Digital Commons Network^™

A Church Of The People: Coptic Church Building And Direction In Central New Jersey, Bishoy Garis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Building off Michael Akladios’ work on early Coptic migration and the ad hoc institutionalization of the Coptic Orthodox Church in North America, this dissertation proposes that the construction and direction of Coptic churches in Middlesex County, New Jersey was laity driven, ad hoc, reactive, and dependent on local variables. Additionally, it reveals that the creation of St. Mary’s Coptic Orthodox Church in East Brunswick, New Jersey spurred migration to the Middlesex County area and transformed their small community into a domestic and international Coptic migration center. Unlike previous scholarship that places greater attention on urban Coptic communities and transnational networks, …

The Political Economy Of State Fragility And The Extent To Which It Fuels International Migration Amongst Nigerians., Funmilola Olorunfemi

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examined the political economy of state fragility and the extent to which it fuels international migration amongst Nigerians and adopt a qualitative research method to critically review 15 articles that was identified using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA). The thesis argues that while migration is not a new phenomenon in Nigeria, there is a renewed fervor amongst Nigerians to migrate and that migration amongst Nigerians is in the context of forced mobility. Employing thematic analysis, the thesis demonstrated how state fragility factors which includes economic factors, sociological factors, geographical factors, and unifying factors …

Math Achievement Opportunity For American Mexican Children In Mexico: A Structural Equation Modeling Analysis Using Multilevel Data, Jimmy E. Hernandez

Theses and Dissertations

Since the U.S. Recession of 2008, more Mexicans are leaving than coming to the United States. Many Mexican families return to Mexico with their U.S.-born--or American Mexican--children and youth. Approximately 700,000 American Mexican children and youth are now living and attending K-12 schools throughout Mexico (Gándara & Jensen, 2021; Jacobo-Suárez, 2017; Jensen et al., 2017; Passel et al., 2012). They are part of a broader category of students who have educational experiences on both sides of the border often referred to as transnational students. Return migration to Mexico presents both challenges and opportunities that affect their adaptation to Mexican schools. …

No Going Back: Ground-Breaking Lab Sends Students To Balkan Route To Learn About Refugees--And Themselves, Arne Norris

Colby Magazine

A double major in global studies and anthropology with a minor in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, Powers was in Istanbul networking, scouring the city, making contacts with LGBTI refugees and activists, finding people to share their stories as part of a project at Colby, the Insurgent Mobilities Lab. The lab, involving more than a dozen students, is researching the dynamics of migration along the Balkan Route that hundreds of thousands of refugees have traveled in a grave effort to seek a better life in Northern Europe.

Iban As A Koine Language In Sarawak, Chong Shin

Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia

This article attempts to delineate the issue of linguistic homogeny in Iban variants in Sarawak (Malaysia). In brief, the Iban speakers are claimed to descend from Upper Kapuas watershed, Western Kalimantan (Indonesia). Based on local traditions and oral materials, this ethnic group began to move out from Kapuas watershed and penetrate into Sarawak in sixteenth century. After several generations, they expanded to become the major ethnic group in the state. Several recent studies show that the number of ethnic Ibans in West Kalimantan is fairly small and the distribution of Iban communities often displays a pattern of distant pockets or …

Identity, Activism, And Rap In The Filipino American Diaspora, Scott Cooper

Master's Theses

For close to two decades, an established network of Filipino American rap artists have developed on the West Coast of the United States. These artists share musical narratives exploring their working-class immigrant experiences as well as the impact of colonization in the Philippines. Outside of music, these artists often engage in community organizing and activism, but few scholars have explored hip hop's effect within these spaces. Recently, a younger generation of Filipino American youth actively make use of hip hop in community organizations and activist groups. This paper will specifically examine how the identity of 1.5 and second generation Filipino …

