Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to discuss the embodiment of the condition of “non-belonging” amongst asylum-seekers and refugees in Portugal, from the perspective of medical anthropology. In particular it will focus on how refugees and doctors cope with illness, physical and mental suffering, mental stress disorder, and access to the national system of health.

Paper long abstract:

The CPR is the portuguese NGO that shelters asylum seekers from several countries, and provides juridical, social and economical support, and also provides the link to the national system of health.

The research presented here is based on several interviews with doctors, psychiatrics, nurses, as well as the life stories of refugees (both genders) and details of their medical consultations at the hospital or in health centres.

If the place of residence is stable (the shelter), the residents (asylum seekers) are not, as they only stay there for few months and their experiences are very heterogeneous. In the words of an asylum seeker "the only thing that is common to all of us here is suffering". In this "non-community", several issues, which this presentation will address, relating to physical and mental health, arise:

- How do they access National Health Care?

- Is there any kind of support regarding mental health?

- How does national health system faces health refugees, trauma and stress disorder? Is there any specialized and oriented support?

- How do asylum seekers and refugees express their feelings and their state of health?

- What kind of symptoms do they present?

- Who "listens" the suffering of the trauma?

- How the medical system faces the problem of language between asylum seekers and the doctor?

- Is the "performance" of telling suffering in the border decisive, to get the statute?

In other words: is there in Portugal, any approach regarding the "psychotraumatologie de l'exil" a la Didier Fassin?