Beyond access

INTRODUCTION: The migratory flow of Brazilian women to Portugal has intensified in recent decades, driven by expectations of security, stability, and better living conditions. However, lived reality often contrasts sharply with these expectations, marked by precarious employment, institutional racism, and social exclusion, factors that generate psychological distress and motivate the search for psychological support. OBJECTIVE: To understand how racialized Brazilian women experience seeking and receiving psychological support in Portugal, considering the social markers of difference, gender, race, class, and nationality. METHOD: This qualitative study, grounded in intersectional and decolonial feminism and social constructionism, conducted fifteen semi-structured interviews with immigrant women who sought psychological care after migration. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. RESULTS: The analysis revealed that the search for care emerges as a response to structural suffering, caused by the gap between expectations of welcome and experiences of discrimination, loneliness, and instability. Participants faced multiple access barriers, financial, bureaucratic, and symbolic, that evidence the persistence of colonial hierarchies in mental health services. In the therapeutic setting, the absence of multicultural competencies resulted in experiences of silencing, misunderstanding, and revictimization. As a counterpoint, creative resistance strategies emerged, such as online therapy with Brazilian professionals and engagement with community-based care networks. CONCLUSION: The study contributes to contemporary debates on migration, mental health, and intersectionality, reinforcing the urgency of culturally responsive public policies and clinical practices committed to social justice, ethics of care, and the decolonization of psychology

Ethnic group · Ethnography · Intersectionality · Mental health · Multiculturalism · Qualitative research · Racism · Reflexivity · Thematic analysis · Migration, Health and Trauma · Migration, Racism, and Human Rights · Racial and Ethnic Identity Research