Migration Studies Commons^™

Playing With International Students From Asia: An Exploration Of Cultural Commonalities And Differences In Developmental Transformations (Dvt), Hazuki Okamoto

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Asian international students in the United States face a multitude of challenges such as language barriers, differences in cultural norms and behaviors, and identity confusion while navigating a foreign landscape. Developmental Transformations (DvT), a form of drama therapy, may apply to these challenges by enabling participants to explore different identities and express themselves creatively beyond the language barrier. This community engagement project was designed for Asian international students to be seen and heard by utilizing DvT. Within an in-person workshop, five participants played with their shared stories, and explored international and cultural roles in group DvT. Key takeaways from the …

Cross-Institutional Collaboration And Exhibit Making: “On The Gold Mountain: Chinese Mining History And Heritage Of Idaho” At The Idaho Museum Of Mining And Geology, Jordan Kathleen Bennett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Gold Rush, which brought many new immigrant communities to the American West, made a permanent impact on American culture by prompting the development of many Western towns. However, the Chinese immigrant mining population in the Boise, Idaho area has had little museum representation despite the more than 300,000 Chinese people who emigrated to the US between the 1840s and 1880. To rectify this, the Idaho Museum of Mining and Geology (IMMG), in collaboration with members of the Payette National Forest, the Asian American Comparative Collection, Boise State University/US Army Corps of Engineers, and the University of Denver, developed an …

Moving Through The Violence: Yemeni Migrants And The Reconstruction Of Lifeworlds In Cairo, Jonathan Hearn

Theses and Dissertations

This Master’s thesis is based on an ethnographic study, following the lives of a small number of Yemeni people rebuilding their lives in Cairo. Their displacement is the consequence of many factors not least the outbreak of war in 2014. In response to this, I ask: In the midst of ongoing conflict, how do Yemeni migrants go about reconstructing their lifeworlds in Cairo? That is, to ask how are Yemeni migrants in Cairo responding to the violent disruption of their social realities and what sense are they making of the consequences. The reorganisation of social realities disrupted by conflict means …

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, …

Navigating Complexity Of Serving Displaced Communities: A Study Of Yemeni Community-Based Organizations In Egypt, Alya Mohammed Al-Mahdi

Theses and Dissertations

Forced displacement is a global crisis that poses challenges for nations like Egypt. Despite international NGO support, escalating displaced individuals have overwhelmed existing capacities. Refugee Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) have emerged as a natural response from the communities themselves to bridge the gap between the state and NGOs and the refugee community. However, CBOs in Egypt face challenges that impact their operation and continuity. Through qualitative research, this study aims to explore the experience of the Yemeni CBOs. Through interviews with seven people from six CBOs conducted through field visits and online calls, this research uncovers the dynamics of Yemeni CBOs …

Pregnancy In United States Immigration Detention: Listening To Migrant Women's Stories, Amanda Heffernan

Nursing ETDs

Over the last five years, dramatic shifts in immigration policy across three presidential administrations have impacted migrants arriving at the U.S.’ southern border, with unique impacts on pregnant migrants. The purpose of this study was to document, analyze and contextualize the experience of pregnancy in United States immigration detention. Specifically, the study aimed to: 1) understand the situation of pregnant migrants detained in United States immigration detention facilities between 2017-2022; 2) situate the experience of detained pregnant migrants within multiple contexts, including their own individual and family migration stories and the larger context of United States immigration policy; and 3) …

Choosing To Come Back: Second-Generation Egyptians Returning As Social Change Agents, Hajar Khalil

Theses and Dissertations

Research has found that upon visiting their parents’ homeland, second-generation immigrants were able to gain a better understanding of where they came from, allowing them to reflect upon their own lives in respect to their family history (Marschall, 2017). Some researchers call this journey the ‘self-awakening’ or ‘searching-self’ journey (Christou, 2003). The aim of this research is to understand the process of second-generation Egyptians return journey to their parent(s)’ homeland in order to create social change. The two main questions posed are: 1) How do second-generation Egyptians construct their narrative identity, and 2) How do they conceptualize themselves as social …

Ambigú Trashumante Barra De Café Ambulante Ambigú Trashumante Barra De Café Ambulante, Augusto Martin Rivero

Master's Projects and Capstones

Ambigú Trashumante Barra de Café Ambulante is an applied research project which took shape over the course of a calendar year from May 2022-2023. A six-person team evolved including the personified project itself, united as one communal entity in collaboration. The project entailed creation of a bicicargo, or cargo bike–useful art becoming a mobile coffee bar and literal vehicle embodying justice through coffee offered freely in México, as facilitated through decolonized ethnography and Mesoamerican Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR). The project’s theoretical framework centers on Bruguera’s (2012) arte útil conceptualization. Five core patterns emerged, including the right to thrive in …

