“Me Siento Segura Aquí. No Quiero Irme.” “I Feel Safe Here. I Don't Want to Leave.” Examining the Impact of Gentrification and Displacement On the Well-Being of the Latina/o Community

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Description

This qualitative research study’s main objective is to explore how Latinas/os in South Phoenix, Arizona perceive the impact of the light rail construction. This phenomenological study utilizes three data sources: pláticas (individual interviews), intergenerational pláticas (focus groups), and a mapping…

This qualitative research study’s main objective is to explore how Latinas/os in South Phoenix, Arizona perceive the impact of the light rail construction. This phenomenological study utilizes three data sources: pláticas (individual interviews), intergenerational pláticas (focus groups), and a mapping exercise. The theoretical framework is composed of three theories—Ecological Systems Theory, Critical Race, Theory, and Latina/o Critical Theory—which serve as the basis for analyzing the co-collaborators’ lived experiences in relation to the light rail. They view this ongoing development project as symbolic of changes that have taken place in South Phoenix that do not take into account the will of the residents, but rather emphasize the ways that city officials disregard the opinions of residents. Co-collaborators’ experiences related their perceptions, decision-making, and the coping skills they have developed during the construction of the light rail, which I consolidated into five themes: 1) Conexión Emocional con el Sur de Phoenix/Emotional Connection to South Phoenix, 2) Conexión Histórica con el Sur de Phoenix/Historical Connection to South Phoenix, 3) Esperanza y Miedo/Hope and Fear, 4) Movilidad/Mobility (Movilidad Social/Social Mobility y/and Transportación/Transportation), and 5) El Derecho a Quedarse en un Vecindario Transformado/The Right to Remain in a Transformed Neighborhood. The study concludes with implications for social work praxis and recommendations for further study and strategies derived from these findings.

Date Created
2022
Agent

“We identify as poor because of the money we earn not because of the way we live”: Perceptions and Experiences of Poverty among Mexican Immigrant Women on the West Side of Chicago

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This study investigates the perceptions and experiences of U.S. urban poverty among Mexican immigrant women living in La Villita, a neighborhood in Chicago. La Villita is the largest Mexican and Mexican American neighborhood in the Midwest with a population of…

This study investigates the perceptions and experiences of U.S. urban poverty among Mexican immigrant women living in La Villita, a neighborhood in Chicago. La Villita is the largest Mexican and Mexican American neighborhood in the Midwest with a population of 77% Mexican and Mexican Americans, with women making up 43% of the population, and 34% of the population living below the poverty line. Although women are less than 50% of La Villita’s population, immigrant women are more likely to experience poverty and earn lower wages than immigrant men. Using qualitative methods and a demographic survey, this study explores the ways in which immigrant women perceive and experience living in a low-income neighborhood. This study addresses the following three questions: 1) How do citizenship status, migration experience, and gender inform the ways Mexican immigrant women experience and manage poverty in Chicago? 2) How do their pre-migration experiences in Mexico influence the women’s perceptions of U.S. poverty? And 3) How do Mexican immigrant women develop and/or find resources from in their low-income neighborhood in Chicago? This study applies a transnational feminist framework to thirty-five semi-structured interviews and demographic surveys. The findings demonstrate that women’s perceptions about poverty are constructed before migrating to the U.S. Once in the U.S., these perceptions begin to change because of their continued referencing to what used to be their living situations in Mexico. However, even though some of the women might not identify as poor after years living in the U.S., their perceptions of escaping poverty in the U.S. are based on attaining basic necessities such as shelter, food, and clothing. Based on the findings of this study, the women’s experiences of poverty informs us that the lack of social opportunities in the women’s lives hinders their full participation in society, an exclusion that perpetuates poverty. Thus, this study shifts the focus from material deprivation to social exclusion as an additional factor that sustains poverty. The last finding demonstrates how women manage living in poverty and how La Villita itself is a resource that offsets some of the material and social challenges they face in the U.S.
Date Created
2021
Agent

Dialogic Cultural Relationships of Expertise, Knowledge, (Inter)dependence and Power Within the Acculturating Family: Exploring the Technolinguistic Brokering Experiences of Adolescents and Their Immigrant Non-English Speaking Mothers

