Migration Studies Commons^™

From Dacamented To Undacamented: The Mental Health Implications Of Daca's Uncertain Future On Latino Immigrants, Isabel Cooper-Perales

Senior Theses

In response to political pressure, President Obama authorized the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2012. The program gives qualified undocumented young people access to relief from deportation, renewable work permits, and temporary Social Security numbers. This policy opened up access to new jobs, higher earnings, driver’s licenses, health care, and banking. Now that DACA’ status is uncertain, Latino immigrants are faced with severe problems of mental health and wellbeing. Ending DACA without a more permanent program or solution in place has heightened the stress and fear that families with mixed citizenship status have increasingly faced. In this …

Survival Migration & The Need For Just Policies And Front-Line Leadership In Climate Change And Migration, Nik Evasco

Master's Theses

Abstract:

This paper explores the growing phenomenon of migration due to climate change through an analysis of human rights and a review of international conventions. It argues that current migration, refugee and asylum regimes at the regional and international policy levels are inadequate to serve the needs of individuals, families and communities that are preemptively relocating or are forced to migrate due to climate change and its subsequent effects. This paper shows that environmentally-displaced migrants who are either forcibly displaced or preemptively migrating do not have sufficient recognition or legal or political protections compared to ‘traditional’ refugees or migrants. The …

Shifting Views: How Experiential Learning Shapes University Students’ Sense Of Civic Engagement And Solidarity On Migration, Karen Larke

Master's Theses

Higher education institutions have put more weight on the use of experiential learning to provide students with opportunities to grow intellectually and develop as engaged citizens. Many recent studies have looked at the quality and educational impacts of a variety of experiential and service learning experiences, yet few have explored what other ideological impacts may result from specific non-curricular experiential learning experiences. This study measured the impact of experiential learning, in the form of week-long migration-themed trips, on undergraduate student’s self-reported levels of solidarity, and related measures of civic engagement and political engagement and activism around migration issues. This study …

Roads To Resettlement: A Global Analysis Of Refugee And Migrant Integration Policies Through Education-Based Non-Profits, Dina Eldawy

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This project is an international comparative study of migration patterns and integration models, spanning global case studies of refugee and migrant communities in Latin America, the United States, and the Middle East through personal research and experience. Using participant observation and interviews, I observed and worked with three different nonprofit ecosystems in Syracuse, NY; Santiago, Chile; and Tyre, Lebanon. This paper situates all three cities in the context of our globalizing world, where global conflicts or economic conditions that affect one country have an extremely crucial impact on other countries surrounding it and beyond. I observed three host countries that, …

Perceptions Of The North American Free Trade Agreement And Mexican Migration: “What Is The Relationship Between Trade Liberalization And Labor Mobility?”, Colin Gonzalez

Political Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

In an effort to understand the effectiveness of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the author uses previous academic literature to assesses the success of the North American Free Trade Agreement’s primary and peripheral goals. To understand how North American citizens, perceive NAFTA and their future relationship with one another, the author uses survey data to analyze attitudes of American and Mexican citizens towards trade liberalization (NAFTA) and labor mobility. Regression analysis reveals that there is a positive relationship between labor mobility and trade liberalization for Mexican citizens but not for American citizens. This is a significant finding that contributes …

Population Movement And State Building: A Case Study Of Migratory Policies In Italy, Julia Pagnamenta

Student Theses

The current study examines Italian laws and policies around migratory movements since Italy first became a modern nation state in 1861 up until April 2019, when the research was concluded. This paper is a case study of Italian migratory policies. It first looks at the way Italy’s early efforts at nation building coincided with the mass emigration of its citizens, informing its policies on emigration and colonial expansion. The study then analyzes the way in which Italy developed a policy response to the growing immigrant and refugee population in the late 1980s following geo-political transformations in Europe. The evolution of …

The Untapped Potential Of Ethnic Community Networks: Urban Resiliency And The Chinese Commuter Van System In New York City, Alexandra Diane Smith

