Cultural differences and foreignness in migrant families

The feelings of foreignness, of unfamiliarity, of strangeness have connotations of unease and suffering, or even madness, one’s own madness. The subject is frightened, when he realises he cannot recognise everyday things. He has doubts on his ability to think. Three types of feelings of foreignness shall be analysed: 1) The feeling of having something foreign inside oneself. 2) The feeling of being a stranger inone’s own family and 3) The feeling of being a foreign family in a host country. As for cultural diversity, we can say that each person’s cultural references come from a social origin: the person identifies himself as belonging to it. But it’s the family which paves the way and thus enables him to introject it. He then rises up to his singularity and the differences between other cultures and his own. However, why then, that amongst migrant, some feel more at ease in their host country than others?The very same people who are breaking with their feelings of belonging to a family? With migration, family members lives as if strangers (of course, they are, but I am referring to the person suffering). Their integration to their new environment will depend a lot on wondering what it means to be a stranger in one’s family. This includes the possibility of acknowledging one’s difference: another way of existing, thinking, and dreaming. Using, or even coaxing the stranger inside, the stranger in one’s family and the foreigner in a host country, may contribute to the family’s adaptation. A clinical case supports these ideas.

Keywords: Foreign parts, Migrant families, Origin of cultural diversity

Alberto Eiguer, traduzione di Luciana Bianchera, Differenza culturale ed estraneità nella famiglia dei migranti in "GRUPPI" 1/2020, pp 31-40, DOI: 10.3280/gruoa1-2020oa10480