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Description

This dissertation explores the technolinguistic brokering experience of adolescents and (im)migrant non-English speaking mothers in acculturating families. By focusing on the performance of cultural intermediation, I examine the dimensions of technolinguistic brokering and their influence upon the Adolescent Language Technology…

This dissertation explores the technolinguistic brokering experience of adolescents and (im)migrant non-English speaking mothers in acculturating families. By focusing on the performance of cultural intermediation, I examine the dimensions of technolinguistic brokering and their influence upon the Adolescent Language Technology Broker (ALTB) and mother relationship. Additionally, I explore the factors of power present as a result of the complexities of the ALTBs role to connect their mother to the English speaking community. This research uses a qualitative approach to explore concepts of expertise, knowledge, (inter)dependence, relational maintenance and quality, and power in the dialogic cultural relationship. Research indicates that expertise in the form of culture, cultural interactions, multilingual, and relational maintenance and quality contribute to the ALTBs capabilities in building cultural relationships. Moreover, to assist in dealing with power tensions created by differing levels of expertise and knowledge, ALTBs and mothers communicatively construct an (inter)dependent cultural relationship. I highlight practical implications, discuss limitations, and provide recommendations for future directions.

Date Created
2020
Agent

Digital Developmental Village: The Political Economy of China’s Rural E-Commerce

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This dissertation investigates how rural e-commerce survives and thrives in resource-scarce rural China in the contemporary era. Building upon literatures on developmental state, state capitalism, industrial policy, and platform economy, this dissertation proposes a new theoretical framework, termed Digital Developmental…

This dissertation investigates how rural e-commerce survives and thrives in resource-scarce rural China in the contemporary era. Building upon literatures on developmental state, state capitalism, industrial policy, and platform economy, this dissertation proposes a new theoretical framework, termed Digital Developmental Village, to understand China’s rural e-commerce development against rural China’s broader socioeconomic and politico-institutional contexts and the evolution of China’s political economy by underscoring three levels of interactions between the central government, local governments, e-commerce platform giants, and rural entrepreneurs.

This dissertation draws upon the data from in-depth interviews with different kinds of participants involved with e-commerce at different places in which e-commerce-related activities occur through multi-site fieldwork across six East China provinces, together with data from secondary data gathering, to scrutinize interactions of four parties at each level. At the national level, this dissertation investigates the coevolution of the Digital Developmental Village model and finds that the bureaucratic evolution and emergence of new economic sector initially created and subsequently developed by private actors will be eventually subjected to the influence of China’s state capitalism. At the local level, in consideration of the factors of local governance approach, the pre-existing robust local economic sectors, and migration patterns, this dissertation creates a typological framework to explore the formation of e-commerce villages in varied settings of the combinations of three factors above. At the individual level, this dissertation finds that rural e-commerce entrepreneurs may achieve economic successes through some more intense forms of embeddedness, which are deemed commercially unwise in the extant literature, within differing local socioeconomic and politico-institutional contexts in China. Lastly, this dissertation analyzes the expansion of the Communist Party of China into rural e-commerce in the business incubator role and sees such organizational expansion as the efforts to implicitly exercise control over rural e-commerce. In sum, through top-down policy directives and bottom-up party organizational expansion, the Chinese state has been gradually transforming rural e-commerce to a new form of state capitalism with potential global impacts, which can empower resource-scarce villages and infuse two kinds of industrial policies to stimulate technological advances.
Date Created
2020
Agent

Trans(figurations): On Pain and the Embodied Experiences of Domestic Workers and their Children

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Description
This dissertation examines the embodied experiences of domestic workers and their children as they emerged in organizing campaigns aimed at achieving a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights in California. I analyze the ways domestic worker organizers have historically conceptualized their…

