Law Commons^™

Sexual Abuse: A Multi-Faceted Problem, Marcus Venable

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

On average, US citizens have experienced approximately 400,000 sexual assaults per year, which results in enormous immediate and long-term consequences for individuals, as well as society in general.

In the U.S., the principal method of combatting this crime has been the creation of Sex Offender Registries used to notify the public of the identity and location of convicted sex offenders who may be living in proximity to their residence. In addition to the Registry, laws have been passed forbidding convicted sex offenders from residing within buffer zones around areas of high child concentration [schools/parks/etc.].

The efficacy and consequences of these …

Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the mobility politics of container shipping and argues that technological development, political-economic order, and social infrastructure co-produce one another. Containerization, the use of standardized containers to carry cargo across modes of transportation that is said to have revolutionized and globalized international trade since the late 1950s, has served to expand and extend the power of international coalitions of states and corporations to control the movements of commodities (shipments) and labor (seafarers). The advent and development of containerization was driven by a sociotechnical imaginary and international social contract of seamless shipping and cargo flows. In practice, this liberal, …

Strictly Intersectional Scrutiny: A Recommendation For Transforming The Epc To Highlight Queer Black Women, Kayla M. Richardson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) and how this interpretation can become more intersectional for Black queer women. This question is explored within the scope of two theoretical frameworks: Derrick Bell’s theory of interest convergence and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality. This project examines whether any factors compel SCOTUS to be more intersectional in its approach to the Fourteenth Amendment. Simultaneously, this study also considers what social contexts make SCOTUS more likely to focus on the interests of the oppressor, a demographic …

Housing Equity In Golden Gate Village, Nicole White

Social Justice | Senior Theses

For generations, the African American community has faced many forms of housing discrimination that have created major inequalities in their everyday lived experiences (Lockwood, 2020). This study explores the long-lasting effects of discriminatory housing policies in creating disparate housing conditions within the public housing community in Marin City called Golden Gate Village, as well as the role of the Marin Housing Authority in practices of displacement and neglect. The methodology for the study included seven different interviews with Golden Gate Village residents to obtain knowledge about the community as well as grasp an understanding of the lived experiences of the …

The Multi-Dimensional Relationship Between Immigration Policies And Mexican Migrant Women: A Cycle Of Violence, Vulnerabilities, And Sobreviviencia, Jasmine Perales, Jasmine Perales

CMC Senior Theses

Thousands of migrants have died at the United States/Mexico border. This paper analyzes how the current crisis at the border came to be, specifically focusing on the experiences of Mexican migrant women. An analysis of race, racial scripts, and illegality shows how these inform immigration policies and negatively impact migrants. Decades worth of draconian immigration policies have militarized the border and continued to reinforce negative racial scripts of migrants. By centering the testimonies of Mexican migrant women, their structured vulnerabilities come to the forefront as a direct result of immigration policies. Reform of the immigration system needs to occur to …

Campos Seguros In Santa Cruz County, Patricia Barajas Villasenor

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Monarch Services is a non-profit organization within Santa Cruz county. The agency provides services for domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking. Campos Seguros focuses on providing resources and advocacy to vulnerable populations, specifically Campesinos (farmworkers). Violence and abuse perpetrated against farm workers is an issue that demands more public attention and advocacy. Campesinos are highly vulnerable because of different contributing factors, these include immigration status, work uncertainty, and language barriers. Consequences include trauma, lack of reporting, and vulnerability to labor trafficking. Sexual abuse is highly prevalent within the agricultural realm; many employers can take advantage of Campesino’s vulnerable position. …

The Long Migration Route: Exploring Social Implications For Asylees In The Us And Policy Creation In Transit Countries As A Result Of Immigration Patterns Of African And Haitian Asylum-Seekers Traveling Through Latin America To The United States, Brendan Rupprecht

Capstone Collection

The number of asylum-seekers from African nations and Haiti traveling from their origin countries, through Latin America, and then to the United States is increasing. This capstone explores why Africans and Haitians are choosing to embark on this journey, what the experience is like for the asylum-seekers (including mapping the physical route taken), and what policies have been developed in transit countries, specifically Panama and Mexico, as a response to this phenomenon. To fulfill the objectives of the study, data was collected by conducting semi- structured interviews with 4 individuals who currently work in the field of international migration and …

Where The Rainbow Ends: The Hidden Humanitarian Crisis For Members Of The Lgbtqia+ Community In International Business, John R. Krendel

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Before pursuing an international career, members of the LGBTQIA+ community must be aware of the hardship that may be exacerbated by living and working abroad. This study addresses the trends in laws, including employment and anti-discrimination laws, that provide and restrict certain rights of members of the LGBTQIA+ community in eight countries. These nations, both progressive and discriminatory, include the United States, England, Switzerland, Germany, Taiwan, China, the Philippines and Kazakhstan. Eight LGBTQIA+ business professionals spoke on their experiences living and working in each of these countries and provided advice to members of the community wishing to pursue an international …