Final Master's Portfolio, Hammed Oluwadare Adejare

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This portfolio contains four related essays concerned with issues of race and migration in literary creations of diasporic African writers and film texts by African American film producers. The first essay offers a general exploration of contemporary African diasporic writings and the pervading Afropolitan politics of home and belonging. The next essay in the collection provides a theoretical grounding for this writing genre, tracing the connections between the theory, Afropolitanism, and earlier modes of theorizing global race relations such as postcolonialism and cosmopolitanism. The third essay explores the application of these theories to Teju Cole’s diasporic novel, Open City, explicating …

Living The Manito Trail: Maintaining Self, Community, And Culture, Trisha Venisa Martinez

American Studies ETDs

Living the Manito Trail: Maintaining Self, Community, and Culture is an ethnographic interdisciplinary study that draws upon the voices of Manitos, or Hispanic New Mexicans, and experiences of migration from Northern New Mexico into Wyoming from late 19th century to the present. This project exemplifies how consciousness or a heightened sense of awareness derives from the value system of querencia or how one establishes a sense of self and community through place. I argue the cultural landscape of a person’s place of origin injects a set of values and distinct qualities that create a strong sense of identity, enable community, …

Diaspora, Migration, And Refugees In Europe: Developing Leadership Within Multicultural Teams, Matthew S. Paschall

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research study addressed the challenge of developing leaders in the midst of the recent refugee crisis in Europe, historic waves of immigration, and ongoing global migration of diaspora peoples. Migration has led to unprecedented diversity in leadership as leaders from the Global South are relocating North and West. Each person carries preconceived cultural notions of how leaders should function and interact. Church and mission leaders must be equipped to navigate this complex cultural environment in order for multicultural teams to work effectively. The researcher based the theology of multicultural leadership in the Trinity where Father, Son, and Spirit expressed …

An Alternative Narrative Of Integration In Germany Through An Ethnographic Exploration Of Cuban Immigration, Ana M. Rusch

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This ethnographic study on Cuban immigrants conducted in Germany explored the dynamics of integration through an understudied immigrant population. Most of the research conducted on integration in Germany has overwhelmingly been on Turkish immigrants, which is Germany’s majority immigrant group. To contribute to Integration Studies, this research focused on a minority and lesser studied immigrant group, Cuban immigrants. Cuban immigrants in Germany not only have a different historical and geopolitical relationship with Germany than its majority group but they also subscribe to different cultural and ethnoreligious categories. Because of these varying circumstances, Cubans act as a counter example to the …

Review Of Michael Budde's "Scattered And Gathered: Catholics In Diaspora", Michael M. Canaris

Institute of Pastoral Studies: Faculty Publications and Other Works

A review of Michael L. Budde's book Scattered and Gathered: Catholics in Diaspora written by Michael Canaris.

Experience As Counterpoint: A Qualitative Study Of Home, Happiness & Aging Amongst First-Generation South Asian Migrants In The U.S., Angela Singh

Theses and Dissertations

Susan Stanford Friedman writes that “Home comes into being most powerfully when it is gone, lost, left behind, desired and imagined” (202). My dissertation addresses notions of home, nostalgia, happiness and aging often found in South Asian diasporic fiction, and from the results of a qualitative study I conducted in which I interviewed five migrant couples who moved to the US from India for educational and professional purposes in the 1960s and 1970s. This project draws on and contributes toward the fields of Migration and Diaspora Studies, Transnational Studies and South Asian Studies. My research aims to explore more uncommonly …

International Migration In Macro-Perspective: Bringing Power Back In, Marcel Paret, Shannon Gleeson

Shannon Gleeson

This paper challenges the inward looking perspective of recent immigration research by situating migration to the United States within a global and historical context. This macro-stratification perspective breaks out of the confines of national contexts to explore how international migration is shaped by global power divides. We argue that in order to fully understand international migration, it is necessary to account for both the emergence of global power structures and the historical domination of Europe. We develop our argument by first outlining the significance of global power divides, with a particular focus on the United States. We then demonstrate how …

