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In this paper, I analyse the narrative positioning in two semi-structured interviews with volunteer interpreters in a counselling centre for refugees run by an NGO in Vienna, complemented by ethnographic descriptions of volunteer work in the counselling centre drawn from long-term participant observation. As a substantial part of the volunteers working at the counselling centre consists of (current and former) clients of the NGO, asylum seekers themselves, ‘work’ and ‘citizenship’ are deeply entangled in their positioning. The analyses of how past and future trajectories are co-constructed in the interviews, and of how the participants position themselves in and through the interview narratives, show that linguistic volunteer work becomes a site of investment and speculation on citizenship (conceived both as a moral and a legal ‘object’). As the paper demonstrates, volunteer work promises to yield symbolic and social capital – including language – required for success in the ‘markets’ of citizenship (e.g. in the asylum procedure) and, contingently, later on, in the national labour market.
