Jointly enclosed in-between: the collective meaning of liminality in refugees’ and other migrants’ mental health care

Abstract

People on the move are increasingly immobilised between and within state borders, having left ‘there’ but not allowed to be fully ‘here’. This paper presents a nuanced examination of this state of enforced in-­betweenness, exploring how refugees and other migrants negotiate collective existence through, despite, and alongside liminality. Drawing on ethnographic data collected at a Swiss Red Cross psychotraumatology centre, the study identifies factors that impede and facilitate the formation of collective identities, with temporal and spatial liminality emerging as the most central collective experience for refugees and other migrants. The findings illustrate how therapists reinforce these bonds by fostering an idealised sense of therapeutic communitas that promotes unity in adversity. However, the paper refrains from reducing the collective significance of liminality to a mere act of defiance. Instead, it critically reflects on how refugees and other migrants forge collective connections within politically and legally imposed disconnection. It accounts for the paradox of refugees and other migrants making collective lives in liminality while confronting the always-imminent possibility of this very liminality dismantling their lives.

Keywords:

• Migration
• liminality
• trauma
• collective identity

Acknowledgments

Without my research partners at Gravita, this work would not have been possible – my deepest appreciation goes to them. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their discerning comments and Prof Dr Rafael Walthert, MA Daniela Stauffacher, and MA Loïc Bawidamann for their thoughtful engagement with various drafts of this paper.

Ethical approval and informed consent from participants

The Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Theology and the Study of Religion at the University of Zurich, chaired by Prof Dr Michael Coors, granted ethical approval for obtaining informed verbal consent and ensuring data protection.

Data availability statement

Due to the sensitive nature of this research, participants of this study did not consent to their data being shared publicly.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This paper refers to people on the move as ‘refugees and other migrants’ to reflect a continuum of categories rather than a dichotomy (Crawley and Skleparis 2018) and to recognise the rights of all migrants in lieu of hierarchical deservingness (Carling 2015).

2 As the data is in German, quotations are translations, with no grammatical corrections made to the original statements.

3 (Rejected) asylum seekers are barred from working, while those with temporary admission are allowed to work, but access to the labour market is severely hampered (Matthey 2015).

4 The SEM, responsible for the asylum process, is based in Bern.

5 Clients and therapists referred exclusively to the asylum centres as ‘camps’, underlining their repressive quality and the status of non-arrival.

6 The Evangelical Swiss Church Aid HEKS offers free legal counselling for refugees and other migrants.

Additional information

Funding

The author has received no funding for this paper.