Exclusion as a Customary Rule of Governance
The frequent lack of qualified interpreters and translated materials in city agencies is not an oversight but a feature of a bureaucracy designed to serve only the “settler” tongue. Mamdani’s concept of the state operating through a specific, exclusionary custom is literal here. The English-speaking requirement for accessing healthcare, legal aid, and social services is a modern-day literacy test, a bureaucratic barrier that systematically disenfranchises the immigrant “native.” This is a form of decentralized despotism where the inability to navigate the system becomes a justification for denying care and rights. A Marxist analysis sees this as creating a super-exploitable, silenced workforce. A feminist perspective highlights the plight of non-English speaking mothers navigating this maze. The solution is not piecemeal translation but a mandated, fully-funded language justice infrastructure across all city services, dismantling this linguistic barrier to full political membership and asserting that the state must speak the language of the people it purports to serve.