New Bad Girls Of Sudan: Women Singers In The Sudanese Diaspora, Anita H. Fábos

Faculty Works

Explores the new ‘bad girls’ of Sudanese music as they defy national boundaries to bring women’s perspectives and critiques to a global audience. Performers such as Alsarah and Rasha have access to a world music stage to comment upon gender and racial hierarchies, chide Sudanese power brokers about their transgressions, and encourage a more inclusive and just society. Pushback against new voices have included charges in the public domain (e.g. YouTube comments) that these performances are haram and sullied by foreign influence. Emerging out of a larger ethnographic investigation of the Sudanese acoustics of diaspora, my feminist analysis of ‘bad …

"Diaspora Is A Greek Word: Words By Greeks On The Diaspora", Marina Frangos

CALL: Irish Journal for Culture, Arts, Literature and Language

The article explores the different types of the Greek Diaspora in the past 150 years and how these different types are identified in literary production. Following global diasporas’ theory and particularly Robin Cohen’s typology of victim, labour, trade, cultural and imperial diasporas, various literary works are cited by writers of Greek heritage from different countries to determine whether these different types of diaspora have been represented and presented to a global audience. The article adds to a better understanding of global migrant literature. Writers cited include Elia Kazan, Pulitzer-prize winner Greek American Jeffrey Eugenides and Australia’s Christos Tsiolkas.

Women As Fish: Physical Movement And Social Mobility In Contemporary Vietnam, Linh Khanh Nguyen

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation examines the changing rurality and the profound social stratification in contemporary Vietnam through the lens of rural-to-rural female migration. It is based on eighteen months of ethnographic research in a rural offshore fishing community in northern Vietnam called Hải Thành. I study the migration of two groups of women: 1) transnational women, who are young Hải Thành girls that marry Taiwanese and South Korean men, and migrate to mostly rural areas in East Asia, and 2) translocal women, who are women from other rural Vietnamese communities who migrate to Hải Thành to marry local men. My dissertation analyzes …

Reassessing Caribbean Migration: Love, Power And (Re) Building In The Diaspora, Andrea Natasha Baldwin, Natasha K. Mortley

Journal of International Women's Studies

Traditional research has framed Caribbean migration as a socio-economic issue including discourses on limited resources, brain drain, remittances, and diaspora/transnational connection to, or longing for home. This narrative usually presents migration as having a destabilizing effect on Caribbean families, households and communities, more specifically the impacts on the relationships of working class women who migrate leaving behind children, spouses and other dependents because of a lack of opportunities in Caribbean. This paper proposes an alternative view of migration as a source/manifestation of women’s power, where women, as active agents within the migration process, in fact contribute to re building relationships, …

From Tibetan Refugees To Transmigrants: Negotiating Cultural Continuity And Economic Mobility Through Migration, Namgyal Choedup

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

This dissertation research, funded by International Dissertation Research Fellowship from Social Science Research Council, investigates how a group of people, who continues to valorize their “statelessness”, critically and actively engages with the powers and policies of host nation-states and international geopolitics to negotiate their individual and collective goals of socio-economic mobility and cultural continuity. Through the study of lived experiences of three generations of Tibetan exiles living as “stateless” people in India, the study investigates historical and contemporary expressions of nation-state, homeland, cultural and ethnic identity within the Tibetan exile communities in India with reference to …

Embattled Communities: Voluntary Action And Identity In Australia, Canada, And New Zealand, 1914-1918, Steve Marti

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines voluntary mobilization during the First World War to understand why communities on the social and geographical periphery of the British Empire mobilized themselves so enthusiastically to support a distant war, fought for adistant empire. Lacking a strong state apparatus or a military-industrial complex, the governments of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand relied on voluntary contributions to sustain their war efforts. Community-based voluntary societies knitted socks, raised funds to purchase military equipment, and formed contingents of soldiers. By examining the selective mobilization of voluntary participation, this study will understand how different communities negotiated social and spatial boundaries as …

