Experiences Of Misrecognition Research Articles

The Queerness of Touch: Mutual Recognition and Deep Intimacy in Moonlight

The Queerness of Touch: Mutual Recognition and Deep Intimacy in <i>Moonlight</i>

Negotiating Engagement, Worthiness of Care and Cultural Identities Through Intersubjective Recognition: Migrant Patient Perspectives on the Cultural Formulation Interview in Danish Mental Healthcare.

This qualitative study presents migrant patient perspectives on using theCultural Formulation Interview (CFI) in mental health assessments in Denmark. Empirical data consisted of 20 recorded CFI sessions and 16 patient interviews, coded with a constructivist grounded theory approach. Empirical findings prompted us to draw on the theoretical framework of intersubjective recognition in the analytical process. Our analysis showed how patients had multiple previous experiences of misrecognition in life and healthcare. This seemed to restrain their self-esteem and available positions for expressing preferences and reservations during the CFI and led to negotiations of worthiness of care. Despite occasional lack of flow and information in the recorded CFI sessions, patients subsequently recounted how they felt the CFI recognised the complexity and context of their cultural identities and illness narratives. Patients described how the CFI-guided provider approach of curiosity and empowerment carried significant meaning and left them feeling dignified, hopeful and engaged in future care. Intersubjective recognition is fundamental in all human interaction, but we argue that the recognising CFI approach is particularly important in vulnerable and asymmetrical mental health assessment encounters where access to care is determined and when working with migrants or other marginalised groups.

Understanding paid support relationships: possibilities for mutual recognition between young people with disability and their support workers

The quality of paid relationships is key for effective support, yet little is known about how people receiving and providing support understand and experience the relationship. This paper reports on recent research that explored the role of relationships with paid support workers in strengthening the rights and wellbeing of young people with cognitive disability in Australia. The research used photo-rich participatory methods with 42 pairs of young people and their support workers and drew on Honneth’s recognition theory to specifically explore experiences of being valued, respected and cared about in their work together. The findings point to the importance of these connected aspects of recognition in paid support relationships, highlighting both the presence and absence of these, as well as experiences of misrecognition. The implications of recognition for strengthening support need close consideration in an international context characterised by personalisation of support, resource constraints and inquiries into poor practice. Points of interest Relationships are key to good quality support. We wanted to know whether and how paid support relationships between young people with cognitive disability and support workers in Australia contribute to feeling valued, respected and cared about. Young people felt valued when the worker noticed what they did and found ways to help them achieve what they wanted to do. They felt respected when they could make decisions about choices and control over their lives. They felt cared about when they felt personal warmth, they were listened to, they felt their views mattered and they trusted each other. When young people felt harmed, they felt it deeply. The worker often did not intend to cause harm with their words or actions. The careless harm sometimes was from unequal power in the relationship. The inequality sometimes took away the voice of the young person. Sometimes the support worker also felt like their voice could not be heard. The research is important because how we feel about being with another person is key to how we know who we are. It develops the self-esteem, self-respect and self-confidence of the young person and the support worker. Knowing this matters for improving the quality of personal support.

Mass supervision, misrecognition and the ‘Malopticon’

This paper aims to contribute to debates about ‘mass supervision’ by exploring its penal character as a lived experience. It begins with a review of recent studies that have used ethnographic methods to explore how supervision is experienced before describing the two projects (‘Supervisible’ and ‘Mass Supervision: Seen and Heard’) on which the paper draws, explaining these as an attempt to generate a ‘counter-visual criminology’ of mass supervision. I then describe two encounters with ‘Teejay’; encounters in which we explored his experiences of supervision firstly through photography and then through song-writing. Both media are presented alongside Teejay’s commentary on what he sought to convey, inviting the reader to engage with and interpret the pictures and song. In the concluding discussion, I offer my own analysis, arguing that Teejay’s representations suggest a need to recognize mass supervision as ‘Maloptical’ as much as ‘Panoptical’. Through the ‘Malopticon’, the penal subject is seen badly, is seen as bad and is projected and represented as bad. Experiences of misrecognition and misrepresentation constitute significant yet poorly understood pains of supervisory punishment. The paper concludes by suggesting several ways in which a counter-visual criminology might follow Teejay’s lead in exposing and challenging of mass supervision.

