Time as Transition: Experiences of Time, Culture and Immigration amongst Syrian Women in the UK

This study contributes to the current literature on time, gender, migration, culture and identity by bringing insights into how time is perceived and experienced by Syrian women who are settled and working in the UK. It is a topic that is little known in the extant literature, and that differs in its dynamics form the western literature. The notion of time has been widely debated but with little reference to its impact on the perceptions and individual experiences of migrant women, who engage with culturally different time structures and different time schedules. The spatial experiences of those women represented by their mobility across cultural boundaries seem to be affecting how migrant women perceive and organise time. Throughout the study, the Heideggerian interpretive phenomenological perspective has been adopted to make sense of and interpret the meanings and experiences provided by the participants of this study. This has been selected to allow space for considering and acknowledging the impact of the personal experience and prior knowledge of both the researcher and the researched subjects. Perceptions of time and time experiences have been found to be much diversified across personal, social and cultural contexts which are marked by spatial or geographical boundaries. Also, time structures and time schedules have been institutionally gendered across the cultures of both countries: Syria and the UK, but with varying degrees. Empirically, this study can help work organisations and agencies interested in working with migrant people to understand the diversity of perceptions and experiences of migrant female workers in the UK to enable them offering the care and services tailored to the needs of those migrants. In doing so, this research is hoped to improve the quality of work and social contributions of migrant women in the UK. Methodologically, this phenomenological inquiry contributes to the field of empirical and socio-political knowledge as well as the understanding of moral, aesthetic, and personal welfare debated in the migration literature. It contributes to the understanding of human experiences in relation to the notion of time, in isolation of any concern to predicting or prescribing any theory.