Stéphanie Larchanché
The Politics of “Specialized” Mental Healthcare for Immigrants in Paris
My research seeks to critically evaluate the reciprocal interaction between France’s immigration politics and the public mental health initiatives that target immigrants specifically. My intention is to locate the regulative mechanisms through which French state policies structure and manage the diverse medical and social dilemmas of immigrant households in Paris, France, and to understand how these mechanisms operate in and around “specialized” mental healthcare institutions.
In France, the extensive state sponsorship and financial support of ethnopsychiatry initiatives, in collaboration with criminal justice, social services, and educational institutions, has raised questions about the clinical management of migrant patients. Similarly, the multiplication of state-sponsored institutional actors assisting migrant families – from school psychologists and social workers, to “cultural mediators” and other interpreters—has raised questions concerning political agendas that may shape these institutional interventions.
In parallel to volunteer participation at two grassroots associations assisting immigrants in Paris, I carried out observation at three mental healthcare centers, each characterizing distinct theoretical orientations to “specialized” mental healthcare delivery for immigrants in France: transcultural psychiatry (alternatively called ethnopsychiatry), clinical medical anthropology, and ethnoclinical mediation. My dissertation focuses on clinical interactions in these centers, as well as on the rationale for referrals to these centers from the range of state-sponsored institutions identified above.
I conducted fieldwork in Paris from February 2007 through June 2008. I was generously funded by the National Science Foundation and by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. I am also a doctoral candidate at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris, where my work is advised by Pf. Didier Fassin, and I am affiliated to IRIS (Interdisciplinary Research Institute on Social Issues).