This book uses gendered stories of displacement and re-settlement to interrogate our understanding of social suffering and justice. Parin Dossa, an anthropologist, argues that systemic inequity and exclusionary practices impact the health and well-being of marginalized people.
Using narrative accounts of Canadian Iranian women, this book links individual experiences of migration to social and political factors. Dossa challenges conventional thinking that interprets social suffering in terms of personal stake and individual accountability. She questions the ways in which racialized and gendered inequality in Canada are perceived as cultural differences instead of social oppression.
Yet this book is far from a laundry list of social determinants of migration and health. Dossa's illustrative stories are linked to a poetics of migration that shows the remaking of a world with a more informed sense of social justice. A pioneering study on migration and storytelling, this book is an important contribution to medical anthropology, migration and gender studies.

Parin Dossa is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia. She is the co-producer of two videos, New Voices: Ethnic Elders in Canada and Out of the Shadows: Narratives of Women with Development Disabilities, and has written extensively on migration, gender, and health.

Parin Dossa's profile page

"Dr. Dossa combines excellence in scholarship and sensitivity in this elegantly written book. She draws upon the voices of women to provide powerful insights into the texture of social suffering. This should be required reading for students in the health and social sciences."— “Dr. Joan Anderson, Professor of Nursing and Elizabeth Kenny McCann Professor, University of British Columbia