How encounters with health professionals reiterate experiences of coloniality for refugees

Physical pain is typically perceived as a raw sensory experience by providers and pain scholars. However, for decolonial theorists, the meaning of pain is derived from the context of colonialization and understood as a multidimensional subjective experience with psychological, emotional, cognitive, and sociopolitical features. The purpose of this field study was to acquire first-hand experiential narratives of racialized refugees living with chronic pain. In this article, we undertake a decolonial analysis of the meaning of pain based on the narratives of refugee study participants, including their experiences of encounters with health care practitioners.

We conducted a community-based qualitative study using focus groups with people living with chronic pain who identified as being socially marginalized in British Columbia, Canada. Thematic analysis of one participant subgroup, those who identified as refugees (N = 14), provided a preliminary decolonial approach to theorizing pain.

Analysis centered on the body as an organizing concept, with three themes identified: "body as (un)knowledgeable," "body as (non)culturally clothed," and "body as (ir)responsive." Based on the analysis, we advance a decolonial approach, using the concepts of dispensability, alienation, and agency, to theorize about the psychological impacts of coloniality that act as barriers to equitable health care. This decolonial approach can be used by health practitioners to assess and address pain disparities experienced by racialized refugees.

A decolonial perspective offers the possibility of understanding pain disparities as resulting from practices of coloniality rather than as a biomedical issue detached from sociopolitical realities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).