Global Studies Commons^™

The Long Arc Of Global Citizenship: Historical Foundations, Modern Challenges, And Institutional Innovation At Rollins College, Wenxian Zhang

Faculty Publications

The concept of global citizenship can be traced back to the Greek and Roman periods in Western civilization, as well as to ancient Eastern philosophies. Representing both a prescriptive ideal and an aspirational faith in humanity, the notion is closely linked to the historical development of cosmopolitanism, transnationalism, and transnationality. This study first reviews the rich historical roots and core values of global citizenship, along with the growing need for global citizenship education in the modern era. It then highlights several influential individuals who strongly championed its principles, including theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein and internationalist and …

External Debt In Sub-Saharan Africa: A Five Country Case Study On External Lending, Andres Ramirez

International Studies (MA) Theses

This thesis examines China as a new external lender to Africa and analyzes if their large infrastructure loans are leading developing countries into debt distress, compared to Multilateral and Commercial Private financing. A regression analysis is run on a 10-year data set, 2014-2024, and analyzes the external debt service-to-revenue ratio, relative to the external debt stock by lender, across a panel of five East and West African economies, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Rwanda, and Benin. The empirical findings in the analysis shows that commercial private debt causes the most strain on a country’s external debt service to revenue ratio, but …

International Student Athletes And The Covid-19 Global Pandemic: Disruption, Uncertainty, And Coping, Isabella M. Franks, Trent A. Petrie, Whitney G. Moore, Carmyn Hayes

Journal of Athlete Development and Experience

COVID-19 and its ripple effects (e.g., social distancing, sport cancellations, quarantining) negatively affected the careers of collegiate student-athletes. The disruption to university systems and collegiate athletics and the stress and uncertainty felt globally likely increased international student-athletes' (ISAs) risk for distress. Yet, ISAs also possessed unique characteristics and were immersed within supportive sport environments, which may have shaped their psychological responses in distinct ways. The COVID-19 pandemic created an opportunity to understand how ISAs, as individuals navigating both athletic and international identities, responded and coped. To date, no study has examined the initial coping experiences of international collegiate athletes, even …

Civic Activism Of Refugee Community Organizations And Their Effectiveness In Supporting Refugees, Anis Zaman

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

The development and governance architecture of migration policy often lacks migrants' perspectives. Thus, in most cases, migration policies generate conflicts between migrants and host communities. In this regard, refugee-led community organizations (RCOs) offer solutions by promoting collective action among refugees. RCOs play a vital role in fostering collective action by refugee communities to alleviate suffering and assert refugee rights. However, RCO’s operations and interactions in the host country are challenging and are shaped by the nature of migration governance and the host government’s tolerance for refugee activism. The nature of migration governance dictates the spaces for refugee civic activism. This …

Domestic Gastrodiplomacy In The U.S. During The Great Depression And International Relations Theory, Leah Tucker

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

International Relations scholarship has generally treated food as an outward-facing instrument of soft power, leaving its domestic political functions comparatively underexamined. This paper argues that, during periods of systemic crisis, food policy can also operate inwardly as a mechanism of regime stabilization with broader political implications. Using New Deal food programs during the Great Depression as a case study, it introduces the concept of “domestic gastrodiplomacy” to describe how the management of subsistence can reinforce confidence in governing institutions when that confidence is under strain.

The paper evaluates this claim through realist, liberal, and constructivist perspectives. Each highlights a different …

Does A Common Threat Unite?: Alliance Formation In East Asia Under Chinese Pressure, Sean G. Mcclellan

Honors Theses

The study explores whether a shared geopolitical threat fosters alliance formation among East Asian nations, focusing on Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea in the context of increasing Chinese influence. Integrating insights from international relations theory and social psychology—particularly Realistic Conflict Theory and the out-group unifying effect—the research evaluates whether perceived Chinese aggression corresponds with increased positive sentiment toward the United States. Utilizing data from the Asian Barometer Survey, linear regression analysis is conducted to assess how perceptions of Chinese and U.S. influence, democratic values, and political affiliation shape public attitudes. Results show that while negative views of Chinese and U.S. …

Semi-Peripheral Whiteness In A Global City: Central And Eastern European Women In Dubai, Hana Rubenstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone examines how Central and Eastern European (CEE) women navigate professional mobility in Dubai and asks to what extent Dubai enables them to bypass the post-socialist stigma attached to their semi-peripheral European identity. Situated at the intersection of migration studies, gender, and critical scholarship on semi-peripheral whiteness, the study addresses the limited attention paid to CEE women as economic actors outside European contexts, where they are often either absorbed into the category of “Western expatriates” or reduced to highly gendered stereotypes. Grounded in a qualitative, interpretivist approach, the study combines digital discourse analysis of 50 publicly accessible LinkedIn profiles …

