental health services, these services rely heavily on the work of interpreters. Despite interpreters being exposed to significant client distress, little attention has been paid to the impact of mental health interpreting on the well‐being of interpreters themselves. This study set out to build on limited previous work in this area.A total of 157 interpreters contracted by Glasgow Translating and Interpreting Service, UK, were surveyed in April 2007. Responses were analysed using grounded theory analyses. Of the 18 interpreters who responded, 56% reported having been emotionally affected by mental health interpreting, 67% reported that they sometimes found it hard to put clients out of their minds and 33% reported that interpreting for clients with mental health difficulties had had an impact on their personal life. Respondents experienced a range of emotions in relation to their work, including anger, sadness, hopelessness and powerlessness, and 28% reported sometimes having difficulty moving onto their next job due to distress associated with a previous client. These findings are discussed in relation to good practice guidelines.

Recent figures show that half the world’s refugees are children, with young people now representing more than 50 percent of victims of global armed conflict and displaced persons. Increasing numbers of refugee youth are entering their host nations’ compulsory and postcompulsory educational systems having experienced frequent resettlements and disrupted education, which in turn, pose major barriers for educational and future employment. The consequences of these experiences raise pressing equity implications for educators and educational systems. However, the picture is not uniformly bleak. Employing Bourdieu’s thinking tools of habitus, field and capital, Yosso’s concepts of community cultural wealth and photovoice methods, this chapter draws on studies of refugee youth of both genders from diverse ethnic and faith backgrounds, conducted in regional Australia. It examines how everyday spaces for learning, for example, church, faith-based and sporting groups and family can play a crucial role in enabling young people to build powerful forms of social and cultural capital necessary to successfully access and negotiate formal education and training settings. Its findings suggest first that everyday spaces can act as rich sites of informal learning, which young refugee people draw upon to advance their life chances, employability, and social inclusion. Second, they suggest that how one’s gender and “race” intersect may have important implications for how refugee youth access social and cultural capital in these everyday spaces as they navigate between informal learning and formal educational settings.