Colombian Women’S Experiences Of The Canadian Refugee And Asylum Adjudication Process, Camila N. Parra Carrillo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The present thesis “Colombian women’s experiences of the Canadian refugee and asylum adjudication process” is an ethnographic description and analysis of the experiences of Colombian refugee women as they move through the refugee and asylum adjudication system in Ontario, Canada. Using concepts such as liminality, politics of waiting, hermeneutics of suspicion and arbitrariness, the refugee and asylum adjudication system is shown to be a site of power and domination that creates negative emotions in the people who face it, especially in the oral hearing as a central event in the process. Centering Colombian refugee women’s voices, their experiences and emotions …

Pendulums Of Personhood? Exploring The Multitudes Of Immigrant Womanhood In Spanish-Maghrebi Literature, Kaitlyn C. Sisco

Honors Theses

Often considered articulations of in-between-ness and bearers of fraught selfhoods, the work of Spanish-Maghrebi authors has been widely debated in literary fields, with academics arguing that it constitutes a largely homogenous set of texts about the standard immigrant experience. However, by placing these texts in a single category, such arguments end up erasing the immensely varied identities expressed and represented by Spanish-Maghrebi authors. This thesis seeks to address this issue by paying particular attention to how Spanish-Maghrebi authors negotiate different types of immigrant subjectivities in their writing. Specifically, I analyze the works of three contemporary Spanish-Maghrebi writers, Najat El Hachmi, …

"We're Like Ghosts, But We Have To Be." Invisibility & Liminality Among Kentuckiana's Undocumented Population, Sophie Amaya

Undergraduate Theses

The controversial topic of illegal immigration has repeatedly and deeply divided the United States. There has been, in recent years, a spotlight on immigrants from Latin America, and impersonal claims are being spread in news articles everywhere. For this research, survey questionnaires and ethnographic interviews were used to facilitate a sample of undocumented immigrants from the Louisville, Kentucky, and Southern Indiana (An area known as “Kentuckiana”) to provide insight on their experiences. This thesis aims to examine the effects of this uncertain status on the well-being of Latin American immigrants in this region, where not much research is done on …

Deep Roots In Eroding Soil: Building Decolonial Resilience Amidst Climate Violence And Displacement In A Louisiana Bayou Indigenous Community, Lia Mcgrath Kahan

Senior Independent Study Theses

The Pointe-au-Chien Indigenous community of coastal Louisiana is fighting for survival as climate change and socio-political factors threaten to displace them from their ancestral home. This project takes an ethnographic and historical approach to exploring how colonization and climate change have influenced Pointe-au-Chien tribal members’ ability to stay on their ancestral land. Climate projections estimate that the bayou this community has lived alongside of for generations will soon be unrecognizable, leading to potential displacement and devastating cultural loss. Due to the increasing severity of climate change, it is crucial to look to the experiences of frontline Indigenous communities to support …

All Roads Lead To Darrington: Building A Bluegrass Community In Western Washington, James W. Edgar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Through the mid-twentieth century, a significant pattern of migration occurred between Appalachia and the Pacific Northwest, with Washington’s thriving timber industry offering compelling economic opportunities. Many workers and families from western North Carolina settled in the small mountain town of Darrington, Washington, frequently accompanied by their banjos and guitars. As a group of young bluegrass enthusiasts from Seattle established relationships with Darrington’s “Tar Heel” musicians, a collaborative music community formed, laying the foundation for the region’s contemporary bluegrass scene.

Drawn from a series of ethnographic interviews, this project illuminates the development of a bluegrass community in western Washington, while identifying …

Platforms And Power: Transnational Guatemala, Eric Sippert

Doctoral Dissertations

Moving beyond studies of social movements and NGOs, this dissertation examines how grassroots groups in Guatemala use transnational flows of goods, ideas, and people to create new organizational forms and types of political action. This case study of an organization of returned migrants, former combatants, and indigenous youth demonstrates how marginalized groups create platforms that facilitate connections between disparate actors across nation-state and identity borders. Drawing on field research in Guatemala’s Western Highlands, I explore how these platforms emerged, threats to them, their effects, and what they can teach us about political organizing in crisis. I begin by tracing the …

How Racialization Shapes Work Conditions For H2a Migrant Farmworkers: Literature Review, Zoi Johns

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

Scholars have argued that an existing gap between the idealization of American prosperity and actualization of American exploitation occurs on account of racialization. Racialization refers to the process in which subsets of people are reduced to a set of occupational practices, beliefs, or narratives that work to define their low position within societal hierarchy (Garcia 2014). This concept distinguishes itself from racism as it focuses on the conditions that exist in order for the reproduction of racism and oppression to occur (Gonzalez-Sobrino and Goss 2019). Thus, it will be argued that the reproduction of these tenants occurs capitalistically and perpetually. …

