Gender and Forced Migration

Abstract

This section presents a sociological rendering and portrait of West African refugee immigrants who have fled their war torn countries to seek safety in the United States. It describes the social and political factors that converged to shatter the lives of these women and their families. Structured to give voices to the contents and realities that these women had to contend with, the analysis portrays a people who emerged from the ravages of war to reconstruct a new life for themselves. The research follows the women as they strive to become incorporated and integrated in the affairs of their host societies and to forge inclusiveness. Having experienced extreme marginality and violence, the process whereby the women begin to reshape their lives offers a sociological glimpse into the cultural mechanisms that are actively at work to redefine or bring a new social order to the lives of the displaced and uprooted women. Again, the analysis employs the use of extensive narratives to tease out the new hopes and aspirations that are formed among the women upon their arrival in the United States and how they strategize to confront new problems and challenges presented by a new environment. As these women confront the uncertainties of not knowing what will happen to them from one day to another, the women (in their collective struggles to become), speak to the resiliency of the human spirit to overcome hardships and at the same time develop a sense of altruism to place and center the needs of relatives at home who have to struggle on a daily basis to face abject and grinding poverty.

The soldiers were ruthless. People carried machetes and administered instant justice on the spot on their foes. No one could stop them. Everyone was terrified, notably the children. Everything fell apart.

—Mina, a Liberian immigrant

People identify you purely by your racial and ethnic attributes. And being Black has become like a burden for me. We are not accepted here like we were in Denmark. The Danes were very kind to us and went out of the way to make sure we had everything we wanted. In America, people treat you with disdain and with a condescending attitude because you are Black.

—Kendra, a Sierra Leonean immigrant