Migration: Emerging Issues and Conditions of Malaise

Resumen

In this article we seek to understand the suffering experienced by migrant people through the dialogue written in the chapter O Mal-estar da Migração [Migration and its Discontents], which is part of a Master’s thesis in Social Psychology of Universidade do Estado de Rio de Janeiro. In the chapter analyzed, the situation of social vulnerability and violation of human rights is considered through the aspects in Freud´s O Mal-estar na Civilização [Civilization and Its Discontents]. Our goal is to deepen this dialogue, using the psychoanalytic conceptual matrix to understand the suffering caused to the migrant when confronted with new cultures. From the Sociological perspective of Norbert Elias in A Sociedade dos Indivíduos [Society of Individuals] (1994), we aim to understand how the concepts of individual and society can help in understanding the search of the migrant for support outside his original community and how he shapes his identity from this experience. In a complex network of affectations, the migrant body, when carrying and communicating its bonds, has in its practices a redesign of spaces and attitudes that reflect the interaction of cultures that, in turn, shape and are shaped by individual expressions in a collective process. Individuals learn to articulate transitions and point out issues that circulate in them and through them, pressured by conditions that society imposes on them in the service of their cultural ideals, often outlining ethnic, racial, and other prejudices.