Children, adolescents, and their families

Migration experience, suffering, uprooting, and exile

Abstract

This work aims to account for the suffering of children, adoles- cents, and their families in the face of migrations to which they are coerced, whether due to urgent political, economic, or social causes. Through clinical material, it seeks to demonstrate the pos- sibilities that psychoanalytic intervention offers for supporting and treating the psychic pain caused by these vital circumstances. In an attempt to theorize the suffering of migrant children and adolescents, the interdisciplinary experience of working with this specific population is narrated. Psychoanalytic intervention, along- side social work, is thus a possible model of practice for psycho- analytic theory and practice to move beyond private consulting rooms and engage with the community. In this way, psychoanalysis is promoted as a complex and plural set of theories and practices, in full development, marking an evolution in the possibilities for the integration of an increasingly broad population in Uruguay.