This dissertation examines the embodied experiences of domestic workers and their children as they emerged in organizing campaigns aimed at achieving a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights in California. I analyze the ways domestic worker organizers have historically conceptualized their movements around demands for dignified labor and immigration reform. I argue that their demands for protections and rights force them into a contradictory space that perpetuates vulnerability and recasts illegality—a space where domestic workers’ bodies get continuously figured as exploited and in pain in order to validate demands for rights. I trace this pattern in organizational survey material across generations, where worker’s voices resisted prefigured mappings of their bodies in pain, and where they laid out their own demands for a movement that challenged normative frameworks of fair labor and United States citizenship that continue to center race and gender in the transnational mobility of migrant women from Mexico and Central America. Furthermore, I explore the embodied experiences of domestic workers’ children, and the embedded power relations uncovered in their memories as they narrate their childhood accompanying their mothers to work. Their memories provided an affective landscape of memory where the repetitive, and demeaning aspects of domestic work are pried apart from western, colonial arrangements of power. I argue that their collective embodied knowledge marks a reframing of pain where transfiguration is possible and transformative patterns of becoming are prioritized. I propose interpreting these collective, embodied memories as a constellation of shimmers—luminous points that align to expose the relationships between workers, their children, employers, and their families, and the specific context in which they were produced. Altogether, they create what I call a brown luminosity—forces activated by their mothers’ labor that created multiple worlds of possibilities for their children, resulting in nomadic memories which move beyond victimizing their mother’s bodies to enable an ever-changing perspective of the ways their labor has radically transformed homes, livelihoods, and transnational spaces.
Date Created
2019
Agent

Globalization and Sex Trafficking: Risk Factors for Women in an Expanding Marketplace

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Description
In this project, I examine the effects of an expanding global marketplace on women. I explore the dynamics of patriarchy in society, the role of technology and communication, and the rise of manufacturing in developing countries.
Date Created
2013-05
Agent

Law Enforcement and Community Relations in Arizona

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Description
This project was focused on critically analyzing legislation that was proposed in the Arizona State Senate concerning the release of peace-officer information in the wake of involvement in deadly-force incidents. The motivation for this project was drawn from my experience…

This project was focused on critically analyzing legislation that was proposed in the Arizona State Senate concerning the release of peace-officer information in the wake of involvement in deadly-force incidents. The motivation for this project was drawn from my experience serving as a legislative intern for the Senate democratic staff during the spring of 2015. The first section includes details of the bill itself (SB 1445) and the process it underwent within the legislature. This includes an introduction to the controversies and stakeholders involved in the process. Second, data from interviews that I conducted with both those in support and those in opposition to the bill is analyzed. This section includes an in-depth look into the perspectives of stakeholders that may not have come out during public testimonies. Third, an outline of my own perspective on this bill and its process is included. Fourth, in a segment entitled Contextualizing Race in Policing, the national and local context of this bill is analyzed in order to arrive at conclusions that define problems underlying legislation like SB 1445. Fifth, in a segment entitled Next Steps, ideas are outlined on how to strengthen positive relationships between law enforcement and communities, drawing heavily from the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing.
Date Created
2016-05
Agent

(Im)migrant voices: an ethnographic inquiry into contemporary (im)migrant issues faced by (im)migrant university students

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This dissertation examines contemporary issues that 18 (im)migrant university students faced during a time of highly militarized U.S.-Mexico border relations while living in Arizona during the time of this dissertation research. Utilizing critical race theory and public sphere theory as…

This dissertation examines contemporary issues that 18 (im)migrant university students faced during a time of highly militarized U.S.-Mexico border relations while living in Arizona during the time of this dissertation research. Utilizing critical race theory and public sphere theory as theoretical frameworks, the project addresses several related research questions. The first is how did (im)migrant university students describe their (im)migrant experience while they lived in the U.S. and studied at a large southwestern university? Second, what can (im)migrant university student experiences tell us about (im)migrant issues? Third, what do (im)migrant university students want people to know about (im)migration from reading their story?

