Being Through Doing: The Self-Immolation of an Asylum Seeker in Switzerland

Author(s) : Gail Womersley, Laure Kloetzer

Source : https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00110/full

Abstract:

The number of refugees seeking asylum across the world is unprecedented. According to the UNHCR, 65.6 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are nearly 22.5 million refugees—people fleeing conflict or persecution who are defined and protected in international law, and must not be expelled or returned to situations where their life and freedom are at risk. Switzerland has 40,900 legally recognized refugees and has received over 18,000 more requests for asylum in 2017 alone. Not least among the difficulties are public health challenges of the multiple traumas faced by this population which constitute severe threats to human, social, cultural, and community development. Several scholars have demonstrated the ways in which refugees and asylum seekers have attained visibility in protests as well as through other acts of political activism through the practices of hunger strikes, self-mutilation, and lip sewing. For such vulnerable populations, these acts of self-harm have been theorized as a resilient attempt to overcome invisibility. When there are no words, when oppressed and dispossessed minorities find themselves on the outskirts of public visibility, one recourse is to use the body as a communicative tool. One extreme example of this is self-immolation, used as a tool by various oppressed groups, notably including asylum seekers and refugees, around the world. A large body of literature further highlights the mediating effect of trauma and dissociation on acts of self-harm. The high prevalence of self-harm among asylum seekers may therefore come as no surprise.