Healing in exile: Diaspora, dignity, and the unspoken cost of being seen

By DEL De Silva| Issue 27

The tunnel speaks to the struggle of moving through silence and imbalance, toward a horizon of dignity and collective presence. It reminds us that resilience becomes possible when isolation is transformed into shared visibility. Photo courtesy of the author, 2023.

In predominantly white institutions (PWIs) that pride themselves on equity, women of colour from collectivist cultures often endure a quieter violence – one of emotional erasure masked as professionalism. Behl’s (2016) self-critical autoethnography challenges mainstream positivist discussions on gender equality through personal experience as a woman of colour in Western academia.

In this narrative, I recognise the relatability of my subjective reality to Behl’s (2016) reflections. I contend that diasporic identity, gender, and cultural background shape one’s experiences of vulnerability and resilience within PWIs. This article offers a critical autoethnographic reflection on how diasporic identity, gender, and cultural background shaped my experience of emotional vulnerability, cultural displacement, and professional ambiguity within a Western academic institution.

Recently, I relocated to a world-recognised Western university to complete my higher studies. My professional identity, as a senior leader in an international organisation with transferable skills I cultivated and mastered over the years, provided me with what I thought would be a stable foundation as I navigated the transition and sought to establish networks in the new setting. 

During my early days of transition, professional isolation felt like a second skin. The informal networks, cultural references, and unspoken codes of Western academia remained largely inaccessible, even with a supportive supervisory team. When a senior colleague, with whom I did not have direct interaction, extended what appeared to be a genuine interest in my work and background, the relief overwhelmed me. 

In an otherwise isolating environment where I often felt rendered invisible or tokenised as an “exotic other”, being seen as a “whole person” by a senior colleague’s apparent appreciation for my academic performance and professional integrity created a space for mutual respect, understanding and genuine friendship. 

As it slowly became clear that I had been drawn into a subtle, subconscious pattern of emotional manipulation, I resorted to a familiar coping mechanism inherited from my cultural upbringing: silence. In collectivist traditions, maintaining harmony often requires absorbing conflict rather than confronting it directly, as in individualist societies. 

The silence I adopted was not passive but strategic: a form of emotional self-preservation that women of colour often deploy when the institutional power favours hierarchy. The power and hierarchy held by white scholars in PWIs presented an environment where I could not turn to seek counsel, speak my truth, and find ways to manage and navigate through the emotional tapestry, while having to balance my academic progress, mental health, professional relations, and fear of facing the uncertainty of retaliation or long-term professional repercussions. 

Grounded in my epistemological position in understanding my lived experience, I critique how my cultural background shaped my response to the situation and how I withstood the existing structural power asymmetries and isolation, using several theoretical concepts central to understanding diasporic academic life. For instance, Hochschild (2003) argues women often renounce their own emotional well-being to focus on and attend to those who are around them. She critiques how women in hierarchical Western institutions are expected to manage not only their own emotional responses, but also the comfort and cultural education of colleagues who benefit from their presence while remaining unaccountable for the impact of their actions.

Applying Hochschild’s (2003) concept of emotional labour reveals how I performed unacknowledged emotional work: maintaining professional communications while constantly navigating cultural differences, all while the colleague maintained emotional ambiguity – never fully present, never fully absent – keeping the connection ambiguously open, sowing confusion.  The emotional labour I invested in this connection was not merely exhausting – it directly impacted my mental and psychosocial well-being. Furthermore, much like Behl (2016), I found that my emotional truth was inconvenient in a setting that prioritised performance over presence. As Ahmed (2012) posits, the ‘stranger’ in academic institutions often performs additional labour to belong, a process that extracts significant psychological costs. My experience shows how cultural displacement can deepen vulnerability to relationships marked by unacknowledged power imbalances, where newcomer status and being othered leave the ground unguarded against exploitation. For instance, I found myself in a precarious situation where genuine sharing of personal struggles in balancing academic and personal life, coupled with isolation in a diasporic academic setting, was not met with the professional respect I had assumed it would invite. In that moment, I became the institutional stranger: welcome only so far as I performed gratitude, yet suspect the moment I voiced genuine questions.

I also reflect on my experience against Bourdieu’s (1986) concept of cultural capital versus social capital. In the social capitalist setting of PWI, I encountered dissonance with my embedded cultural capital, where my professional credentials and international experience were simultaneously valued and undermined. The power imbalance, initially obscured by apparent collegiality, became undeniable. The qualities that made me value this connection – my openness, willingness to contribute to wider academic discourse with my professional experience, and the gratitude for being included – were weaponised against my emotional clarity and professional well-being. 

I sustain that women of colour, particularly those from collectivist traditions, often bear unspoken costs when navigating PWIs that fail to recognise their emotional complexity. However, diasporic identity can also serve as a site of empowerment through storytelling, boundary setting, and resilience building. My narrative demonstrates how storytelling is not merely therapeutic but politically necessary, contributing to broader conversations on gender, race, inclusion and institutional responsibility. 

Through my subjective reality, I aim to advocate for other women of colour who may feel unseen or emotionally exposed in similar contexts. The PWIs must establish support systems specifically designed for international scholars, for example, structured peer-mentoring programmes that pair incoming academics with culturally aware senior scholars, women-of-colour affinity groups that provide confidential space for sharing and strategising, and targeted induction sessions that address cultural communication norms and power dynamics. Institutions should also implement clear guidelines on ethical professional boundaries, recognising how altered interpretations of cultural tolerance and silence may lead to submission and unconsented emotional access, erasing voice, especially in women from diverse cultural backgrounds in Western academia. 

As diasporic women scholars, our healing begins when we transform our exile from a space of isolation into one of collective resistance and dignified visibility. I have seen this take shape in transnational feminist alliances, collaborative storytelling projects such as #CiteBlackWomen and FirstGen Scholars, where women of colour jointly resist exploitative subversion by raising their concerns as a group. These moves, whether formal or grassroots, create a shared shield against erasure, enabling us to reclaim not only our voices but also our right to define the terms of our academic belonging on our cultural terms. This is a value that a true egalitarian academic society must advocate for – not just in principle, but in lived practice. 

DEL De Silva 

The author is a development practitioner turned development academic researcher currently reading for her doctoral degree in Humanities and Social Sciences at an esteemed Western academic institution. Her professional, academic, and research interests are to explore how various facets of gender dimensions intersect development discourses in the context of adverse climate change impacts.