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Paths To Belonging: How Chinese Parachute Kids Construct Identity Across Borders, Huiying Chen

Pitzer Senior Theses

Chinese parachute kids, defined as unaccompanied minor who study in foreign countries alone while their parents remain in China, represent a unique segment of international students.This research specifically focusing on Chinese parachute kids studying in the U.S. Grounded in interviews with nineteen individuals who were once parachute kids, this study challenges the popular view that all international students have monolithic experiences especially within the assimilationist framework.

I propose a typology of three orientations (the heritage, the instrumental, and the global) and argue that Chinese parachute kids’ orientation determines their sense of belonging and their approaches to embeddedness in American educational …

School Culture: Identifying The Barriers To Belonging At Boarding Schools And Shifting The Culture, Kyle Connolly

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

School Culture: Identifying the Barriers to Belonging at Boarding Schools and Shifting the Culture is a theoretical application of sociological concepts to boarding school social spaces. The social environment in schools is a venue where students are subjected to endless influences that play a major role in shaping their social realities. Though much debate in education focuses on the curriculum in public school settings, there is far less attention given to small boarding school communities and even less attention on the culture of belonging, or the obstacles to belonging that exist within it. As American society grows more diverse, economically …

Learning To Fly While Staying Grounded: How Forcibly Displaced Individuals Develop A Sense Of Belonging In Disempowered Cities, Janina L. Selzer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite a growing interest in belonging, immigration and urban scholarship has yet to develop an empirically grounded, spatially sensitive, and complex theorization of the concept itself. Drawing on a comparative case study of two disempowered cities – Bielefeld, Germany, and Detroit, US, – this dissertation analyzes how and to what extent forcibly displaced Yazidi and Chaldean Iraqis develop a sense of belonging. By triangulating data from semi-structured interviews, ethnographic observations, as well as a discourse analysis of policy documents, the following pages trace how politics of belonging are continuously produced, reproduced, and challenged through a spatially mediated and often contradictory …

Resistencia Indocumentada: Exploring The Lived Experiences Of Higher Education Undocumented Students In The San Diego-Tijuana Border Region, Adan Escobedo Sanchez

Dissertations

Undocumented students face myriad obstacles while attending higher education institutions that would deter them from completing their academic journeys. Furthermore, they are placed with a dual narrative that labels them as either dangerous or exceptional. This study explored the lived experiences of undocumented students in college in the San Diego-Tijuana border region to consider what factors have led to resilience and resistance in their academic journey. By understanding these factors, the research aimed to tackle the dual narrative that burdens undocumented students from the illegality as a master status they possess.

This study used narrative inquiry and a literature review …

“What’S Belonging Got To Do With It?”: An Exploration Of Campus Racial Climate And Sense Of Belonging In Black Counseling Students Attending Predominately White Institutions In The North Atlantic Region, Erin Durrah

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) dialogues are raging across campuses throughout the U.S. with specific focus on the needs of Black student populations in the aftermath of the George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbury murders. However, if the supportive spirit of the DEI initiatives is undermined by a hostile campus climate and local community, it may negatively impact the learning environment isolating the target population, while also effecting their potential for successful completion of their programs. The current qualitative study aims to explore the perceptions of belonging expressed by Black graduate students enrolled in Council for Accreditation of Counseling …

“There Shall Be Made No Differentiation:” The Maintenance Of Stratification In The State Of Kuwait Through The 1959 Nationality And Aliens Residence Laws, Alzaina Shams Aldeen

Masters Theses

Article 29 of the Kuwaiti constitution states that “The people are peers in human dignity and have, in the eyes of the Law, equal public rights and obligations. There shall be made no differentiation among them because of gender, origin, language or religion.” If I were to say that the 17, 818 km ² that make up the State of Kuwait is home to 4.2 million people, it would be a misrepresentation. While 4.2 million people do live in Kuwait, citizenship and immigration laws restrict 70% of its population, to varying degrees, from making their country of residence a home. …

Toward An Inclusive Islamic Identity? A Study Of First- And Second-Generation Muslims In Canada, Aisha Birani

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Toward an Inclusive Islamic Identity? A Study of First- and Second-Generation Muslims in Canada examines the intergenerational differences between first- and second-generation Muslims living in Canada, and the way in which they define their personal identities as both Muslim and Canadian. It aims to investigate the integration experiences of Muslims in Canada in order to understand how closely they derive a sense of belonging from Islam and/or their religious communities, and how their identification with Islam limits or stimulates their sense of belonging in Canada. The main research question I pose, therefore, is: how does being Muslim affect the likelihood …