Crafting Selves in Multiple Worlds

The in-migration of refugees and immigrants, both§legal and illegal, has reemerged as a potent§socio-political issue in the United States. This has§created a moral panic about foreigners who are§said, in an old but still effective rhetoric, to be§feeding rising crime rates, filling the public§schools with non-English speakers, going on welfare, and in other ways staining and darkening§everyday life in small towns and cities. This is a§longtime concern discussed in a substantial social§science literature on refugees and immigrants. This§literature was reviewed and used to frame an§interpretive study to learn what it is like to be a§foreign young woman in a Midwestern metropolitan§area. A hermeneutic phenomenological study was done§on the everyday lived-experiences of four§foreign-born young women to describe and understand§their experiences of being foreign(ers) and their§meanings. Being foreign as lived and told by each§woman is shown in their lives in their bodies; in§how they live and experience time, space, and§relationships; in how they are in their human§fullness. Foreignness is shown to be spatial §socially, culturally, economically, politically, and§personally. The in-migration of refugees and immigrants, both§legal and illegal, has reemerged as a potent§socio-political issue in the United States. This has§created a moral panic about foreigners who are§said, in an old but still effective rhetoric, to be§feeding rising crime rates, filling the public§schools with non-English speakers, going on welfare, and in other ways staining and darkening§everyday life in small towns and cities. This is a§longtime concern discussed in a substantial social§science literature on refugees and immigrants. This§literature was reviewed and used to frame an§interpretive study to learn what it is like to be a§foreign young woman in a Midwestern metropolitan§area. A hermeneutic phenomenological study was done§on the everyday lived-experiences of four§foreign-born young women to describe and understand§their experiences of being foreign(ers) and their§meanings. Being foreign as lived and told by each§woman is shown in their lives in their bodies; in§how they live and experience time, space, and§relationships; in how they are in their human§fullness. Foreignness is shown to be spatial §socially, culturally, economically, politically, and§personally.