This paper presents in condensed form the life stories of two refugees, a man and a woman from El Salvador. The aim of collecting these and other stories has been to explore how refugees themselves make sense of the turbulent changes that war and exile force upon them. It is a way to understand political conflict and displacement through the people who live them, but also to explore the diversity of experience behind the generalised notion of ‘the refugee experience’. Further, of wider ethnographic relevance is how the personal narratives mediate personal experience and cultural explanations. The present example shows how a key cultural theme, grounded in a model of social experience from the home country, is employed differently by the actors to organise their narratives and understand their changing lives. © 1996, Taylor and Francis Inc. All rights reserved. © 1996, Taylor and Francis Inc. All rights reserved.

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