Morbid mixtures: Hybridity, pain and transnational dying

Abstract

Three stories about dying migrants in the United Kingdom are at the heart of this article. Working with these narratives, I investigate the neurobiological, subjective and socio-cultural entanglements of disease, pain and dying and the challenges such hybridisations present for attempts to recognise and alleviate suffering. My aim is to show the differential workings of hybridising forces with regard to assumed correspondences and time, as well as the indeterminate and liminal states of subjective experience that disease can amplify. The article engages with the growing literature on 'social pain' and suggests that social pain is the mortar rather than merely a reflection of the affects and neurology of transnational migrations, loss and social violation.