Three conceptual constructs, each composed of three categories, that described the different (im)migrant experiences in this study emerged through data analysis. The first of these conceptual constructs was the racialized/ing (im)migrant experience that categorically was divided into systemic exclusions, liminal exclusions, and micro-social contextual exclusions. The second concept that emerged was the passed/ing (im)migrant experience where (im)migrant university students shared that they felt they had a systemic pathway to citizenship and/or that their immigration authorization gave them privilege. This concept was also categorically divided into systemic inclusions, liminal inclusions, and micro-social contextual inclusions. The last concept was the negotiated/ing (im)migrant experience, which described ways that (im)migrant university students negotiated their space/place in the public sphere while attending a large, public university in Arizona. As with the other two concepts, three categories emerged in relation to negotiated/ing (im)migrant experience: systemic negotiations, liminal negotiations, and micro-social contextual negotiations. It is (im)migrant university student experiences that give individuals a better understanding of the complexities that surround immigration. The (im)migrant narratives also highlight that inclusion and exclusion from the public sphere is a complex and dynamic process because all (im)migrant students, including U.S. citizens, experienced moments of inclusion and exclusion from the U.S. public sphere.
Date Created
2016
Agent

A participant-generated model of intercultural friendship formation, development, and maintenance between Taiwanese and Chinese students

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Description
This dissertation aimed to identify the factors that facilitated the friendship initiation, development, and maintenance between Taiwanese and Chinese students and the influential relationship among those factors. Nine Taiwanese and nine Chinese students studying at one Taiwanese university were recruited…

This dissertation aimed to identify the factors that facilitated the friendship initiation, development, and maintenance between Taiwanese and Chinese students and the influential relationship among those factors. Nine Taiwanese and nine Chinese students studying at one Taiwanese university were recruited for this study. The Chinese students were in Taiwan for at least two years. The participants were friends with the other party for at least 8 months. This study was divided into three stages. In the first stage, participants were required to provide factors that facilitated their friendship with the other party. Fifty ideas were collected. In the second stage, participants were asked to clarify those factors and then categorize those factors. Fourteen categories were identified in this stage. The participants, then, voted on factors that affected their friendship formation, development, and maintenance with other party. Fifteen factors were voted the highest among those factors. Those 15 factors were imported into interpretive structure modeling (ISM) software for the next stage. In the third stage, 18 one-on-one interviews were conducted, and 18 ISM diagrams were generated. ISM provided a method to identify the influential relationship among those factors. According to the results, the friendship formation model was proposed. Five stages were identified in this model: exploring, matching, engaging, deepening and bonding.
Date Created
2016
Agent

Conceptualizing and operationalizing empathetic expressions: scale development, validation, and message evaluation

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Description
The goals of this dissertation were to develop a measurement called the

Empathetic Expressions Scale (EES) for Negative and Positive Events, to evaluate expressions of empathy from the receiver perspective, and to provide initial evidence for empathetic expressions as a separate…

The goals of this dissertation were to develop a measurement called the

Empathetic Expressions Scale (EES) for Negative and Positive Events, to evaluate expressions of empathy from the receiver perspective, and to provide initial evidence for empathetic expressions as a separate construct from the empathy experience. A series of studies were conducted using three separately collected sets of data. Through the use of Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), the EES for Negative Events and the EES for Positive Events were created from the emerged factors. A five-factor structure emerged for the EES for Negative Events, which include Verbal Affirmation, Experience Sharing, Empathetic Voice, Emotional Reactivity, and Empathetic Touch. This scale was found to have good convergent and discriminant validity through the process of construct validation and good local and model fit through Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). A four-factor structure and two-factor structure emerged for the EES for Positive Events. The four factors include Verbal Affirmation, Experience Sharing, Empathetic Voice, and Emotional Reactivity. The two factors in the second structure include Celebratory Touch and Hugs.The final study focused on evaluating different empathetic expressions from the receiver perspective. From the receiver perspective, the participants rated five types of empathetic expressions in response to negative or positive events disclosure. According to the findings, Emotional Reactivity was rated as the most effective empathetic expression in negative events on both levels of supportiveness and message quality scales whereas Verbal Affirmation received the lowest ratings on both criteria. In positive events, Experience Sharing was evaluated as the most supportive and highest quality message whereas Verbal Affirmation was evaluated the lowest on both criteria. Taken together, the series of studies presented in this dissertation provided evidence for the development and validity of the EES for Negative and Positive Events.
Date Created
2016
Agent
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