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This study focuses upon the importance of group narrative work by ill and injured individuals who are participants/listeners/viewers in the reciprocity of testifying and witnessing one another’s stories. Their creative collaboration addresses a transformation of self that is engendered by illness and injury. An emphasis on narrative within a group setting offers tools to validate individual autonomy, build collective strength, and assist those in the group to gather momentum for the journeys that await each of them. The rationale and exercises described serve to complement and enhance traditional modes of healing.

The immigration conundrum to craft policy that ensures border security and safeguards human rights is grave and complex. Individuals fleeing religious persecution made finding refuge part of our heritage since colonial times. This American tradition has enshrined our values to the world. This essay is limited to summarizing the asylum process and recent events through the summer of 2018 which affect it. Policy changes are ongoing. The asylum process is complicated by illegal immigration. The surge in migrants arriving at and/or crossing the border has led to controversial policies over the years. Unlike those who illegally cross the border and remain unknown to law enforcement, everyone who makes an affirmative asylum claim to a United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officer, or a defensive asylum claim in immigration court, has been thoroughly vetted through identity, criminality, and terrorism background checks. Granting refuge to those fleeing persecution reaffirms the values of a country that is, as Lincoln richly stated, the last best hope of Earth. Comprehensive immigration reform is needed on many immigration issues, two of which are to ensure border security and safeguard the asylum-seeking process.

The essay explores the profound nature and consequences of subjectivity struggles in everyday life. W. E. B. Du Bois's concept of double consciousness and its constituent concepts of the veil, twoness, and second sight illuminate the process of racialized self-formation. Racialized self-formation contributes to understanding the cultural reproduction of domination and subjugation, the two primary concerns of radical interactionists. Double consciousness, long ignored by symbolic interactionists, cannot be neglected by radical interactionists if they are to articulate a comprehensive account of self-formation in a white-supremacist culture. Reflections on racialization, meritocracy, and subjectivity struggles in contemporary everyday life conclude the essay.

Families who left their homes in Central America and Mexico searching for a better life in the United States often left their children behind until they were financially secure enough to send for them. The children usually waited years to reunite with their parents while many never made the voyage. The children’s emotional stories are conveyed in their own words detailing how vulnerable they felt when abandoned, confused, and at times, rejected after finally connecting with their long-lost families. The psychological trauma for the parents, and especially for their children, is documented via the children’s voices.

This study addresses resistance and its potential to achieve social justice. Discussion of oppression begins the essay, clarifying the concepts of structure, agency, and the interaction between the two. Next, class exploitation, white supremacy, male supremacy, and epistemological imperialism illustrate forms of oppression. Epistemological emancipation and resistance elucidate agency. A conclusion summarizes the argument that a structure-and-agency perspective best conceptualizes forms of oppression and resistance.