Migration and Mental Health in Two Contemporary Memoirs
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 14984355 |
|---|---|
| Authors | L Englund (0000-0001-7019-7943, University of Eastern Finland, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 541-554 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Medical Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1041-3545 • E-ISSN: 1573-3645 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s10912-024-09874-w |
| PMID | 39037561 |
| OpenAlex | W4400894461 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 33 |
This article examines two autobiographical texts that address the relationship between migration and struggles with mental health: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s The Undocumented Americans (2021) and Dina Nayeri’s The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You (2020). Both memoirs help bring mental health issues to light in situations of precarity, and the texts indicate that it is not just the experience of physical dislocation that may cause or exacerbate struggles with mental health, but the disconnect from other people, from citizenship, and the nation itself. Nayeri and Cornejo Villavicencio do not focus on narratives of recovery or healing but provide space for the experiences of other undocumented migrants trying to navigate the European asylum system or difficulties in obtaining American citizenship. The article argues that the two authors use their experiences of migration and mental illness for greater advocacy purposes with regard to human rights. The struggles with mental health present in the two memoirs intertwine with the treatment of undocumented migrants as described by the two authors, going beyond the personal experience of mental health, or illness, connecting it with migration practices and policies in the United States and Europe
Art · Citizenship · Immigration · Memoir · Mental health · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Precarity · Psychiatry · Refugee · Sociology · Gender Studies · Law · Migration, Health and Trauma · Migration, Racism, and Human Rights · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Psychology
Personal Recovery and Mental Illness
Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
Introduction
Between Remembering and Confession
A Mind Trying to Right/Write Itself
What is mental health
Working with Parents and Children Separated at the Border
Determinants of Mental Illness Among Humanitarian Migrants
A Home in My Body”
Narrating Contested Lives
Living Autobiographically
MeToo and the Memoir Boom
No Place to Belong
| Highly cited | No |
|---|