Being Human, Being Migrant ― Senses of Self and Well-being

Taking as its central premise that migrant experiences shed light on the human condition through the "embodied, cognitive and existential experience of living `in between' or on the `borderlands' between differently figured life-worlds," as editor Gronseth (social anthropology, U. College of Lillehammer, Norway) writes in his introduction, this volume contains six essays that address migrant experiences of self and well-being in physical and existential `borderlands.' Specific topics include fantasy, subjectivity, and vulnerability in the story of a woman asylum-seeker in Italy; Tamil refugees' sense of identity and agency in relation to past and future; transforming subjectivity in the case of a Dutch migrant woman in Northern Ireland; fear, Othering, and the spatial relocation of the Ljubljana Asylum Home in Slovenia; and embodied memory and emotion in relation to the sense of belonging and well-being experienced by a Japanese migrant in Ireland. Annotation c2014 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Anne Sigfrid Gronseth is a Professor in Social Anthropology at the University College of Lillehammer, Norway, where she directs the Research Unit of Health, Culture, and Identity. Her recent publications include Lost Selves and Lonely Persons: Experiences of Illness and Well-Being among Tamil Refugees in Norway (Carolina Academic Press, 2010) and Mutuality and Empathy: Self and Other in the Ethnographic Encounter (co-edited with Dona Lee Davis, Wantage: Sean Kingston Publishing, 2010).