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Community resiliency begins at the local level. This explores the intersection of urban resiliency with the strength of community transit networks by evaluating the extensive Chinese immigrant inter-borough commuter van system in New York City. How should the city better empower and utilize existing immigrant transit and support networks in its strategic planning in response to disaster relief, recovery, and resiliency? More broadly, how can cities harness the realities of the 21st century - migration and climate change - and realize their potential to improve accessibility and reach in disaster relief? Better understanding the way the van system works within …

Female Genital Mutilation In The United States: Estimating The Number Of Girls At Risk, Phyllis Chesler

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Female genital mutilation (FGM) destroys the capacity of women to experience sexual pleasure. It causes serious medical complications such as bleeding, painful urination, cysts, dangerous and recurrent bladder and urinary tract infections, the growth of scar tissue that make marital intercourse a nightmare and that turns childbirth into an experience of danger and torture. Due to immigration, FGM now poses a potential health crisis in the West, both in Europe and in the United States. To estimate how many girls who live in the West are at risk, one can measure the prevalence of FGM in the non-Western countries where …

Group Distinctiveness And Ethnic Identity Among 1.5 And Second-Generation Russian-Speaking Jewish Immigrants In Germany And The U.S., Jay (Koby) Oppenheim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study investigates the ethnic identity of the 1.5 and second-generation of Russian-speaking Jewish immigrants to Germany and the U.S. in the most recent wave of immigration. Between 1989 and the mid-2000s, approximately 320,000 Russian-speaking Jewish immigrants departed the (former) Soviet Union for the U.S. and an additional 220,000 moved to Germany. The 1.5 and second-generations have successfully integrated into mainstream institutions, like schools and the workforce, but not the co-ethnic Jewish community in each country. Moreover, Russian-speaking Jewish immigrants are subject to a number of critiques, most prominently, of having a ‘thin culture’ that relies on abstract forms of …

Defending The "Bad Immigrant": Aggravated Felonies, Deportation, And Legal Resistance At The Crimmigration Nexus, Sarah Rose Tosh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the development and effects of the “aggravated felony”—an expansive legal category that has spurred the detention and deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, including many green-card-holding lawful permanent residents, over the past thirty years. Offenses in this category need not be “aggravated” nor “felonies,” but rather, include a broad range of criminal convictions, including misdemeanors, ranging from check fraud and simple drug possession to drug trafficking and murder. Non-citizens in removal proceedings based on aggravated felony convictions are mandatorily detained and almost certainly deported—usually without legal representation. Still, despite growing academic interest in deportation and the …

Migrant Domestic Labor In The Global South: The Plight Of Filipina Domestic Workers In Morocco, Sara Asselman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In studying feminist theory, I discovered that domestic and care labor are often gendered and racialized. They are gendered because they are performed almost exclusively by women, and racialized because in western societies they are often relegated to women of color or migrant women. Feminist literature provides that migrant domestic labor often entails a migration flow between countries of the global north and countries of the global south and between countries that are economically disparate. Feminist theorists often criticize political economic and social structures reproduced by neoliberalism, globalization and neocolonialism for creating a global market for migrant domestic and care …

Occupational (Im)Mobility In The Global Care Economy: The Case Of Foreign-Trained Nurses In The Canadian Context, Margaret Walton-Roberts

Global Nurse Migration Pathways: A Comparative Project

The twenty-first century has witnessed a number of significant demographic and political shifts that have resulted in a care crisis. Addressing the deficit of care provision has led many nations to actively recruit migrant care labour, often under temporary forms of migration. The emergence of this phenomenon has resulted in a rich field of analysis using the lens of care, including the idea of the Global Care Chain. Revisions to this conceptualization have pushed for its extension beyond domestic workers in the home to include skilled workers in other institutional settings, particularly nurses in hospitals and long-term care settings. Reviewing …

Migration, Return Migration, And Economic Development In Latin America, Jose R. Bucheli

Economics ETDs

This dissertation presents a collection of essays that study ways in which human mobility affects economic development in origin countries. It focuses on Latin America—a region historically connected to episodes of large-scale migration, recipient of significant remittance flows, and victim of sluggish economic growth. The first two chapters examine the effects of return migration from the United States on aggregate economic welfare and non-state violence in communities of origin in Mexico. The analysis is motivated by the historic reversal in the Mexico-U.S. migration flows in the early 2000s. The third chapter analyzes the interaction between remittances, migration, and secondary school …

