Jointly enclosed in-between: the collective meaning of liminality in refugees’ and other migrants’ mental health care

Peter, Laura (2024) Jointly enclosed in-between: the collective meaning of liminality in refugees’ and other migrants’ mental health care. Anthropology and Medicine. ISSN 1364-8470

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Abstract

People on the move are increasingly immobilised between and within state borders, having left ‘there’ but not allowed to be fully ‘here’. This paper presents a nuanced examination of this state of enforced in-­betweenness, exploring how refugees and other migrants negotiate collective existence through, despite, and alongside liminality. Drawing on ethnographic data collected at a Swiss Red Cross psychotraumatology centre, the study identifies factors that impede and facilitate the formation of collective identities, with temporal and spatial liminality emerging as the most central collective experience for refugees and other migrants. The findings illustrate how therapists reinforce these bonds by fostering an idealised sense of therapeutic communitas that promotes unity in adversity. However, the paper refrains from reducing the collective significance of liminality to a mere act of defiance. Instead, it critically reflects on how refugees and other migrants forge collective connections within politically and legally imposed disconnection. It accounts for the paradox of refugees and other migrants making collective lives in liminality while confronting the always-imminent possibility of this very liminality dismantling their lives.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/canm20
Additional Information:	© 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
Divisions:	International Relations
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration
Date Deposited:	03 May 2024 13:48
Last Modified:	24 Jun 2024 15:09
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/122902

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