Elsa Lechner

The migrant patient, the doctor and the (im)possibility of intercultural communication: silences, silencing and non-dialogue in an ethnographic context

This paper attempts to reflect on the impossibilities of intercultural communication implied in institutional medical encounters. Drawing from an ethnographic case study among patients of a transcultural consultation for migrants in Portugal, the analysis focuses on the contents and forms of the interaction observed by the anthropologist in the clinical setting. A repetitive pattern of communication between a refugee women patient and her psychiatrist foregrounded the unsaid within the interaction as well as the unwillingness of the refugee to speak about her life with the anthropologist. In this sense, we propose to understand silence as a form of communication pointing to both the condition of the patient but more significantly embedded in the institutional framework of the clinical setting, discursive positions of the participants, as well as their social statuses. Following the theoretical work of Jaworski, Wagner and Winter, our analysis of silence leads us to the critical examination of the question of privilege in intercultural situations pointing to a necessary deconstruction of post-colonial institutional object/subject positions. In practical terms, this challenge corresponds to the work of international cross-cultural psychiatry (in terms of clinical matters) as well as that of biographical research and research on memory among migrants and refugees.

Narratives In|With and Beyond Borders: Constraints and Potentialities of Biographical Research with Refugees

Aman, Mahamed. Ritorno a Lampedusa di Mahamed Aman. Archivio delle Memorie Migranti. Archivio delle Memorie Migranti, n.d. Web. 29 May 2017. Clarke, Margaret Anne. “The Online Brazilian Museu da Pessoa.” Save As ... Digital Memories. Ed. J. Garde-Hansen et al. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009. 151–66. Print. Lambert, Joe. Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community. Berkeley: Digital Diner, 2006. Print. Minh-ha, Trinh T. Elsewhere, Within Here: Immigration, Refugeeism and the Boundary Event. New York: Routledge, 2011. Print. Ng~ ug~ı wa Thiong’o. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1986. Print. Sayad, Abdelmalek. La double absence: Des illusions de l’ emigr e aux souffrances de l’immigr e. Paris: Seuil, 1999. Print. Sciabica. Fabrica, 2013. Web. 20 May 2017. Triulzi, Alessandro, et al. “Charter.” Archivio delle Memorie Migranti. Archivio delle Memorie Migranti, n.d. Web. 20 May 2017.

Oficinas de Trabalho Biográfico: pesquisa, pedagogia e ecologia de saberes

O texto apresenta e desenvolve os pressupostos teoricos da proposta pedagogica que sao as oficinas de trabalho biografico junto de pesquisadores e estudantes universitarios das ciencias sociais e humanidades. Sao revisitadas as suas diversas etapas e contextualizada a proposta no quadro mais vasto da teoria da ecologia de saberes de Boaventura de Sousa Santos em equacao com a corrente actual da pesquisa biografica tal como esta e desenvolvida no quadro da associacao internacional Le Sujet dans la Cite.