Personhood, belonging, affect and affliction

Abstract

What does migrancy mean for personhood, and how does this flow through caring relations? Drawing on life history interviews and photo elicitation with 43 people who identify as migrants and live with cancer, here we argue for the significance of recognising complex personhood as it inflects illness and care. Drawing on social science theory around temporalities, moralities and belonging, we assemble a series of cross-cutting themes at the intersection of personhood and care; relations that transcend cultural origins yet are vividly illustrated in relation to migrant pasts. In seeking a multidimensional view of personhood, we attend to the intersecting layers of complexity that make up care in this context vis-a-vis an emphasis on forms of difference, vulnerability and otherness. In this way, we develop an approach to personhood and care that broadens the lens on migrancy and cancer, but also, one that speaks to the importance of recognition of complexity and how it shapes care more generally.

Coping with personhood limbo: Personhood anchoring work among undocumented workers in Italy

“…In other words, undocumented migrants are allowed to work in the labor market and exist in broader society, but their socio-legal status prevents them from fully realizing their desires of where, when, and how they wish to exist. This creates a "pervasive absence-presence" (Broom et al, 2021(Broom et al, , p.1068 characterized by "constitutive ambiguities and tensions" (Wylie, 2009 p.279), where they are in a state of in-between statuses, torn between the preoccupations of the present and retrospective hopes of the past (Schuck, 1998).…”

“…Our empirical investigation makes significant contributions to the existing literature on personhood and migration studies. While previous personhood scholarship has extensively debated various attributes of being stuck in personhood limbo (Broom et al, 2021;Rabin, 2021), it often falls short in elucidating how individuals cope with such limbo. In this regard, a key finding of our study is that individuals stuck in personhood limbo engage in articulating fractions of their undermined personhood without disrupting existing structures.…”