Sociological Imagination
Sociological Imagination
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Sociological Imagination
Sociological imagination according to Mills, 1959 is the concept of being able to reflect ourselves away from the well known every day live routines with an aim of looking to them from a new point of view. It is also that vibrant consciousness of the link between incident and the outer society (Mills, 1959). Therefore, social imagination is that ability of seeing things from a social setting and the interactions that exist between them, as well as, the influence they have on each other. One is in a social imagination situation if he or she is able to pull away from a current situation and thinking into a different approach.
An asylum seeker refers to an individual who has fled his or her home country and is in search of both physical and legal protection in another country as a refugee. Asylums are different from IDPs in that they try to reach out for a country that has signed the UN convention in relation to refugees of 1951 (Fletcher, 1960).It is important to note that Australia and other countries were one of the first countries who signed the law where they go to an extent of finding asylum in case of a justifiable persecution fear.
A refugee on the other hand, is an individual who has managed to flee his or her country and is not able to return due to logical persecution fear. Such persecution may be due to race, nationality, religion, or belonging to a certain social group. This kind of persecution takes place once the human rights of a person are violated, threats issued, or failure for governments to protect and in other cases taking part in the violations (Mills, 1959). The other term that needs clarification is the migrant, which refers to an individual who has managed to leave his or her mother country voluntarily to another country in a new land.
The aim of this paper is to bring out the issue of refugees & asylum seekers basing the facts on a social imagination perspective.
Refugees & asylum seekers Issue
Gaining the difficult awareness of sociology is not a simple task, and not unless people have will in looking at both outside of their live and the inward part of it. Therefore, the asylum seekers and refugees cannot just be described simplistically as a problem and not accessed through personal subjective point of view (Lipset, 1976 ). As a way of feeling empathy to the asylum seeker, as well as, see the state of life as hard as those poor people, there is need to outlook the individual and community connections. Although old policies in many countries concerning this issue have changed, the old ideas and values that existed they still hang on many people’s mind (Denzin, 1990). That is, their social imagination about the issue has not changed. It is important for people to gain a deep understanding of the world that surrounds them in order to have a clear picture of the social forces that either constraints them or gives them freedom.
The kind of languages that people use towards this issue greatly influences their inner feelings towards the refugees and asylum seekers. Some of these languages are used with an aim of protecting ones lifestyle from the dangers that may arise from asylum seekers (Kolb, 1960 ). Sociologist are also not an exemption because they find themselves influenced by their own interest biases, which they are not conscious about thus making them victims of sociological imagination (Domhoff, 1968 ). This kind of anxiety and fear that surrounds the asylum seekers, as well as, refugees who may flee into a certain country influences the national imaginary of those countries and its citizens. One important thing to note is that, the main influence of social changes is the industrial and political aspects to a point of having refugees and asylum seekers, politics has been manipulated in order to dole out the political elements rather than those who require social assistance the most (Homans , 1961).
Refugees and asylum seekers in certain cases have been used by states as continuity to a certain lifestyle. Sociologists have in one way admitted that there should be a lot of changes and high need to search for general information within the meticulous and usual in the unusual aspects (Halliday, 1994 ). They have also brought out a mediation layer between the governed and governors within the complex democracies. As a result of globalization, disconcertion people finds themselves separate, as well as, elitists, other than being inclusive of other forms of culture, religion, and races. The government and the media are playing a key role in trying to divert the mind set of people on the asylum seekers and refugees as potential terrorist and threats (Lipset, 1961). This makes it important for people to use their sociological imagination to be able to view the pertinent facts and as a result come to an actual precision and understanding of the issue. Therefore, social segregation is not a condition, but a process (Mills, 2000). The boundaries that are included have variations over time on the basis of education, social prejudices, demographic characteristics, and public policies.
According to mills, the main point is that many people in the society are faced with problems that have a social root shared by many others. These social roots are in one way or the other related to the society structures and the changes taking place inside them (Wong, 1968 ). Therefore, a call for sociologist is made for them to help in defining how and why these problems contain sociological causes (Mills, 1968). Such aspects can be used to help these groups of people to have a clear understanding on how their life situations in general are connected to the composition and history of society. This information can give hope and help in empowering people such as the asylum seekers and refugees in order to be able to transform personal nervousness into community issues with an aim of facilitating social change (Lipset, 1961). There is no likelihood that a number of thoughts that the ideas and feelings people may have not been encountered by other people in the society.
