Migrants in Translation: Caring and the Logics of Difference in Contemporary Italy / Edition 1

by Cristiana Giordano

Overview

Migrants in Translation is an ethnographic reflection on foreign migration, mental health, and cultural translation in Italy. Its larger context is Europe and the rapid shifts in cultural and political identities that are negotiated between cultural affinity and a multicultural, multiracial Europe. The issue of migration and cultural difference figures as central in the process of forming diverse yet unified European identities. In this context, legal and illegal foreigners—mostly from Eastern Europe and Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa—are often portrayed as a threat to national and supranational identities, security, cultural foundations, and religious values.

This book addresses the legal, therapeutic, and moral techniques of recognition and cultural translation that emerge in response to these social uncertainties. In particular, Migrants in Translation focuses on Italian ethno-psychiatry as an emerging technique that provides culturally appropriate therapeutic services exclusively to migrants, political refugees, and victims of torture and trafficking. Cristiana Giordano argues that ethno-psychiatry’s focus on cultural identifications as therapeutic—inasmuch as it complies with current political desires for diversity and multiculturalism—also provides a radical critique of psychiatric, legal, and moral categories of inclusion, and allows for a rethinking of the politics of recognition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520276666
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	05/16/2014
Edition description:	First Edition, 1
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Cristiana Giordano is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UC Davis.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

     

ONE. ENTERING THE SCENE: THE WALLS

1. On the Tightrope of Culture

2. Decolonizing Treatment in Psychiatry

     

TWO. ENTERING THE SCENE: THE IMMIGRATION OFFICE

3. Ambivalent Inclusion: Psychiatrists, Nuns, and Bureaucrats in Conversation

     

THREE. ENTERING THE SCENE: THE POLICE OFFICE

4. Denuncia: The Subject Verbalized

     

FOUR. ENTERING THE SCENE: THE SHELTER

     

5. Paradoxes of Redemption: Translating Selves and Experimenting with Conversion

     

FIVE. REENTERING THE SCENE: THE CLINIC

6. Tragic Translations: "I am afraid of falling. Speak well of me, speak well for me"

     

EPILOGUE: OTHER SCENES

Notes

Bibliography

Index

     

Editorial Reviews

"Pleasant reading and a useful piece of research."

H-Net - Marco Santello

"Stimulating and insightful . . . a rich ethnography; [and] an important scholarly contribution."

Allegra Lab - Staff

"A fundamental contribution to uncovering the moral logics of conditional inclusion that use “recognition” as a tool to define, and prescribe, the right place for immigrants in society."

Transcultural Psychiatry - Francesco Vacchiano

This book is an original and important contribution to our understanding of the politics of humanitarianism, citizenship, and cultural difference in contemporary Italy... a must read.

Migration Studies

"Stimulating and insightful . . . a rich ethnography; [and] an important scholarly contribution."

Allegra Lab - Staff

"Pleasant reading and a useful piece of research."--Marco Santello "H-Net" (2/1/2015 12:00:00 AM)

This book is an original and important contribution to our understanding of the politics of humanitarianism, citizenship, and cultural difference in contemporary Italy... a must read.-- "Migration Studies"

"A fundamental contribution to uncovering the moral logics of conditional inclusion that use "recognition" as a tool to define, and prescribe, the right place for immigrants in society."--Francesco Vacchiano "Transcultural Psychiatry" (12/1/2015 12:00:00 AM)

"Stimulating and insightful . . . a rich ethnography; [and] an important scholarly contribution."--Staff "Allegra Lab" (11/25/2015 12:00:00 AM)

From the Publisher