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Works dealing with non?profit solidarity organizations concerned with asylum seekers and with foreigners at large very seldom speak of a certain category of actors despite the fact that their role is critical. This category concerns voluntary interpreters who, quite often, have experienced exile themselves. By focusing on the way these volunteer interpreters take over a highly informal role, this paper highlights the diversity of their engagement logics, which are marked by a dialectic of proximity and distance, both towards the users, the associations involved, as well as towards their own life experience. Through these engagement logics, it is not only identity logics that come into play, but also and above all a relationship to state institutions, which is taking place and making sense within a singular migratory experience.