Speaking about social suffering? : Subjective understandings and lived experiences of migrant women and therapists

This thesis aims to investigate and illuminate lived experiences, cultural representations, and organizational conditions that influence the way therapists in Swedish psychiatry receive and treat migrant women. This overall aim is pursued through two distinct but interlinked part-studies. The aim of the first of these is to examine migrant women’s perceptions of mental (ill-) health along with their actual experiences of therapy in Swedish psychiatry. The aim of the second part is to describe and explain how therapists, in their organizational work conditions, interpret and experience their professional encounters with migrant women. The thesis is based on qualitative interviews with twelve migrant women and eleven therapists in psychiatry. The result show that the migrant women experience health and mental health through a sense of belonging. Non-belonging, isolation and estrangement will point to the other direction i.e. not having health. The migrant women may gain a sense of belonging to society through therapy. However there are also obstructions on this path to belonging. The therapists, in psychiatry, seeing migrant women are doing emotion work comparable to physical labor. As the production is expected to increase due to marketing principles it puts a demand of acceleration on the therapists emotion work. They, thus have to find strategies to manage their emotion work. Everyday resistance thus becomes a way to gain emotional energy and to avoid emotional numbing and burnout. It is also gives openings to be content with their work with their patients and thereby to be able to offer an adequate reception of migrants into treatment in psychiatry. The thesis contributes to the gap in research by focusing on the borderlands between migrant women’s lived experiences of social suffering and the receiving therapists’ possibility to meet their migrant patients’ request.This thesis aims to investigate and illuminate lived experience and organizational conditions that influence the way therapists in Swedish psychiatry receive and treat migrant women. This overall aim is divided into two separate but interlinked part-studies. The main body of the thesis is based on interviews with migrant women as well as therapists in psychiatry. The result show that the migrant women are searching for belonging in the host society. One way of searching for belonging is through therapy in psychiatry. However the work pace in health care and psychiatry is increasing and the therapists are struggling with giving a decent reception of migrants. In order to manage the heavy emotion work the therapists oppose the accelerating work pace by doing resistance in their everyday work. This thesis contributes to gap in research on the borderlands between lived experiences of social suffering odf migrant women as well as the lived experiences of the work conditions that make it possible to care for another personArticle No 4 was still in manuscript form at the time of the defense.