Pain, suffering, and discrimination: Between vulnerability, injustice, and recognition

This paper explores pain, suffering, and discrimination as interconnected social phenomena. It argues that suffering is not only a personal or emotional experience but is shaped by social, political, and institutional conditions that determine which forms of pain are recognized, expressed, and addressed. Drawing on phenomenology, narrative theory, and social theory, the authors examine how pain becomes intelligible through storytelling, collective memory, and everyday practices of care and attention. The paper highlights the ethical and political dimensions of recognition, showing that injustice often arises when certain experiences of suffering are rendered invisible or excluded from moral and public discourse. Discrimination is understood as a systematic obstruction of intelligibility, whereby social, bureaucratic, and spatial structures limit whose suffering can be seen, heard, and responded to. The authors argue that justice requires not only material or legal remedies but also conditions in which suffering can be meaningfully recognized and socially acknowledged. Ultimately, they propose that attention, responsiveness, and recognition are central to ethical and just societies.