Este artigo, baseado em 4 anos de pesquisa de terreno num serviço de saúde mental específico para imigrantes em Portugal, discute criticamente o carácter da experiência migratória enquanto factor de risco e patologia psíquica. As condições particularmente duras da migração contemporânea são consideradas como propícias a um aumento exponencial de psicopatologias. A ideia de que a emigração esteja indissoluvelmente ligada a formas específicas de sofrimento psicológico acabou para promover uma progressiva medicalização da experiência migratória. Esta leitura patologizante da experiência migratória funda as suas conclusões sobre o modelo de "selecção negativa", isto é: seriam os sujeitos fracos, pouco integrados na sociedade de origem, com escassas ligações afectivas e estrutura familiar instável a optar pela emigração, levando a que os seus distúrbios latentes se manifestassem particularmente no país de acolhimento. A representação da vulnerabilidade psicológica como característica intrínseca dos migrantes não toma todavia em conta a relação mais ampla entre sofrimento individual e experiência de exclusão, marginalização social, discriminação e precariedade das condições habitacionais e laborais, entre outros factores. O estereótipo do imigrante como pessoa frágil do ponto de vista mental, com um elevado risco de desenvolvimento de patologias psiquiátricas, permite transformar os problemas sociais, económicos e políticos de grupos desfavorecidos em elementos potencialmente patológicos que podem ser controlados e monitorizados farmacologicamente.
Purpose -In the public arena, immigrants are easily recognized as ''vulnerable'' but also ''as a risk'' for the social environment. They are associated with stigmatized infectious-contagious health conditions, with deviant or disturbed behaviours, with poor education and hygiene, and with dubious morality and parental competence. This paper aims to analyse the complex array of targeted programmes designed in the last decades in Europe in order to intervene on immigrants' health practices and lifestyles.Design/methodology/approach -The paper was designed to engage with a critical approach to the healthcare sector, rendering visible the rationale behind such programmes of intervention by focusing on the relations between the representation of immigrants' health, the symbolic and physical borders of the body and the nation, the welfare state, and the contemporary politics of care.Findings -The paper highlights: the racialization of public health and social care policy, which have been constituting migrant populations as unsanitary citizens; the intervention of social care programmes as technologies of citizenship in order to guide these populations towards specific models of body, health, behaviour and life projects; and the paradigmatic shifts in the way healthcare is perceived and deployed, and its ethical and political implications. Originality/value -Building on the contributions from medical anthropology, historical sociology, and governmentality studies, the paper sheds a new light on the subject by positioning the practices of healthcare on a racialized post-colonial setting of intervening on populations constituting vulnerabilities and managing risks through medical expertise.
A gestão de imigrantes e refugiados tornou-se, nos últimos anos, um dos principais desafios sociais. Por meio da apresentação de recentes casos internacionais e da minha pesquisa no âmbito da saúde mental de imigrantes e refugiados em Portugal, irei não só reconsiderar as consequências trágicas do endurecimento das políticas migratórias e do fortalecimento da fronteira meridional da Europa, mas, também, criticar a patologização da experiência migratória no léxico do trauma e na sua midiatização. O objetivo final desta reflexão não será só a desnaturalização dos conceitos que medicalizam o sofrimento social, mas, também, a repolitização das suas vítimas, reconhecendo-as como sujeitos ativos, capazes de usar o léxico clínico de forma estratégica pela obtenção de direitos civis.
In the recent context of the European Union governmental activity-in particular in this time of crisis-immigration-related issues became of pivotal importance. Social healthcare programmes targeting deprived immigrant populations equate reducing social problems with guiding their conduct towards more responsible, healthier habits and life projects. Building upon a set of debates on governing the body and health under advanced liberalism, this paper, focusing on the Portuguese context and on family planning, suggests ideas towards a new research agenda on immigration and public health, claiming that social care interventions are inherently racialized. The insecurities, threats and overall concerns in a time of global crisis create a state of exception, which justifies the deployment of illiberal practices in order to secure collective well-being. In particular, I am interested in how the dominant discourses of the health and social care sectors influence [1] the ways in which "the right thing to do" is constructed and debated and the material effects of these decisions on immigrants lives; [2] the ongoing strategies, micronegotiations of power and truth between different actors; [3] the fading borders of the subject of medical knowledge, which becomes no longer to govern the body merely according to a medical logic, but rather to seek social well-being.
This article discusses the impact of skin colour inequality in the individual aspirations and prospects of social inclusion and success, social mobility aspirations, professional ambitions and career opportunities. Ethnographically, it studies specific forms of cosmetic investments and self-optimisation in Portugal and its effects on the micropolitics of bodies, correlating the agency of individuals (how they empower themselves maximising certain aspects and minimising others) with the ways in which a European white appearance circulates as a form of capital and commodity, creating body narratives that are very much racialised. By inquiring the actual European understanding of value in bodies, we can also understand the colonial legacy and how it is reproduced through the mutation of bodies.
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