Becoming a (Neuro)migrant: Haitian Migration, Translation and Subjectivation in Santiago, Chile

Abstract

Based on a multi-sited ethnography conducted over 14 months in northern Santiago, I examine how the introduction of a series of health policies and the global mental health agenda has interacted with and impacted Haitian migrants in the context of a postdictatorship neoliberal Chile (1990–2019). Specifically, I explore the interactions between health and social institutions, mental health practitioners, psy technologies, and Haitian migrants, highlighting migrants’ subjectivation processes and everyday life. I argue that Haitian migrants engage with heterogeneous subjectivation processes in their interactions with health and social institutions, challenging normative values of integration into Chilean society. These processes are marked not only by the presence of, or exposure to, psy interventions and mental health discourses but also by the degree of compatibility between a psychiatric and neurological language and Haitians’ ideals and moral frameworks.