The Suffering of the Immigrant

Abdelmalek Sayad (Author), Pierre Bourdieu (Preface by), David Macey (Translated by)

9780745626437, Polity Press

Paperback / softback, published 15 January 2004

360 pages
23 x 15.5 x 3 cm, 0.526 kg

A brilliant excavation of the condition we usually describe as immigration. Sayad brings to light aspects of that condition typically camouflaged or neutralized by the language itself of most academic research on immigration. He juxtaposes to this language the apparent opacity of the language of immigrants’ lived experience and helps us see its transparence and what it communicates.’ – Saskia Sassen, author of Guests and Aliens

This book is a major contribution to our understanding of the condition of the immigrant and it will transform the reader’s understanding of the issues surrounding immigration. Sayad’s book will be widely used in courses on race, ethnicity, immigration and identity in sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, politics and geography.

• an outstanding and original work on the experience of immigration and the kind of suffering involved in living in a society and culture which is not one’s own;
  
• describes how immigrants are compelled, out of respect for themselves and the group that allowed them to leave their country of origin, to play down the suffering of emigration;
  
• Abdelmalek Sayad, was an Algerian scholar and close associate of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu - after Sayad’s death, Bourdieu undertook to assemble these writings for publication;
  
• this book will transform the reader’s understanding of the issues surrounding immigration.

Acknowledgements.

A Note on Terminology.

Subject Areas: Sociology & anthropology [JH]