“Free Men Name Themselves”: U.S. Cape Verdeans & Black Identity Politics In The Era Of Revolutions, 1955-75, Aminah Pilgrim

Journal of Cape Verdean Studies

Contrary to widely held assumptions about Cape Verdean immigrants in the US – based on oral folklore and early historiography - the population was never "confused" about their collective identity. Individuals and groups of Cape Verdeans wrestled with US racial ideology just as they struggled to make new lives for themselves and their families abroad. The men and women confronted African-American or "black" identity politics from the moment of their arrivals upon these shores, and chose very deliberate strategies for building community, re-inventing their lives and creating pathways for survival and resistance. One exceptional tool for providing others with a …

Public Relations: Diaspora, Media, And The State(S) Of American Literature, Nathan Allen Jung

Dissertations

Like any good public relations campaign, this dissertation aims to offer a persuasive interpretation of certain key facts. The facts, as I see them, are as follows: first, a great number of contemporary novels and poems explore the personal and social consequences of diasporic migration. Second, these texts, along with their print and electronic paratexts, share a pervasive interest in media. And third, these works are rarely read in conversation with one another, despite their mutual concern for migration and media. Owing to this last point in particular, scholarship has failed to fully address the broader media theories developed in …

Harlemites, Haitians And The Black International: 1915-1934, Felix Jean-Louis Iii

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

On July 28, 1915 the United States began a nineteen year military occupation of Haiti. The occupation connected Haiti and the United States and created an avenue of migration in the country. As a consequence of extreme racism in the South and segregation in the Northern states, the majority of the immigrants moved to Harlem. The movement of people reinvigorated the relationship between African Americans and Haitians. The connection constituted an avenue of the interwar Black International. Using newspapers articles, letters, and press releases from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Yale Beinecke Rare Books and …

Becoming Transnational Citizens: The Liberian Diaspora's Civic Engagement In The United States And In Homeland Peacebuilding, Janet Elizabeth Reilly

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the relationship between civic participation in homeland peacebuilding and immigrants' political incorporation and integration in their local communities in the United States. It explores the impact of state (U.S. and Liberia) policies and local context on individuals' civic participation locally and in transnational activities. The study demonstrates the mechanisms through which state policies and local context influence Liberians' political participation in the United States and their transnational citizenship, defined as full legal membership and civic participation. The relationship between civic engagement in the United States and in transnational activities is not an adversarial one. Engagement with the …

The Music And Multiple Identities Of Kurdish Alevis From Turkey In Germany, Ozan Aksoy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the experiences of Kurdish Alevis, currently living in Germany, who trace their background to locations within the boundaries of the Republic of Turkey. I argue that music has been a particularly important mode through which Kurdish Alevis in Germany have articulated collective histories and have fashioned narratives of belonging and multiple and sometimes contradictory identities. The subjects of my research are immigrants and refugees who are ethnically Kurdish and whose religion is Alevi, an Anatolian religion whose relations to both Sunni and Shi'a Islam are historically controversial. They speak Turkish along with Kurdish, in most cases are …

Migration And Transculturation In The Digital Age: A Framework For Studying The “Space Between”, Padmini Banerjee Ph.D., Myna German Ph.D.

Journal of International and Global Studies

Transnational immigrants today appear to live dual or even multiple lives across national borders, with help from a range of new technologies involving media and channels of communication such as Internet-based chat or telephony, mobile phones, and interactive online social networks. The authors explore the implications of accumulated findings on this aspect for researchers and scholars investigating the contemporary experience of global migration in relation to diasporas and their technology-enabled interconnections with home and host societies. Against the context of existing conceptual frameworks, the utility of the multi-dimensional construct of transculturalism (Ortiz, 1995 [1940]), involving the three processes of acculturation, …