Research Report on Loneliness Narratives: A Somali Experience

Immigration is a social process encompassing identity challenges, transformations, readjustments and an on going struggle to make a new country home and is by no means synonymous to relocation. The study aims to explore the impact of attachment styles on perceived loneliness of Somali immigrants in Australia and seeks to contribute to the knowledge about the adjustment processes in their settlement. This study will help in contributing to the much neglected area of African refugees and immigrants in developed countries like Australia. An attempt was made to understand the process, meaning and content of loneliness through their narratives. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were adopted. The semi-structured interviews provided detailed pictures about participant beliefs, perceptions and life events encompassing the richness of the themes emerging from the respondent's narratives. Since narratives provide a process of self presentations and personal meanings and not records of facts, they endow with spaces for common yet unique phenomenon, in this case-loneliness.