Crafting selves in multiple worlds: A phenomenological study of four foreign-born women's lived-experiences of being 'foreign(ers)'

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. The purpose was to describe and understand these experiences and the meanings they give to being "foreign(ers)." Observation, interviews, casual conversations, and simply "hanging-around" were the primary means of data collection. The women's lives were interpreted according to a "selective or highlighting approach."; Four themes emerged: "being in everyday life," "being a student," "being a youth," and "being self." Being "foreign" as lived and told by each woman is shown in these themes and 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 women experience almost simultaneously belonging or non-belonging, being an insider or being an outsider, being a member or being a non-member, being at home, being at home with or at a distance from others: within and outside, member and stranger, back and forth, one moment and situation after another.