Reconfiguring Dependency: China's Belt And Road Initiative And Development In Ethiopia And Nigeria, Alexander Freund

University Honors Theses

This thesis examines China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Africa through the frameworks of dependency theory, postcolonial theory, and neo-colonialism. As China's global economic influence has expanded throughout the twenty-first century, the BRI has emerged as a major source of infrastructure financing and development across the Global South, particularly in Africa. While critics frequently portray the initiative as a form of "debt-trap diplomacy," supporters argue that Chinese investment offers an alternative to the neoliberal conditionality historically associated with Western-led International Financial Institutions (IFIs) such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. This study addresses two central research questions: …

Negotiating Complementary Pathways In Europe: Faith-Based Actors And Humanitarian Corridors In Italy And Belgium, 2015-2017, David J. Sulewski

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

For decades, migration has ranked among the most pressing issues in European domestic and regional politics as the number of forcibly displaced persons seeking protection continues to rise. Complementary Pathways, developed as an alternative to the retrenchment of state-led refugee resettlement and restricted access to asylum, have gained increasing prominence in policy discourse and practice. Existing scholarship often explains their emergence through transnational policy transfer or government-led initiatives. Less attention, however, has been given to cases in which civil society actors initiate and negotiate such policies with the state. This dissertation examines the development of one such model—Humanitarian Corridors—focusing on …

Pipelines And Power: Governance, Conflict, And Hybrid Political Orders In Nigeria's Niger Delta, Nkasiobu Wodu

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Abstract

Many conflict-affected states in the Global South can be described as Hybrid Political Orders—governance arrangements where informal authority and formal state institutions coexist, overlap, and contest for power. In Nigeria's Niger Delta, this phenomenon is clearly evident. In this context, the exercise of governmental authority extends beyond the Weberian State. Local and non-state actors such as ethnic-based organizations, former combatants, and traditional authorities routinely perform government-like functions within their spheres of influence.

This study analyzes how extractive corporations, informal authorities, and the Nigerian state co-produce governance and shape patterns of conflict and cooperation in the Niger Delta. Its central …

Digital Communication And The Evolution Of Ideological Narratives In Indonesia: Insights From Social Media Platforms, Tia Mariatul Kibtiah, Muhammad Fikri Fawazi

Journal of Terrorism Studies

This study examines how pro-caliphate and anti-democratic narratives are articulated and normalised within YouTube comment spaces in Indonesia. As the world’s largest Muslim-majority country with high levels of digital engagement, Indonesia provides an important context for analysing how political-religious discourses circulate through everyday digital interaction. The research analyses 1,354 YouTube comments related to the caliphate, governance, and democracy. Data were collected using Google Apps Script, manually filtered for relevance, and examined through qualitative content analysis informed by Social Network Theory (SNT) and the Radicalisation Factor Model (RFM). The findings show that 34.49% of comments endorsed ideological pro-caliphate narratives, while 35.97% …

Middle Management Diplomacy: An Examination Of Us Foreign Policy Analysis In Middle-Echelon Diplomatic Professionals, Isaac R. Silvino

Master's Theses

This study analyzes the role which managerial level U.S. military Foreign Area Officers and Foreign Service Officers play in shaping and implementing U.S. foreign policy. By analyzing the individual professional at the middle-echelons of an organizational hierarchy, we make an effort in dispelling ourselves from obscured perceptions of IR centered on character and state idealization driven narratives. Doing this may help bridge the foundational gap between academics and practitioners while shifting towards a paradigm of IR analysis focusing on human agency and decisions.

Result

Individual managerial echelon diplomats do not directly make policy, but rather play a crucial role in …

A Stadium In Our Backyard: Community Participation In Stadia Redevelopment Projects, Sofia Zazueta

Master's Theses

The Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid, Spain and the Chase Center in San Francisco, California are two stadium redevelopment projects that exemplify the stakeholder dynamics that come into play when developers pitch a multipurpose stadium located a few blocks away from people’s backyards. Urban development patterns must be in constant evolution to meet the needs and demands of the current generations. In cities, stadia redevelopment projects have entered the picture to reimagine the role that these structures once played. The stadium once used for the sole purpose of holding matches has become a venue that now hosts different events such as …

La Maquiladora De Sueños Is Where The “American Dream” Ends: The Socio-Cultural Impact Of Hai(T)Ijuanenses In The United States-México Borderlands, Pedro Aleman Perfecto