Historical Underpinnings And Consequent Effects Of Labor Exploitation Of Mexican And Central Americans In The United States, Andrew Elkins

World Languages, Literatures and Cultures Undergraduate Honors Theses

The experience immigrants have today working and living in the southern United States is defined by systems that have developed out of lingering racist attitudes and reactions toward these individuals. The flow of people across the U.S.-Mexico border has a long history, and it is characterized by patterns that have continued from early guest worker programs to the present-day flow of migrants, both legal and undocumented. Also continually present is the racialization of these migrants, which has often forced them to work and live as marginalized members of American society. This project will explore the establishment of Mexican American citizen …

Unequal Treatment: An Exploration Of Immigrant-Related Factors And Likelihood Of Discrimination In The United States, Sophia Woods

Sociology and Criminology Undergraduate Honors Theses

Despite the rapid and considerable growth of the Latino population in the United States, the continual xenophobic rhetoric surrounding Latino immigration along with the nativist public policies set in place have led to higher rates of discrimination. Latino immigrant discrimination has shown to have consequences on mental health, social isolation, physical health, and trust of law enforcement. Using data from the Pew Research Center, I explored the specific factors associated with Latino immigrants that increase the likelihood of experiencing discrimination in the United States. In line with much of the prior literature, age, ethnic identity, English proficiency, Mexican origin, fear …

Facultas Marginem: Assessing Disability Data And Public Aau Universities’ Affirmative Action Plans For Systemic Barriers Facing Faculty With Disabilities, Joseph Carlton Barry

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

This dissertation contributes to education equity scholarship produced by academics seeking to develop understandings of disability, Persons with Disabilities (PWD), and how both are situated amongst faculty in institutions of higher education. As such, this dissertation centers on a study of public US universities belonging to the Association of American Universities (AAU). This study looks for institutional level associations between respective rates by which college and university faculty with disabilities (FWD) are employed, certain aspects of disability policy drawn from each institution’s 2020 Affirmative Action Plans (AAP), and various other instances of empirical disability data (EDD).

While this study contributes …

Johnson V. M'Intosh: Christianity, Genocide, And The Dispossession Of Indigenous Peoples, Cynthia J. Boshell

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Using hermeneutical methodology, this paper examines some of the legal fictions that form the foundation of Federal Indian Law. The text of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1823 Johnson v. M’Intosh opinion is evaluated through the lens of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to determine the extent to which the Supreme Court incorporated genocidal principles into United States common law. The genealogy of M’Intosh is examined to identify influences that are not fully apparent on the face of the case. International jurisprudential interpretations of the legal definition of genocide are summarized and used as …

'Indirect Pathways Into Practice': Philippine Internationally Educated Nurses And Their Entry Into Ontario's Nursing Profession, Lualhati Marcelino

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

While there are several studies that highlight the quantitative and statistical profiles of internationally educated nurses (IENs) from the Philippines who migrate to countries throughout Asia, the Middle East, Europe, the United States and Canada, there is little research that delves deeply into the qualitative review and analysis of their experiences in their own words. This study addresses that gap by applying the transnational feminist concept of “global care chains” in a single case study design that explores the experience of nurses who migrated to Ontario through permanent and temporary immigration streams and were interviewed in 2011 to 2012 to …

Collateral Damage: How Expanding Public Charge Policy Influences Adult Esl Enrollment, Allison M. Eckert

Master's Theses

This study used statistical analysis of enrollment records for ESL programs at community colleges throughout California from 2015-2019 to determine whether adult immigrants’ participation in public ESL programs was reduced under President Donald Trump. Immigrant families’ lesser use of public education services and means-tested federal benefits has been widely documented in the wake of Trump’s expansion of the public charge rule, which counted immigrants’ use of a wider array of public benefits against their case for residency in the United States than had any previous iteration of the rule. Failing the public charge test can block an immigrant’s entry into …

Caring Against The Carceral: How Families Mediate The Social Death Of Incarceration, Jessica Claire

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Incarceration, especially in the United States, is deeply related to issues of racism, poverty, and citizenship. These particular experiences are the result of a history of biopolitical control affecting Black and brown communities and have a quintessential origin in enslavement. Those who are incarcerated are isolated, dishonored, and powerless as a result of the criminalization of race and poverty. These observations led to questions surrounding the particular impact families may have on the experiences of those who are incarcerated. Families of Incarcerated Loved ones, or FOILs, mediate incarceration through intentional socialization which has the potential to counteract the realities of …

Is This Seat Taken? African American Male Perceptions Of Ascension In The Federal Office Of Inspectors General Community, Donrich L. Young

Doctor of Education (Ed.D)

