Embodiment and dignity: Asylum migrants’ experiences of (mis)recognised personhood in everyday encounters

Abstract

This paper presents findings from a narrative ethnography that explores asylum migrants’ everyday experiences of embodied encounters, tracing concrete situations and processes in which they are either affirmed or denied recognition as persons. Empathy – understood as the capacity to understand the experiences of others – is identified as a central dynamic in the recognition of personhood. We approach this through the lens of Helmuth Plessner’s philosophical anthropology, which grounds the study in the premise that recognition of personhood in embodied encounters enables one to exist as a human being with dignity. Conversely, its absence can give rise to acts that disregard human worth and result in violations of dignity. To access the first-hand experiences of our participants, we developed analytical tools informed by the methodology of dialogical-hermeneutic empathy and the concept of empathic unsettlement, as well as Jay Bernstein’s Plessner-inspired conception of dignity as emerging from the delicate balance between voluntary embodied agency and experienced involuntary embodiment. Our analysis presents both dignifying and undignifying embodied encounters as reported by asylum migrants. The latter are presented under three themes: implicit expressions of misrecognised personhood, undignification through sympathetic performativity, and the instrumentalization of empathy. Based on this analysis, we argue that a more ‘human and humane approach’ to migration necessitates attentiveness to the myriad everyday moments in which migrants are either affirmed or denied dignity as persons.