Borderland Anxiety

Negotiating Care Ethics at a Transcultural Clinic

Bibliographic Data

ID5953612
AuthorsStéphanie Larchanché (0000-0001-5670-0880, Department of Psychology Sigmund Freud Private University Paris France, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume128
Issue1
Pages5-15
Publication date2025-10-30
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Anthropologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7294 • E-ISSN: 1548-1433
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/aman.70035
OpenAlexW4415695105
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited25

This article explores the borderland as a site of anxiety. I define borderland as a stretch of space (physical and symbolic) or as a subjective positioning where defined border categories are suspended or renegotiated. Anxiety here is an ethical affect that results from being located in a semantically overdetermined location, where individuals are faced with various scripts to choose from, each of which introduces legitimate, ethical arguments. I engage with the institutional management of asylum seekers' mental health distress as a site of anxiety in the context of contemporary France. From the analysis of an event that disrupts the routine of various institutional actors in social services and public health, I attempt to trace how social anxieties arise and how they are reframed by a specific community of practice: transcultural clinicians at Centre Minkowska in Paris. Centre Minkowska, while itself positioned at the borderland, offers a space where anxiety as an affect can be expressed and legitimately participate in the logics of professional deliberation. By doing so, it offers professionals a safe space to critically reflect on appropriate clinical responses to potentially stigmatizing referrals

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