Advancing a phenomenology of law of migration and displacement: Centering recognition of persons and communities migrating and their lived experience of suffering.

Abstract

In this contribution to the Special Issue on Law, Medicine, and Bioethics: Role of Interdisciplinary Leadership in Influencing Health and Public Health Policy and Democratic Systems of Governance, the author brings a phenomenological lens and heightened focus to bear on suffering as transcendentally constituted and the witnessing of social suffering across the global world at the intersections of migration and displacement, global crisis conditions prevailing during the COVID pandemic, and climate, conflict, and war that threaten human annihilation. Engagement with phenomenological processes of reflection opens the field of the lived experience of suffering in migration and displacement to inquiry and probing of the social imaginaries that shape law and structural conditions and determinants contributing to massive social suffering, including structural and systemic racism and policy harms to immigrants and refugees and their communities. A palliative turn toward dismantling such structural conditions of suffering is proposed as integral to social change processes and fostering of resilience among immigrant and refugee communities, including building environments that mitigate suffering. Expanding the social and ethical capabilities of both health care and public health systems and workforces is also essential to social transformation. Finally, centering recognition of persons and communities who are migrating or experiencing displacement is an ethical priority and a condition precedent to the pursuit of meaningful social change, equity, and justice for all communities.