Master's Theses

Historically, Tijuana has been the destination for migrants who have been left out from the United States, Mexico, and the rest of the world. The city is at the epicenter of globalization where many transit, leave, and arrive. Sometimes considered a “third country” due to its binational and bicultural identity with its sister city, San Diego, California. The growing number of Haitian refugees that arrived in Tijuana in the mid 2010s to seek asylum in the United States overwhelmed the city’s infrastructure and left the Haitian community vulnerable, yet it created new opportunities and reshaped new identities in the region. …

Hidden Behind Happiness: Bhutan’S Global Image And Ethnic Exclusion, Deepesh Das Shrestha

Master's Theses

Bhutan has gained international recognition for its philosophy of Gross National Happiness (GNH), which promotes holistic development through principles of well-being, environmental sustainability, cultural preservation, and good governance. Yet this celebrated image conceals a darker history: the systematic expulsion of the Lhotsampa, the Nepali-speaking ethnic minority of southern Bhutan. This study critically explores the contradiction between Bhutan's international image as a model of happiness and the lived experiences of Lhotsampa refugees who were displaced during the early 1990s.

Using a qualitative phenomenological research design, the study draws upon in-depth semi-structured interviews with six resettled Bhutanese Lhotsampa refugees living in the …

Archives Of The Future, Ka Oskar Ly

Masters Theses

Archives Of The Future is a practice-based thesis that invokes the archive and the future as simultaneous.

This research insists on the recentering of HMong Indigeneity and its own rooted traditions of HMong Queerness and HMong Feminism as ancestral knowledge systems.

They are the medicine. To recover their cosmological capacity is to traverse centuries of systematic eradication by empires and patriarchy.

I treat artistic making, community encounter, memory, and materials as equally valid ways of knowing and as collaborators. Field research from 2020 to 2026 moves through kinship and artisan teachings. It spans Southeast Asia, France, the United States, and …

Silicon Rivalry: Understanding The U.S.-China Ai Competition In Southeast Asia, Daniel Christopher Kent

Master in Public Policy Theses

In the rising global strategic competition between China and the United States, artificial intelligence (AI) has taken on a special significance given its potentially transformative impact upon economics and security. Yet while the dialogue around the “AI race” is typically centered on foundational model capability enhancement, application in security contexts, and chip design and manufacturing, there is much less attention paid to its impact on geopolitics. In particular, AI diplomacy—the work of a state to spread its model of AI governance, evangelize its AI companies, and develop critical AI interdependencies and linkages around the world—is far less studied. Nowhere is …

Global Health Financing Of Diagonal Interventions: Building Resilient And Sustainable Health Systems In Sub-Saharan Africa, Lucy Kim

Master in Public Policy Theses

Background: Global health financing has historically prioritized disease-specific “vertical” programs over broader “horizontal” strengthening of general health systems. Vertical programs in HIV have led to unprecedented reductions in mortality worldwide, but HIV remains a significant public health threat in sub-Saharan Africa, where vertical strategies have long been criticized for creating fragmented health systems. In response, global health strategies have shifted towards combining vertical investments with broader horizontal activities, commonly referred to as “diagonal” programming. While evidence suggests that diagonal programming has the potential to create more resilient and sustainable health systems, evaluating its value for money is challenging due to …

Inherited By “Merit”: What Caste Carries Across The Indian American Diaspora, Aarushi V. Jaiswal

English Undergraduate Distinction Projects

This project traces the rhetorical formation termed “meritocratic nationalism,” a political vocabulary that makes national belonging conditional on moralized merit, converting structural advantage into the language of individual character. Meritocratic nationalism is traced across three political figures whose rhetoric represents successive moments in a single ideological trajectory. Reading Narendra Modi’s 2014 and 2018 Independence Day addresses and his 2014 Madison Square Garden speech to the Indian American diaspora as the formation’s originating texts, this project argues that Modi’s recurring moral tetrad of conduct, values, traditions, and ability translated the structurally concentrated advantages of India’s upper-caste professional class into a universalist …

Vietnamese American Anti-Imperialism: South Vietnamese History And Analysis Of Publications Pre-1975, Jeannie Nguyen

Master's Theses

During the Vietnam War, citizens contested US imperialism at multiple levels. In South Vietnam, citizens published newspapers and magazines to challenge their government and expose the depth of US aggression in South Vietnamese society and culture. Inside the imperial core, Black, Chicano, and Asian American activists formed solidarities to resist the war and challenge racial inequality. At the intersection of imperialism inside and outside its borders, lies a group of South Vietnamese students and scholars who became American, migrating during the war via state-structured projects. However, in response to the heightening of war and drawing inspiration from their ‘Third World’ …