“The Silence of the Lambs”. The paradoxes of welfarism and the martyrs of the Mediterranean.
Abstract
PUSSETTI, Chiara. “The Silence of the Lambs”. The paradoxes of welfarism and the martyrs of the Mediterranean. Interface (Botucatu) [online]. 2017, vol.21, n.61, pp.263-272. ISSN 1807-5762. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1807-57622016.0625.
The management of immigrants and refugees has become in recent years a major social challenge. Through the revision of recent international events and of my own field research related to mental health of immigrants and refugees in Portugal I will 1) reconsider the tragic consequences of the hardening of immigration policies and the strengthening of the southern border of Europe; 2) criticize the pathologization the migratory experience in the psychiatric lexicon of ‘trauma’ and its mediatization. Ultimate goals of this reflection are the de-naturalization of the nosological concepts that medicalize social suffering, and the re-politicization of their ‘victims’, recognizing them as active subjects able to strategically use the clinical lexicon, in order to obtaining civil rights.
Keywords : Borders; Public policy; Biolegitimacy; Trauma; Mediatisation.
