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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

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Social Justice

The University of San Francisco

Theses/Dissertations

2021

Articles 1 - 17 of 17

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Ley Olimpia: Examining Policymaking Around Digital Violence, Andrea Alejandra Capella-Castro Dec 2021

Ley Olimpia: Examining Policymaking Around Digital Violence, Andrea Alejandra Capella-Castro

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The topic of this thesis is policymaking and regulations around digital gender violence. This work intends to examine what methods effectively regulate and eradicate Online-Gender Based Violence (OGBV), a new type of Gender-Based Violence (GBV). Effective policymaking for the digital space has a significant impact on our society and especially on women as they remain the most objectified, attacked, and harassed on social media platforms. Therefore, social media needs an effective policy to address digital gender violence. Furthermore, the topic is relevant because policymaking around digital gender violence will advance the feminist movement’s fight and protect women and social media …

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Collateral Damage: How Expanding Public Charge Policy Influences Adult Esl Enrollment, Allison M. Eckert Dec 2021

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 …

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A Minority Within A Minority: Exploring Identity Development In Relation To Mental Health Outcomes Within The Black Deaf Community, Nekolas Milton Aug 2021

A Minority Within A Minority: Exploring Identity Development In Relation To Mental Health Outcomes Within The Black Deaf Community, Nekolas Milton

Doctoral Dissertations

Black Deaf people are a double minority group that faces discrimination on multiple fronts. There is little literature on the relationship of cultural identity development and mental health concerns of this marginalized group. This study employs a mixed method approach to examine this relationship and explore the extant culturally tailored interventions targeted towards Black Deaf adults in a clinical setting. There were two phases of this project. Phase 1 included qualitative interviews with service providers of black deaf people to ascertain the type of culturally tailored interventions that are in place for this population. 5 themes emerged: systemic issues, mental …

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Evict The Speculators: An Analysis Of Moms 4 Housing, Kendra N. Ma Jun 2021

Evict The Speculators: An Analysis Of Moms 4 Housing, Kendra N. Ma

Master's Projects and Capstones

This paper contributes to the scholarly work on grassroots housing movements in the United States. More specifically, I explore how Moms 4 Housing’s activism challenged urban displacement regimes and offered pathways towards the human right to housing. My analysis of their movement reveals that they utilized three principle strategies to articulate their movement and push the agenda for the right to housing: 1) the use of corruption narratives to confront the state and urban speculators, 2) the application of “motherhood” as a political identity and a rights-based framework to challenge the capitalist property regime, and 3) direct action to shift …

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Budgetary Obstacles To Police Reform: The Case Of San Francisco, Hayden Anderson May 2021

Budgetary Obstacles To Police Reform: The Case Of San Francisco, Hayden Anderson

Master's Projects and Capstones

In response to the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement issued a statement calling on cities to Defund the Police. The event sparked a nationwide reckoning that has reshaped the narratives and strategies for remedying the racial bias and police brutality apparent in the criminal justice system. The shift in police reform efforts embraces notions guiding police budgeting decisions. Today's advocates are transforming their approach to police reform to include budgeting decisions by promoting a municipal practice known as police budget reform. This Capstone explores the feasibility of successful police budget reform under current …

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Refugee Policy In Australia And New Zealand: An Approach For Resettling Environmentally Displaced Persons?, Sedina Sinanovic May 2021

Refugee Policy In Australia And New Zealand: An Approach For Resettling Environmentally Displaced Persons?, Sedina Sinanovic

Master's Theses

An increase in human mobility as a consequence of climate change induced slow-onset environmental degradation and sudden-onset natural disasters is expected to be a defining feature of the 21st century. Inexorably shifting the global migratory landscape, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) approximates that roughly 250 million people will be forcefully displaced due to adverse climate impacts by 2050. While there is no international consensus on appropriately categorizing such people, this thesis refers to them as "environmentally-displaced persons" (EDPs). Since EDPs do not qualify for "refugee" status, they are not afforded access to assistance under the 1951 Convention …