The federal law enforcement community is one that should be diverse and reflect society as a whole. Traditionally, federal law enforcement, and specifically the Office of Inspectors General (OIG) Community, has been occupied by White males at all levels. This qualitative exploratory case study examined the perceptions and lived experiences of eight African American males currently employed in or recently retired from the federal OIG community. The research findings resulted in the emergence of three themes: (1) mentorship, (2) treatment and opportunities, and (3) underrepresentation. The implications and recommendations which evolved from this research study may contribute to the development …

America’S Presidential Crisis Of Legitimacy: How The Electoral College Became Obsolete And How We Can Fix It, Julia Rose Foodman

Scripps Senior Theses

The goal of this thesis is to critique the current American Presidential electoral system, the Electoral College, and to show what an alternative could potentially mean for the American people. This paper seeks to answer the following questions: What are the main arguments for the Electoral College, why are they troubling, and how can we mend American Presidential elections for the greater purposes of political equality, democracy, and freedom? To do so, core arguments made by conservative pundits in favor of the Electoral College are outlined in order to bring attention to their logical, political, and moral inconsistencies. The inequalities …

Neither “Post-War” Nor Post-Pregnancy Paranoia: How America’S War On Drugs Continues To Perpetuate Disparate Incarceration Outcomes For Pregnant, Substance-Involved Offenders, Becca S. Zimmerman

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the unique interactions between pregnancy, substance involvement, and race as they relate to the War on Drugs and the hyper-incarceration of women. Using ordinary least square regression analyses and data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, I examine if (and how) pregnancy status, drug use, race, and their interactions influence two length of incarceration outcomes: sentence length and amount of time spent in jail between arrest and imprisonment. The results collectively indicate that pregnancy decreases length of incarceration outcomes for those offenders who are not substance-involved but not evenhandedly -- benefitting white …

Transformation As Desistance Inside: Temporality And Identity Reconstruction Among Men With Life Sentences, Richard Stover

Honors Theses

This thesis is an investigation of destistance strategies among men sentenced to life in prison in a medium security prison in Pennsylvania. Desistance here is defined as the process leading to the cessation of formally deviant behavior. Drawing from life narrative interviews conducted among 22 men, I argue that desistance is intrinsically tied to how inmates conceptualize themselves within the institutional context of the prison and can be expanded to include people who are still incarcerated. I build off of Peggy Giordano and colleagues symbolic interactionist perspective on desistance and expand it to chart how men with life sentences order …

The Weaponization Of Poverty: An Investigation Into United States Military Recruitment Practices In High Schools Of Low-Income Communities In The Inland Empire, Michael Springer-Gould

Pitzer Senior Theses

Military recruitment in the United States is a highly contentious subject that has yielded a multitude of prior research across a variety of academic concentrations. To further the conversation, I narrow my focus to Southern California’s Inland Empire (IE) to explore practices of military recruitment in high schools that serve students in low-income communities. I begin with a general overview of life and labor in the Inland Empire before moving into prior research on military recruitment. My empirical research consists of five in-depth interviews documenting the lived experiences of individuals hailing from and attending high school in low-income communities of …

Teacher Perceptions Of Environmental Science In Rural Northwestern New Mexico Public Schools, Marie Quiahuitl Julienne

Organization, Information and Learning Sciences ETDs

In this study, I explored what teachers perceive as the factors that impact their teaching of environmental science in rural secondary level schools in northwestern New Mexico. I adapted Bronfenbrenner’s (1994) ecological systems model, based on four environmental subsystem levels (microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem), as the conceptual framework to address the major research question of this study, and developed 18 interview questions to explore teachers’ perceptions of factors that influence their teaching of environmental science. I investigated the perspectives science teachers have about environmental science topics and the influences they perceive that affect how they teach environmental science, and …

The Stability Paradox Of Special Immigrant Juvenile Status Backlogs: Unstable Policy Implementation For A Stability-Aimed Visa, Lanna Seline Sanchez

Pomona Senior Theses

As of May 2016, the U.S. State Department officially declared a priority date for all green cards for applicants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras that capped the number of visas granted to individuals from these three countries to just 10,000 per year. This inherently created a two to three-year backlog for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status applicants from these countries as well, meaning that SIJS petitioners will remain undocumented for periods of up to six years until their petition is adjudicated by USCIS and their priority date arrives. I research whether the increasingly difficult path to obtaining permanent residency through …

Beyond Repair: An Investigation Of The Experiences, Interpretations, And Self-Construction Of Black Women Welfare Recipients In The Deep South, Eniyah C. Willingham, Eniyah Willingham