The transition to adulthood from care as a struggle for recognition

AbstractThis article explores young people's experiences in the transition to adulthood from child welfare services and how Honneth's theory of recognition can be useful as an analytical tool to help us understand these experiences. The underpinning empirical research consisted of interviews and focus groups with 43 adolescents who had been in contact with Norwegian child welfare services. Three themes emerged as particularly important: having good relationships to caring adults, being listened to and able to influence their own lives, and receiving support and encouragement. The research shows how young people's difficulties in leaving care can be understood as experiences of misrecognition and points to some ways in which these can be overcome.

Encountering Misrecognition: Being Mistaken for Being Muslim

Exploring both debates about misrecognition and explorations of encounters, this article focuses on the experiences of ethnic and religious minority young people who are mistaken for being Muslim in Scotland. We explore experiences of encountering misrecognition, including young people's understandings of, and responses to, such encounters. Recognizing how racism and religious discrimination operate to marginalize people—and how people manage and respond to this—is crucial in the struggle for social justice. Our focus is on young people from a diversity of ethnic and religious minority groups who are growing up in urban, suburban, and rural Scotland, 382 of whom participated in forty-five focus groups and 224 interviews. We found that young Sikhs, Hindus, and other south Asian young people as well as black and Caribbean young people were regularly mistaken for being Muslim. These encounters tended to take place at school, in taxis, at the airport, and in public spaces. Our analysis points to a dynamic set of interconnected issues shaping young people's experiences of misrecognition across a range of mediatized, geopoliticized, and educational spaces. Geopolitical events and their representation in the media, the homogenization of the south “Asian” community, and the lack of visibility offered to non-Muslim ethnic and religious minority groups all worked to construct our participants as “Muslims.” Young people demonstrated agency and creativity in handling and responding to these encounters, including using humor, clarifying their religious affiliation, social withdrawal, and ignoring the situation. Redressing misrecognition requires institutional change to ensure parity of participation in society.

Voluntary work with sporting activities for Jewish children and teenagers: commitment to inclusiveness, Jewish identity, and a future Jewish life – an interview study

ABSTRACTMembership in Jewish congregations seems to be declining and modern society has been described as a challenge to Jewishness and to the future for Jews as a people with shared characteristics and traditions. Activities for children and teenagers have gained increasing attention, since such activities might be a reassurance of a future Jewish life. To arrange such activities is, however, demanding and individuals who commit themselves to voluntary work are essential. In this study, six members of a Swedish Conservative congregation, who were committed to voluntary work with sporting activities for children and teenagers, were interviewed about the way in which they perceived their voluntary work. A thematic analysis was conducted. The volunteers concluded that everyone should feel included in the activities. They had a nuanced view of Jewish identity and also welcomed those who were not considered halakhically Jewish. Moreover, they wanted to support a positive Jewish identity in the new generation. Their work was perceived as meaningful even though they said that congregants who felt that the activities should adhere to Halakhah had criticized them. It is proposed that congregations should support voluntary workers and facilitate their efforts, otherwise experiences of misrecognition might evolve, experiences that are counterproductive for a vital congregational life.

Recognition as care: a longitudinal study of Arabic immigrants’ experiences of diabetes training in Denmark

This longitudinal study provides critical insight into the social processes of municipal diabetes training for Arabic-speaking immigrants in Denmark focusing on participants’ experiences. Our study builds on observations of three diabetes courses and 36 interviews with participants at the start of, immediately following or 30–36 months after the courses. Lifestyle change and responsibility were dominant messages in the courses; over time and depending on their daily social context, participants selectively accepted and incorporated these messages. However, in retrospect, participants highlighted other meaningful benefits; these centred on reducing isolation and being met on their own terms regarding language and logistics. Most importantly, they remembered when treated with attention and respect by professionals and the mutual acknowledgement between participants. We use Axel Honneth’s notions of rights-based and solidarity-based recognition to analyse what was at stake in these experiences, and we engage Annemarie Mol’s concept of a logic of care to show how recognition unfolded practically during the training. We propose that participants’ wider social context and experiences of misrecognition situated the training experiences concerned with recognition. We also show exceptions. The sociality, which for some generated solidarity-based recognition, felt intimidating for others. We argue that the silent processes of recognition in the diabetes training carried significant meaning for participants, and that over time, many highlighted these as benefits rather than lifestyle change and responsibility.

