From interculturalism to inter-recognition: towards an ethico-onto-epistemological approach in migration research

Abstract

ABSTRACTMigration policies and social science research tend to describe and stratify migrants according to bureaucratic and legal categories, which prevent the understanding of the complexity of migration as a process of recognition. Having in mind the migration of healthcare professionals to a semi-peripheral country like Portugal, this paper critically debates ‘multi-inter-cultural discourses’ and the asymmetric power relations it envisions. The case study under analysis reveals the production of different types of migrants’ disqualification (‘overstayers and irregulars’, ‘non-native’, ‘overqualified’, ‘underemployed’ and ‘non-human beings’) and the invisibilities that it promotes (socio-institutional, discursive, educational, professional, alterity). This article is influenced by the recognition framework as a critical approach and the decolonial proposal of an ‘Ecology of Recognitions’ [Santos, B.S. 2014. Epistemologies of the South: Justice against epistemicide. London: Paradigm Publishers]. In my view, this dialogic and comprehensive expression represents a turning point concerning the replacement of ‘culture’ as the core domain to embrace the socio-political construction of ‘difference’. A new framework for the ‘ethico-onto-epistemology’ of migration studies is therefore suggested: an inter-recognition approach. This could be an added value for the understanding of the wastage of human diversity as a process of loss of human dignity.