The Frantz Fanon Association has always devoted much of its energy to research on migration and health issues, the psychological consequences of violence and torture, healthcare systems in other socio-cultural contexts, clinical epistemology, and healthcare practices in Western countries.
In 1998, initial research was conducted on access to mental health services for foreigners in the city of Turin (the research was published in the Bulletin of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, ISTISAN, Rome, 1999). This research revealed the low number of foreign users being treated, the high dropout rate, and the diagnostic difficulties arising from the inadequacy of the tools used. The results were consistent with previous research carried out in the city of Turin in 1993 on access to social and health services (AA.VV., La salute straniera, Naples, Edizioni Scientifiche) and were further confirmed by a subsequent survey conducted in 2000 and 2001 by other members of the Association, again relating to foreign users’ access to mental health services. The initial research therefore highlighted the need to launch an ‘ethnoclinical’ intervention project capable of directly testing other treatment strategies and promoting other modes of access. In 1996, the Frantz Fanon Center was created in Turin, a psychotherapy and counseling service for people with a migrant background, refugees, and their families, which served as a place for reflection and direct research in the field of clinical mental health and migration. Similarly, the Association’s commitment to training social and health workers took shape (see Training and Seminars).
In 2001-2003, the Frantz Fanon Association also conducted research on victims of torture in Italy as part of a European Union project, in collaboration with the Cecchini Pace Foundation in Milan and the Italian Consortium of Solidarity (ICS, Rome). The research aimed to assess the condition of refugees and the institutional responses to the social and health needs of victims of torture (Percorsi delle vittime di tortura in Italia [Paths of Victims of Torture in Italy], Rome, 2003; Pensare la violenza. Atrocità di massa, tortura e riabilitazione [Thinking about Violence: Mass Atrocities, Torture, and Rehabilitation], Rome, 2003).
Since 2004, in collaboration with the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Interdisciplinaires in Paris, research has been conducted on the consequences of mass atrocities and violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (see International Activities).
In the same year, in collaboration with the UNICUBA committee (Turin), research entitled “Bodies, cultures, history” was launched, conducted in parallel in West African countries (Mali, Cameroon, Senegal) and in Central and South America (see International Activities). From 2001 to 2006, members of the Association conducted ethnographic field research in Cameroon and Morocco as part of doctoral projects in cultural anthropology, focusing on the cultural construction of childhood, the therapeutic strategies of traditional healers, witchcraft, young people, and the imagery of migration.