Australian Housing Policy, Misrecognition and Indigenous Population Mobility

Policy initiatives in remote Indigenous Australia aim to improve Indigenous health and well-being, and reduce homelessness. But they have raised controversy because they impinge on Indigenous aspirations to remain on homeland communities, require mainstreaming of Indigenous housing and transfer Indigenous land to the state. This paper uses recognition theory to argue that if policies of normalization are imposed on remote living Indigenous people in ways that take insufficient account of their cultural realities they may be experienced as a form of misrecognition and have detrimental policy effects. The paper examines the responses of remote living Indigenous people to the National Partnerships at the time of their introduction in 2009–2010. Drawing on interview and administrative data from a national study on Indigenous population mobility, the paper argues although the policies have been welcomed, they have also been a source of anxiety and anger. These feelings are associated with a sense of violated justice arising from experiences of misrecognition. The paper argues this can lead tenants to depart their homes as a culturally sanctioned form of resistance to state control. This population mobility is associated with homelessness because it takes place in the context of housing exclusion. Policy implications include developing new models of intercultural professional practice and employing a capacity-building approach to local Indigenous organisations.

Legitimacy and the Swedish Security Service’s Attempts to Mobilize Muslim Communities

The paper addresses how the Swedish Security Service (SÄPO) is attempting to mobilize the support of the Muslim communities in their counterterrorism strategy, together with their measures to prevent radicalisation processes among Muslim young people. Under what circumstances can we find voluntary cooperation by Muslim Swedes in the state’s anti-terror policing efforts and under what circumstances can we expect that voluntary cooperation will be withheld? The analysis focuses two intertwined factors which I argue influence voluntary cooperation: the potential unintended consequences of the Security Service’s outreach activities and the link between cooperation, institutional legitimacy and procedural justice. It is argued that both the ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ aspects of the Swedish Security Service’s preventive, respective control and intelligence strategies, interconnect to produce unanticipated and unwanted consequences. The Swedish Security Service’s outreach programme can have the unintended consequence that instead of counteracting radicalization processes, the programme, which targets practicing Muslims as per definition potential terrorists, can very well lead to radicalization among young Muslims with experiences of misrecognition.

Is racial mismatch a problem for young ‘mixed race’ people in Britain? The findings of qualitative research

Recent evidence concerning the racial identifications of ‘mixed race’ people suggests growing latitude in how they may identify. In this article, we examine whether mixed race young people believe that their chosen identifications are validated by others, and how they respond to others’ racial perceptions of them. While existing studies tend to assume that a disjuncture between self-identification and others’ perceptions of them is problematic, this was not necessarily the case among our respondents. While a racial mismatch between expressed and observed identifications was a common experience for these individuals, they varied considerably in terms of how they responded to such occurrences, so that they could feel: (1) misrecognized (and there were differential bases and experiences of misrecognition); (2) positive about the mismatch; or (3) indifferent to how others racially categorized them in their day-to-day interactions. Some differences in responses to such mismatch emerged among disparate types of mixed people. This study also found that we need to consider national identity, and other forms of belonging, in making sense of the diverse and often multilayered identifications and experiences of mixed race young people in Britain.

In the Name of Diaspora: Between Struggles for Recognition and Political Aspirations

Since the early 1990s, the concept of diaspora has propagated in migration studies and gradually been appropriated by many migrant groups, who describe themselves as ‘diasporas’ in relation to political mobilisation and self-portrayal. In this article, claims made in the name of diaspora and their conditions for possibility are analysed through a focus on Somali migration. Two main arguments are presented. Firstly, that the identity category of ‘the Somali diaspora’ is constituted between marginalisation and invocations of a transnationally committed community, dedicated to the development of the homeland. Secondly, that the proliferation of diaspora claims can be understood as part of a broader societal development where migrant groups are seen as potential political actors. On the one hand, it is suggested this relates to the so-called ‘recognition turn’ where potential political legitimacy is ascribed to social struggles driven by experiences of misrecognition or marginalisation, making ‘diasporas’ possible political actors—as minorities. On the other hand, there is a global tendency in policy circles to refer to ‘diasporas’ as either dangerous or constructive agents of change in their erstwhile homelands, implying a focus on transnational resources and agency. The article argues that together these tendencies form favourable conditions for diaspora identification, drawing on two repertoires of rights and political action which can be used in different instances of political mobilisation.