How are we to understand the psychological, embodied and social consequences of discrimination and othering?

This presentation presents key concepts such as racialization, microaggressions, othering and specifically minority stress to explore how we can better understand and grapple with questions connected to sensitive topics such as sexism and racism. Minority stress is a research based concept developed to understand the affective, embodied and social effects of being in a minoritized position covering a wide spectrum of reactions such as hypervigilance, isolation, anxiety, powerlessness etc. Knowledge about these symptoms can be very useful in counselling, therapeutic and educational contexts- especially when encountering people from vulnerable or marginalized communities. An important point in this relation is to also focus on what we know is helpful for vulnerable and minoritized subjects, such as community support, allyship and other coping strategies.

One major concern within this field is how to approach and open the often sensitive and difficult conversations surrounding privilege, power, otherness and vulnerability without futher othering and marginalizing the vulnerable people and communities? We might avoid difficult conversations to uphold the comfort of a setting and not risk the relation with the other, but on the other hand we know from research and personal learning that growth and development happens when we step outside of our comfort zone. This is why I intend to introduce the approach, “pedagogies of discomfort” by the end of the presentation.   

Iram Khawaja is associate professor in educational psychology at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University and has a PhD in social psychology. She has 20 years of experience of researching and teaching within the field of ethnic and religious minorities, diversity and inclusion with a specific focus on exploring processes of (non)belonging, racialization, identity and community.