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.
Borders; Public policy; Biolegitimacy; Trauma; Mediatisation