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Job Satisfaction And Stressors: The Direct Support Professional's Experience, Saralynn Emery May 2021

Job Satisfaction And Stressors: The Direct Support Professional's Experience, Saralynn Emery

Master's Theses

The current service system for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities is provided in the form of community-based support. This support is carried out by Direct Support Professionals (DSPs) who provide one-on-one services to individuals in their homes, workplaces, and communities. The current system is undergoing a turnover crisis and there is an enormous need for a quality and reliable workforce of DSPs to continue to carry out services. Previous research has explored factors that contribute to DSP burnout and ultimately turnover. By researching the DSP role from the DSP experience directly, this study examines other factors that contribute to …

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Contextualizing Bipoc High School Students’ Racialized Experiences Under Trump, Christina Ung May 2021

Contextualizing Bipoc High School Students’ Racialized Experiences Under Trump, Christina Ung

Master's Theses

This thesis contextualizes public high school experiences of self-identified students of color during Trump’s presidency. The study features three recent high school graduates from the same campus, and their perspectives on a series of topics related to their racial identity. It was important that this research served as a space for marginalized voices to share their lived experiences, as they are frequently left out of American curriculum. More specifically in this case, the high school is located in a small, rural town where the population is majority white and politically conservative. Through the lens of critical race theory (CRT), data …

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Planting Power Or Planting A Paradox? Urban Agriculture, Gentrification, And Community Development In Oakland, California, Elissa M. Mann May 2021

Planting Power Or Planting A Paradox? Urban Agriculture, Gentrification, And Community Development In Oakland, California, Elissa M. Mann

Master's Projects and Capstones

Urban agriculture has long been used as a tool for promoting food justice and urban sustainability in municipalities across the globe. From vertical and rooftop growing operations to community and residential garden plots, the idealistically transformative nature of urban agriculture is becoming an increasingly popular subject among scholars, city planners, policymakers, and activists alike. A handful of cautionary scholars, however, have begun to uncover the elusive role that food justice oriented urban agriculture projects can play in facilitating gentrification and displacement in low-income communities. My capstone project focuses on the relationship between urban agriculture and gentrification, specifically asking: How does …

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Mapping Out Our Space In Stories: A High School Curriculum For A Social Justice Tour Of San Francisco, Elena Ramírez Robles May 2021

Mapping Out Our Space In Stories: A High School Curriculum For A Social Justice Tour Of San Francisco, Elena Ramírez Robles

Master's Projects and Capstones

How do youth engage with the spaces around them? In what ways might students connect their personal, lived knowledge to the politics and intricacies of space? The manners in which schools approach outside-of-school learning includes non-critical Place-Based Learning and field trips as optional material; however, doing so breaks the powerful relationship waiting to be explored between Critical Geography and Critical Education. This field project uses Henri Lefebvre’s concepts of The Production of Space and Rhythmanalysis as foundations to argue for the implementation of Critical Geography into high school curricula, and offers a 9-week high school curriculum to create a student-led …

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Placing God: Defining “Post-Christianity” For Contemporary Japanese Christians, Leryan Anthony Burrey May 2021

Placing God: Defining “Post-Christianity” For Contemporary Japanese Christians, Leryan Anthony Burrey

Master's Projects and Capstones

This work suggests that we consider a new, working definition of post-Christianity. This new paradigm is in response to Western Christian thought being too dominant a force that fails to take into enough account other global experiences— like those of Japanese Christians. These reflections are based on scholarly opinions claiming that Christianity is a “global culture,” and ultimately argues for more international inclusivity in Western Christian thought and institutions, especially regarding the Asia-Pacific. Moreover, this paper illuminates how iitoko dori allows Christian thought to peacefully coexist in Japan’s greater society. The research also explores specific Japanese cultural practices that make …

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Neighborhood Reinvestment: A Changing Community In The Urban South, Jackson Nutt-Beers May 2021

Neighborhood Reinvestment: A Changing Community In The Urban South, Jackson Nutt-Beers

