Rethinking Mistrust: Elements Toward a Situated Theory on Immigrant Workers

This article explores mistrust as a socially situated phenomenon by using the care trajectories of injured immigrant workers in Québec as a conceptual entry point. Rather than focusing on the individual characteristics of trusters, it examines how mistrust emerges from a subjective evaluation of environments perceived as threatening. Drawing on a body of work on mistrust and trust, the article proposes a two-tiered model distinguishing between underlying mistrust, rooted in generalized social vulnerability, and directed distrust, focused on specific actors. The study identifies four key factors shaping perceptions of environmental threat: precariousness, lack of support, diminished recognition, and limited agency. Ethnographic cases highlight how these factors interact to produce mistrust, and how their presence or absence modulates its expression. The article also incorporates a distinction between mistrust and distrust to refine conceptual clarity. Though grounded in a specific empirical context-immigrant workers navigating Quebec's work injury rehabilitation system-the model is offered as a more generalizable analytical tool. By treating mistrust not as a deficit or pathology but as a rational, context-responsive orientation, this article contributes to the development of a situated theory of mistrust applicable across diverse social fields.