Coordination Sensation: When Ngos Strike Down Sex Trafficking, Megan Prangley

Honors College Theses

Human sex trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery that is prevalent in the United States and across the globe. Currently, a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) exist to diminish sex trafficking. I seek to discover how powerful the efforts of NGOs are in combating sex trafficking. I argue that NGOs are successful in combating sex trafficking to the extent that their efforts are coordinated. Although an NGO may experience individual success in decreasing sex trafficking in a given area, without coordinating their efforts with the efforts of other NGOs, they will lack attaining the full knowledge, power, and resources …

In The Name Of Profit: Canada’S Mount Arrowsmith Biosphere Reserve As Economic Development And Colonial Placemaking, Richard M. Hutchings, Marina La Salle

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Taking a critical heritage approach to late modern naming and placemaking, we discuss how the power to name reflects the power to control people, their land, their past, and ultimately their future. Our case study is the Mount Arrowsmith Biosphere Reserve (MABR), a recently invented place on Vancouver Island, located in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. Through analysis of representations and landscape, we explore MABR as state-sanctioned branding, where a dehumanized nature is packaged for and marketed to wealthy ecotourists. Greenwashed by a feel-good “sustainability” discourse, MABR constitutes colonial placemaking and economic development, representing no break with past practices.

Resettling Female Refugees From The Democratic Republic Of Congo: Obstacles And Their Implications For Intervention, Makenzie Jo Winger Pasma

Global Studies Student Projects

No abstract provided.

Where Did They Go? Analysis Of Out-Migration From Mammoth Cave National Park, 1920-1940, Collins U. Eke

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The 52,830-acre Mammoth Cave National Park, located in the karst region of south-central Kentucky, was formally established in July of 1941, culminating nearly three decades of park creation that displaced several thousand residents of the region. This thesis sampled residents using the 1920 manuscript census for the United States Census of Population and Housing and tracked their migration destinations using the 1930 and 1940 manuscript censuses. Migration patterns for the entire sample, as well as by race and homeownership status, were identified through mapping. Out-migrants generally chose locations north, west, and east of the proposed park area, noticeably neglecting the …

“This Is What You Want! This Is What You Signed Up For!”: How Agencies Responsibilize Resettling Refugees, Kelsey Wilber

McNair Scholars Research Journal

US refugee resettlement agencies face a daunting task: they are federally mandated to achieve resettlement within a severely restricted time frame and funding limit per refugee, all while creating integrated, “self-sufficient” US citizens. As a result, resettlement agencies must guide resettling refugees through a rigidly scheduled set of activities that are designed to expunge ‘dependency’ while finding resettling refugees jobs, homes, schools, and community belonging. Interviewing resettlement case workers and volunteers in a northwestern US city, I find that staff respond to this double bind by using informal tactics to transform the character of resettled refugees into good neoliberal ‘American’ …

When Crayons Meet Tibetan Living Room Walls: Early Childhood In Exile, Emma Hart

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study aims to understand early childhood caregiving among Tibetan refugees living in Nepal. Due to the brain’s enormous developmental plasticity from ages zero to three, children’s experiences during this period are extremely important to explaining their future learnings in school, interactions with people, and engagements with their surroundings. Through interviews and observations, Tibetan parents shared their conceptions of early childhood, parent-child interaction norms, dreams for their children, and how their status as refugees in Nepal affects these. Research was conducted in two Pokhara district Tibetan settlements and one settlement in Mustang. Connected by the flow of children and adults …

Teaching English To Refugees Through Storytelling, Emily Camplejohn

Senior Honors Theses

Many refugees are trying to learn English while assimilating to a new culture. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has identified several needs and goals of refugees including competence in the language of the receiving culture and participation in a new, welcoming community. Storytelling, expressing or receiving a narrative through oral or written communication, can be implemented for teaching English to refugees with these goals and can link academic learning with real life experiences. In addition to using storytelling as a meaningful way to interact with language, storytelling also fosters a community within the classroom. The teacher is …