Asylum seekers and refugees conditions can lead to extremely negative experiences and feelings of personal failure in the society. However, there are situation where the rate of the asylum seekers and refugees goes high and the situation is not viewed as the consequence of a character error or weakness (Gillam, 1981). The important thing to note in this issue is that whenever a large number of people in the society are facing a similar problem in the society structure an investigation is needed to define the root cause of the problem. Issues that lead to an individual to becomes an asylum seeker or a refugee is rather a social problem than one that usually stems from own shortcomings.
The idea of sociological imagination should not be used in anyway as an excuse to be used by individual in the society for not working hard to achieve set goals in life. It is possible for people to misuse this idea and run away from personal responsibilities (Brewer, 2003). However, some situations are very serious such that an individual fails even if he or she tries to do all that is right, for example, in the issue of asylum seekers and refugees. These people may try to live in their mother country despite of how dangerous the situation can be, but they are unable to persevere at some point forcing them to run for safety.
These two groups of people are unable to achieve the ability and way of achieving their life goals. The main reasons would be as a result of political solutions that are inefficient, discrimination, and labor exploration (Beck, Giddens, and Lash, 1994). Therefore, since situation like these ones are hard to be solved on individual basis, it is important to use sociological imagination in order to get solutions to the situations. As a result, it will be able to come up with a better society, improve and change personal situations. For example, once people make political solutions that are sufficient enough problems rising from political unrest would be reduced (Halliday, 1994 ). In such a case the number of refugees would go down, people will be able to better their life, achieve their life goals and an ultimate society will be created.
Sociological Imagination to Social Work practice
An individual who is able to apply sociological imagination is able to put him or herself away from the normal routines of one own experiences in a daily life. Social work workers have the capacity to view how sociological situations turn out in accordance to the way people in the society differ in terms of their locations in certain social and historical circumstances (Berger, 1963). Social practice on the other hand calls for an ability to be able to think of things within the society which have in one way led to certain sort of outcomes. It also calls for a critical thought of understanding to define elements that led to such outcomes. Therefore, in the case of asylum seekers and refugees’ sociological imagination calls for a social practice that is able to accept the situations of these people and think out on the causes of such life situations towards these people in the society (Binns, 1977).
Some of things that can be used to shape such outcomes which include: social norms, which refers to goals that people wants to gain from something. The social context they are contained in a country and those people that they get to associate with in the society. Fundamentally, what people do, what they are made, and who they later become these factors plays a key role in shaping people resulting into some kind of outcome (Mills, 1939). Social work practice functionally is able to view things in a social way and the interactions, and influence that exist to every person in the society.
In this case sociological imagination contains the understanding that the shape of social outcomes is based on social context, culture, actors, as well as, social actions (Becker, 1994 ). This indicates that what is included in sociological imagination is the indulgent of the interconnections that informs the human society’s fabrics. In other words those things or social workers do are shaped by the situation they are usually contained, their values, actions of the people surrounding them, and how all these aspects relates to some kind of upshot (Binns, 1977). Sociological imagination in the context of social work practice can be seen as the ability of these people to view things in an interactive manner between individual and society compared to the narrowed lens of personal understanding (Homans , 1964 ). Another thing to note is that social work practice is contained in the ability of being able to budge from one particular perspective to another. That is individual are able to connect personal disruptions to public values.
One thing to understand with sociological imagination is that as far as social work practice is concerned, social workers imagination are able to pull out quickly from their personal needs and are able to think from another form of point of view (Beck, 1994 ). Refugees and asylum seekers needs so much help in order to be able to have such shift in their life. Therefore, with the help of social workers who have adopted to sociological imagination it is a possible task (Homans, 1960). In order to acquire knowledge the most important thing is not to follow a certain routine other than breaking from personal circumstances immediacy and set issues into a wider framework. People’s actions are more important compared to the acts themselves.
Conclusion
Sociological imagination has clearly proved that people are able to understand their inner life and external career, a good example is the social workers. It is also easy to have an understanding of how people results in being falsely conscious in terms of the social position they hold. The human nature limits are seen to be frighteningly broad making it easy for people to locate these limits through an understanding one’s experience. Once people are conscious of sociological imagination they will realize that they make up a society through the interconnection that exists in them (Berger, 1963). For an individual to end his or her troubles there is need to look up on the issues that are there in the society. Changes that occur in the society are for better or worse and they contain various sets of issues and such issues will affect individuals in that society accordingly, for example, issues of the refugees and the asylum seekers (Gillam, 1981).
In easy terms people can easily be able to understand why some things happen or happened by looking into what they were doing at that time when such things happened. At the same time they can also check on what the society did towards such issues (Becker, 1994 ). Therefore, people can use the concept of sociological imagination to evaluate and get prepared by taking a simple step back and looking at their current society in terms of its strengths, weaknesses, where they can fit in it, or where people around that society fits.
References
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