To contend with others is to contend with ourselves. The way we “other” others, by identifying and reinforcing social distance, is more a product of who we are and who we want to be than it is about “others.” Strangers, Aliens, Foreigners questions such consolidation and polarization of identities in representations ranging from migrants and refugees, to terrorist labels, to constructions of the local. Inclusive and exclusive identities are observed through often arbitrary yet strategically ambiguous lines of class, religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, social status, and geography. However, despite any arbitrariness in definition, there are very real consequences for the emotional, physical, and psychological well-being of those constructed as “the other”, as well as legal governance implications involving human rights and wider sociopolitical ethics. From practical, professional, and political-philosophical points of view, this collection examines what it means to be, or to construct, the Strangers, Aliens, Foreigners.
Contributors are David Elijah Bell, Adina Camenisch, Hanna Jagtenberg, Seraina Müller, Lana Pavić, Michelle Ryan, Marissa Sonnis-Bell and Tomasso Trilló.
Author Biography:
Marissa Sonnis-Bell is a doctoral researcher of geography at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). Her research and publications centre on energy justice policies, consent-based waste siting and political economy of infrastructure in domains of nuclear and renewable energy.
David Elijah Bell is an assistant professor of anthropology at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, NY. He is a cultural and medical anthropologist, interested in disaster and conflict intervention, human rights, environmental contamination, ambiguous chronic illness, politics of health, and the general intersection of public health science with governance.
Michelle Ryan is currently researching the impacts of migration, loss and grief on asylum seekers and refugees. She is working with a group at the University of Limerick on a migrant pilot program to support refugees from a psychological perspective. She provides human resources support to companies and teaches academic writing and sociology and diversity at Limerick Institute of Technology, Ireland.
