‘Tell me why, mama!’ – a case study of a perplexed young immigrant

Abstract

This study explores issues of moral development in the context of social unsettlement (e.g. disconnection, fears, alienation, loneliness) that immigrant people, especially young immigrants, are experiencing in their immigration. Using a combined qualitative and discourse analysis approach, drawing on John Dewey's theory of experience and Emile Durkheim's idea of human agency, this study explores the interplay between the development of moral agency and the tensions and disruptions of immigration. Through describing and analysing a young immigrant's experiences, we focus on aspects of such experiences that bear upon internal conflicts and moral dilemmas of coming to a new culture. We thus seek to demonstrate how such unsettling experience can in fact engage a young person's moral agency to cope with the confrontations of cultural unsettlement in his or her learning environment.