Contextualizing The Health Of U.S. Farmworkers, Gabrielle Hyde

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

Farmworkers often exist in vulnerable social and occupational positions that make accessing health care a challenge. This literature review seeks to outline the health of U.S. farmworkers in the context of these vulnerabilities through a review of the existing literature. It provides a short background to understand how we have become reliant on immigration to feed our nation and to give a snapshot of where these farmworkers come from and what their health concerns are. A key topic in this literature review is the social context of these health burdens including the attitudes of providers, farmworker’s perceptions of their own …

Journeys Of Middle-Class Syrian Women To And In Berlin: Modes Of Subjectivity, Possibilities And Becoming, Randa Adnan Bashlah

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an invitation to dive into the possibilities that emerge in the multiple stages of displacement journeys of a group of diverse Syrian women from a middle-class background, who happen to live in Berlin today, and learn about the displaced bodies' experiences from a personal scale. By capturing the journeys' nuances and trajectories, this study demonstrates how the mobile subjects interact differently and create different attachments with different power structures in the various modes which emerge through the journeys' different spatial and chronological stages. Looking at how displacement adds layers of complexity to the social's messiness and diversity, …

From Stateless People To Citizens: The Reformulation Of Territory And Identity In India-Bangladesh Border Enclaves, Md Rashedul Alam

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation analyzes nation-building in hitherto ungoverned territories of two Indian chhitmahals in Bangladesh and explores the transformation of their residents from stateless Indian nationals to citizens of Bangladesh. Chhitmahals comprised nearly two hundred enclaves located along the Bangladesh-India border that belonged to one country but were located inside another’s territory. Chhitmahals came into existence with the partition of India in 1947; their non-contiguous locations kept them without state administration and citizenship rights. People developed political councils and adopted illicit practices to survive in the absence of the state, but the impossibility of exercising sovereignty in chhitmahals led Bangladesh and …

Korean Fusion: Consuming A Globalized Korea Through Food And Music, Ashley Hong

Honors Theses

In Koreatown, Los Angeles, one of the largest centers of Korean immigrants in the Western hemisphere, restaurant owners are constantly creating new forms of Korean cuisine that both challenge and preserve traditional methods of Korean culinary methods. Based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews conducted in Koreatown, Los Angeles in December 2020, I examine how Korean restaurant owners are navigating the current food scene while also maintaining their ethnic identity in a globalized landscape such as Los Angeles. I conceptualize the idea of a “twist” which can be understood as components of fusion food that allow Korean restaurant owners to …

La Mera Verdad: Exploring Immigrant Latino Fatherhood, Jessica Martinez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to gain a better understanding of the current experiences of immigrant Latino fathers and their families in Southern California, and to examine the barriers and facilitators that impacted their paternal involvement. The literature suggests that father-absence diminishes the ability of a child to thrive in life and yet immigrant Latino fathers are more at risk of all the factors that lead to father-absence, such as poverty and other added stressors. Likewise, these fathers have been noted to experience a lack of fathering in their childhood, which speaks on generational trauma creating the father wound …

The Biological Manifestation Of Health, Culture, And Disease In Turn Of The Twentieth Century San Francisco, Trisha Walker

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Between 1880 and 1920, a period known as the Great Migration, the city of San Francisco became one of the most diverse areas in the United States due to the steady arrival of immigrants. These groups of immigrants primarily consisted of individuals from China, Japan, Ireland, Italy, Eastern Europe, and Mexico. However, each of these groups faced various forms of xenophobia from American-born citizens when they tried to either earn a living or assimilate into American society. These immigrant groups were frequently impeded by who was, and who was not, considered to be “white” in the eyes of the dominant …

Queen Nanny, A Case Study For Cultural Heritage Tourism: The Archaeology Of Memory And Identity, Lacy Risner

Liberal Arts Capstones

This research project is intended to provide a foundation of knowledge of the Maroon culture in Jamaica, through the legends of one of their most prominent founders, Queen Nanny, as an aid for those who want to educate themselves before approaching community leaders about tourism development. Documentation of Queen Nanny’s life is contested and shrouded in mystery. Yet, that is part of what makes her memory so powerful. The various roles that Queen Nanny is associated with feature her adamant pursuit of an independent life for herself and her Maroons. Whether she is catching bullets or teaching the Maroons how …

What Will You Do Here? Dignified Work And The Politics Of Mobility In Serbia, Dana N. Johnson

