Digital Commons Network^™

(In)Visible Lives: Exploring Lesbian Migrant Spaces Of Belonging In South Africa, Kayla Baumgartner

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation explores how and where lesbian migrant women living in South Africa feel a sense of belonging. Despite South Africa having legal and constitutional protections for sexual minorities and refugees, both groups of individuals face high amounts of homophobic and xenophobically motivated persecution. Little work has explored the unique challenges that migrants who are also sexual minorities can face as a result of their intersecting identities, and this is particularly true for work that looks at the lives of lesbian migrants.

With principles of narrative inquiry serving as methodological guidelines, this study uses interviews and solicited sketch maps from …

Mapping The Arab Diaspora: Examining Placelessness And Memory In Arab Art, Shahad Rashid

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Currently, the Middle East is experiencing adversity and instability due to political upheaval, war, and mass displacement, and has become the focus of international attention. This project investigates the ways contemporary Arab art utilizes creative expression to allow Arab diasporas and non-diasporas to negotiate their identities, promote collective memory, and reconcile fragmented and traumatic experiences. This investigation comprises a discussion of discourses regarding defining “diaspora,” “home” and “placelessness,” identity and popular media, contemporary Arab art, collective memory, and, briefly, temporality. The diversity of terms and histories are a testament to the impossibility of exploring diasporic conditions in a simple and …

The Influence Of Beliefs And Gender On Choosing, And Feeling Like You Belong In Engineering, Julia Mcmenamin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

After decades of research and interventions, the gender gap in STEM fields has narrowed, and even closed in some sub-fields, such as the life sciences. This trend toward gender parity has plateaued, however, in engineering. Efforts to encourage young women to study engineering often portray the field as affording opportunities for collaboration and helping others. The success of such efforts rests, arguably, on the accuracy of the assumption that women value these qualities in a career. It also depends on the degree to which women’s perceptions of the field of engineering reflect this portrayal. For the present study, measures of …

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 …

Shifting Notions Of Citizenship In The Netherlands: Exploring Cultural Citizenship And The Politics Of Belonging Through Neighbourhood Spaces In Rotterdam, Jennifer Long

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Notions of citizenship in the Netherlands are increasingly shifting away from liberal models of civic citizenship that, in theory, promote diversity, pluralism and, multicultural understandings of citizenship and are moving, instead, towards a mono-cultural and assimilationist understanding of national identity and belonging. This trend, known in the literature as the ‘culturalization of citizenship’ constitutes the primary topic of this project.

In this dissertation, I argue that official and populist discourses concerning non-western Muslim immigrants in Dutch society today work to inscribe difference onto “foreign” (“allochthonous”) residents of the Netherlands while upholding an idealized notion of “Dutch identity”. My research revealed …