Groups with immigrants: experiences of the “in-between” between thecountry of origin and the host country, the past and the present, the denied and the integrated

Abstract

Listening groups are welcoming spaces designed for people in transitional situations or experiencing migration, especially Spanish speakers. This approach, similar to Winnicott’s therapeutic consultation, encourages speaking, playing with others, and finding meaning in experiences of displacement, adaptation, readjustment, language shifts, and lifestyle changes that occur during migration from one country to another. As in therapeutic consultation, the process unfolds over a series of meetings in which the essential tasks are to listen and make sense of what the person has experienced within the group’s intersubjective encounter. The aim was to foster unique, intersubjective, and associative group processes. We highlighted the use of therapeutic mediators, which help access silenced or pre-verbal aspects of experience that cannot be expressed in words yet. The listening groups are held within an institution that supports migrants in the city of São Paulo, Brasil.