Doctoral Dissertations

Serbia is said to have one of the highest rates of brain drain in the world. For the generation glossed as the “children of the 1990s,” stances toward mobility and migration have shifted along with geopolitics. Following nearly two decades of wartime entrapment, in 2009 the conditions of possibility for mobility fundamentally changed for Serbian citizens. Of both symbolic and material consequence, the country’s return to respectable geopolitical standing also marked a shift toward more nuanced stancetaking in relation to mobility and migration. Namely, by the time of my research, the expectations of youth—not only of “normal mobility” but of …

Postcolonial Trauma In The Mediterranean: The Italian-Libyan Transnational Community, Rosario Pollicino

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study aims to recuperate the Italian collective remembering originating from the colonial offense in Libya. Focusing on works of testimony in different genres of contemporary literature written by the Italian former settlers in Libya, I analyze how these former settlers who moved to Libya have been subjected to different kinds of traumas by the Fascist government. I focus on how these traumas, individual and collective, are documented through these works and discuss how they continue to be relevant today. Drawing on sociology, anthropology, history, literary and trauma studies I argue that these cultural representations prove the existence of a …

A Parade Of Identities: Negotiation Of Ethnic Identities In Three New York City Cultural Parades, Julia M. Herrera-Moreno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“A Parade of Identities” is a digital project that applies social theories of international migration, psychology and cultural anthropology to ethnographic visual data in order to analyze ethnic identity and urban space appropriation found in three of New York City’s cultural parades. The project traces and analyzes the historical meaning and emerging directions in terms of ethnic identity construction, of NYC immigrant parades through the use of the author’s photography and video collections (2012-2018) of St. Patrick’s Day, Columbus Day and Chinese New Year parades, in association with a website and blog via digital humanities’ platform. Additionally, by activating the …

Refugees From Syria Caught Between War And Borders: A Journey Towards Protection, Maissaa Almustafa

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation examines the global crisis of protection through the lens of the Syrian refugee crisis and the particular experiences of refugees’ journeys to Sweden.

In doing so, the dissertation challenges the dominant narratives that represent refugees either as victims who deserve aid in their regions, or as threats when they exert their agency and journey towards the global north. In the same vein, the dissertation problematizes the dominant narrative of the “European crisis of migration” and proposes that the “unauthorized” arrivals of refugees in Europe are reflections of a global crisis of protection, a crisis that develops as a …

An Exploratory Study Of Acculturation Experiences Of Graduate Student Immigrants At The University Of San Francisco, Courtney Lamar

Master's Theses

This study explores the shared challenges during the acculturation process of graduate student immigrants pursuing higher education in the United States. 13 graduate student immigrants at the University of San Francisco discuss their experiences of cultural adjustment into U.S. culture. Through qualitative interviews and thematic analysis, this study seeks to understand the acculturation experiences of graduate student immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area of the United States. This analysis is based on the individual-level experience examining attitudes and acculturation strategies in the dominant society. Analysis, possibly policy implication for institutions of higher education, and possible directions for future research …

Brentwood, New York 11717: A Multimedia Ethnographic Study On An Immigrant Town, Ashley Mungo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Brentwood, New York is a working-class town of about 60,000 situated forty miles east of Manhattan on Long Island. As of the 2010 Census, 68.5 percent of residents are Latino or Hispanic, with 10.7 percent of the overall population living below the federal poverty level. Less than ten percent of the population has obtained a bachelors degree or higher. Street violence, gangs, and overall crime are frequently addressed at community meetings, igniting a fierce debate on immigration within the town that has reached national media, with critics arguing that the exponentially increasing Latino migrant population has caused this crisis.

The …

Labor Migration And Intangible Cultural Heritage In Postsocialist Rural Romania, Alin Rus

Doctoral Dissertations

The processes of industrialization and modernization, as well as those emerging from them, have produced radical changes in the lifestyle of the peasantry. These transformations went hand in hand with the degradation of community lifestyle and of the customs it contained. Among the many rituals performed by rural communities, this dissertation focuses on mummers' plays. The present paper is an attempt to outline a brief history of mummers' plays beginning with an age when they were simple community rituals and going to the recent decades when they entered a rapid decline, and when state institutions together with international organizations such …

Türkisch Und Deutsch: Shifting Understandings Of The German, The Citizen, And The Foreign, Isabelle Arden Mudge

Senior Projects Spring 2018

This paper follows the history, role, and perception of Turkish-Germans as Germany developed into an immigrant country but remained with a narrow concept of Germanness. I explain how the country did not historically consider itself a nation of immigration, apparent in its citizenship requirements, lack of coherent immigrant policy, and pushback against foreigners. Germany still has difficulty seeing those with different backgrounds as German; an intricate system of exclusion has developed over the years, changing and evolving but remaining in place.