Migration has become a growing concern worldwide. In Brazil, we face several challenges in welcoming practices, particularly within the public healthcare system and in the social acceptance of migrants by the national community. In this context, social representations inevitably produce biases in professional training and clinical practice. Aiming to understand the effects of cultural encounters on psychodiagnosis and mental health care, this research was conducted in two studies: first, a qualitative analysis of the researcher’s clinical journals while working as a psychologist in migration and refugee contexts, examining how clinical listening is constructed in these encounters; and second, a qualitative study with Brazilian professionals qualified to conduct psychodiagnosis (primary healthcare physicians, psychiatrists  and psychologists), exploring how diagnostic formulation unfolds when clinicians face cultural difference. In this seminar, I focus specifically on the second study. The findings indicate that, when confronted with culturally unfamiliar forms of suffering, many clinicians rely on diagnosis as a defensive mechanism, a way to contain the unpredictability introduced by cultural otherness. Although professionals express awareness of the need for cultural sensitivity, institutional pressures, clinical protocols, and gaps in training often lead to normalising or pathologising responses. The analysis reveals a “triple frontier” in clinical encounters, between diagnostic reasoning, ethical engagement, and psychopathological classification, where tensions between technical knowledge and cultural openness become particularly visible. Diagnoses frequently operate as instruments of control, reinforcing colonial logics and limiting the elasticity of clinical technique. These results underscore the fragmented nature of psychosocial care for immigrants and the tendency toward medicalisation in the Brazilian public health system. At the same time, the study highlights possibilities for transformation: the need for reflexivity regarding power, knowledge, and professional training; the importance of expanding culturally sensitive practices; and the ethical imperative of cultivating a form of listening capable of tolerating difference without reducing it to normative categories.