Master's Projects and Capstones

Since the mid-twentieth century, public and private actors across the country have been identifying sources of potential capital accumulation in the United States. Shortly after the passing of the Civil Rights Act by President Lyndon Johnson in the mid 1960s, many White families across the country fled the urban core for the suburbs leaving neighborhoods in the city center abandoned and without capital. During this period, Black families and other racial minority groups were forced to live in the blighted neighborhoods of the urban core due to a variety of racialized discriminatory housing practices that lead to the disinvestment of …

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“What Did You See? We Didn’T See Shit”: Dialectics Of Protest And Resistance In Portland, Annika Bratton May 2021

“What Did You See? We Didn’T See Shit”: Dialectics Of Protest And Resistance In Portland, Annika Bratton

Master's Theses

The murder of George Floyd sparked reinvigorated racial justice uprisings across the United States, coinciding with quarantine, pandemic, and mass unemployment, and in some places across the country, starting a fire of social unrest. Portland, Oregon received national attention for the protest efforts and mutual aid carried out by the community, while being met with brutality and violence at the hands of police. This thesis interviews five self-identified protesters from Portland, seeking answers to three central research questions: (1) What are the experiences of protesters who have been demanding racial justice on the streets in Portland since May of 2020? …

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Affordable Housing In San Francisco: A Historical Analysis Of Its Finances And Policies, Ricky H. Tran May 2021

Affordable Housing In San Francisco: A Historical Analysis Of Its Finances And Policies, Ricky H. Tran

Master's Projects and Capstones

The affordable housing crisis is not new to San Francisco. As it has been made clear several times, The Bay Area continues to face a crisis of a massive wealth disparity as housing prices continue to rise as incomes for the top earners have risen dramatically since 1999. In San Francisco, rents and housing prices are one of the highest in the nation, and people are facing rent burdens, in which a large portion of their income goes to rent, as for those with low and extremely low income are facing severe rent burdens, which take up more than 50% …

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Recreation And The Sacred: A Case Study Of Diné Bikéyah, Brian Andersen May 2021

Recreation And The Sacred: A Case Study Of Diné Bikéyah, Brian Andersen

Master's Theses

The relationship between indigenous groups and outdoor recreation is something that has been analyzed by various scholars. In the North American context, scholars have primarily focused on conflicts regarding land use, particularly as it relates to the concept of the sacred. Although these works speak to general truths, the complexity of the relationship between outdoor pursuits and Native American groups is often over-simplified. This thesis analyzes the potential of outdoor recreation as a means of economic empowerment for the Navajo people. The work draws on the various initiatives currently underway to promote outdoor recreation in the Navajo Nation. These initiatives …

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Honor Crimes: A Question Of Honor, Culture, And Humanity, Nadia N. Almusleh May 2021

Honor Crimes: A Question Of Honor, Culture, And Humanity, Nadia N. Almusleh

Master's Theses

Honor crimes, femicide, domestic abuse and violence are widely prevalent in patriarchal societies. Middle Eastern cultures deeply value protecting the chastity and honor of women. The traditional images of women and the notions of honor and shame are consistently used as justifications for violence and killings. This is not attributable to a single culture or religion. It is rather a manifestation of societal norms around gender-based violence. Feminist activism against honor crimes in the Middle East within the last decade has increasingly received social media attention. However, the impact of this social media activism on government intervention has yet to …

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Re-Centering Racial Justice In White-Dominated School Settings, Brian A. Davis May 2021

Re-Centering Racial Justice In White-Dominated School Settings, Brian A. Davis

Master's Projects and Capstones

Any institution that does not give students the critical and theoretical frameworks to understand White supremacy in the United States is an active contributor in the proliferation of this hegemonic force. White supremacy is a system that produces violence educationally, socially, politically, environmentally, ontologically, and epistemologically. The study of Whiteness and White supremacy has been discounted in high school settings for various reasons. This project seeks to solve this critical issue within the field of secondary education through the implementation of a course that unpacks White supremacy while center Black history. This course will provide students with a historical framework …

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