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Based on six in-depth interviews with Black women in the Metro-Atlanta area who have at some point in the past ten years received welfare assistance, this project serves to understand how Black women relate to the welfare system in the current moment. To best understand their circumstances, I set forth a three-part question: how do Black women welfare recipients experience the welfare system in the current moment?; how do they interpret these experiences?; and lastly, how do these experiences and interpretations lend to how they conceptualize, construct, and/or manage their identities as Black women welfare recipients? I argue that my …

The Rhetoric Is On The Wall: A Multimodal Study Of The U.S. – Mexico Border Through Image Narratives, Kristoffer Mason

Global Honors Theses

This paper applied social semiotics and systemic functional theory to study visual narratives related to President Trump’s border wall project and U.S. immigration policy. The images were selected by new articles posted by The New York Times using search parameters “border wall” and “undocumented immigration” between the dates of March 13 – April 13, 2018. Images were selected and categorized based on visual themes related to the border wall and policy enforcement. Of these categories, two images were selected for vertical perspective, vector patterns, and gestures to discover the narratives. Analysis of the images showed that social power and hierarchical …

The Predictors Of Juvenile Recidivism: Testimonies Of Adult Students 18 Years And Older Exiting From Alternative Education, La Toshia Palmer

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this descriptive, qualitative study was to identify and describe the importance of the predictors of juvenile recidivism and the effectiveness of efforts to prevent/avoid juvenile recidivism as perceived by previously detained, arrested, convicted, and/or incarcerated adult students 18 years of age and older exiting from alternative education in Northern California. A second purpose was to explore the types of support provided by alternative schools and the perceived importance of the support to avoid recidivism according to adult students 18 years of age and older exiting from alternative education.

Methodology: This qualitative, descriptive research design identified …

California As A “Blue-Print’ For Progressive Immigration Reform?: Uncovering Racial Liberalism To Expose Reconfigured Anti-Migrant Hegemony, Edith Jaicel Ortega

Scripps Senior Theses

Using the frames of analysis and language of political whiteness and anti-migrant hegemony, this paper examines the narrative of liberal immigration reformers transforming California’s political landscape within the period of 1994 to 2017. Taken as case studies the following articles of legislation are analyzed: Proposition 187 in 1994, the California Dream Act in 2010, the Trust Act in 2014, up to the present Senate Bill 54 in 2017. The paper finds that while California has experienced a recognizable shift in racial liberalism in rhetoric and legislation, its overall policy continues to work within the framework of anti-migrant hegemony that functions …

The Effects Of Employment On Recidivism Among Delinquent Juveniles, Leigh Kassem

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Current research indicates an association between intense adolescent work (twenty hours or more per week) and delinquent behavior. It has been widely speculated that this relationship is spurious, occurring only as a result of other factors which are common to both offending and intense employment. The current study attempts to fill a gap in the literature by utilizing the Pathways to Desistance dataset to examine the evolution of the relationship between work and self-reported offending in a longitudinal sample of juvenile offenders. Work intensity and consistency, social capital, and expectations for success were analyzed as potential predictors of recidivism or …

Missing The Message: Advocating For Action In Human Rights, Alyssa Dinsmore

Capstone Collection

This research addresses two basic yet exhaustive questions dictating the field of human rights advocacy. The first question surrounds the feasibility of implementing a universal list of human rights across contexts, and whether the attachment of moral values to discussions of human rights further obfuscates the ability to enforce them. What are universal human rights, and how do culture and politics challenge efforts to implement them? Three case studies, the Iranian revolution, the Rwandan genocide and the Salvadoran civil war, provide the backdrop to discuss practical strategies underlying ostensible human rights interventions and the tipping points at which those strategic …

The Plight Of Undocumented Female Migrants: Identifying Structural Factors That Contribute To The Proliferation Of Sex Trafficking And The Failings Of International Law, Hannah K. Valles

Arts and Sciences Dean's Office Undergraduate Honors Theses

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the conditions at two specific border zones, the United States-Mexico border and the Mexico-Guatemalan border, that render undocumented female migrants vulnerable to abduction or recruitment into sexual exploitation. In addition to exploring the factors that expose women to trafficking networks, the study scrutinizes the legal failings of the international law-making community with regards to the safeguarding of women whose socio-economic conditions and environment of perpetual violence prompt their extralegal international movement. The paper provides an overview of the social, economic, and historical factors that underpin the flourishing of sex trafficking operations in …

Local Immigration Enforcement Entrepreneurship In The Punishment Marketplace, Daniel L. Stageman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The contemporary neoliberal economic order plays a significant role in American social organization and policy-making. Most importantly, neoliberal ideology drives the creation and imposition of markets in public goods and services and the valorization of free market ideology in cultural life. The neoliberal ‘project of inequality’ is in turn delimited and upheld by an authoritarian system of punishment built around mass incarceration, surveillance, and an unprecedented level of social control directed at the lowest strata of American society – a group that includes both the urban underclass, and unauthorized immigrants.

This study lays out the theory of the punishment marketplace …