Racial disparities in educational achievement have been a persistent phenomenon in the United States. This inequity has been described as educational "opportunity gaps", "education debts", and "achievement gaps". Education debt refers to the year after year amassed racial and ethnic achievement gaps that result in a debt for most minoritized groups in comparison to White and Asian students. Despite the repeated significance of focusing on education inequalities concerning race and ethnicity, there is a paucity of research that examines the interrelatedness of school climate and academic achievement specifically with respect to racial and ethnic differences. The ecology of human development framework provides a complex lens to better understand the students' experiences in the environment of the school. For this quantitative, correlational, cross-sectional study descriptive statistics and structural equation modeling (SEM) were applied to answer the research questions about the extent that high school students' perceptions of school climate predicted their self-reported grades, whether they differed as a function of students' race and ethnicity, and whether the magnitude between race/ethnicity groups was substantial. Overall, evidence was found for the unceasing and persisting education debt for minoritized groups regarding their grades, but also in connection to the influence of school aspects on their academic achievement. For Black and American Indian/Alaska Native students the results indicated an intensification of the education debt through the considerably lower impact of school climate characteristics on grades than for White and Asian. For Mixed, Latin@, and Other the debt appeared to be unchanging due to similarly small impacts as for White and Asian, yet, not lessening due to their lower grades.

Cebolla Canyon, in the El Malpais National Conservation Area, New Mexico, was homesteaded extensively in the late 18th and early 19th centuries by Hispanic and Euro-American families. The local environment provided grazing resources for sheep and cows, and the ability to homestead in this area allowed families to pursue seasonal or year-round occupation. The regional histories of these migrants differ, but the exploitation possibilities of land and timber provided people with the promise of land ownership and sustainability with respect to their necessities and desires; these are strongly based on sociopolitical factors of the time. Focus here is on Hispanic and Euro-American homesteading sites, comparatively. Dendrochronology can provide target dates for felling events, and in combination with archaeological remains we can grasp the duration of occupation for homesteading sites. We can also identify methods in which ethnicity can be delineated in the historical archaeological record. Further insight is provided by historical documents, such as census records and homesteading patents that can give us an idea of how people institutionally- or self-identified as an ethnic group. Additionally, information about interactions between ethnic groups can be parsed from historical documents that may not be fully present in the archaeological record.

This work is a qualitative study that aims to create a deeper knowledge regarding teacher's perceptions on gender and gender equality in an intercultural preschool. This study also clarifies whether preschool can counteract the stereotypicaltraditional gender norms andif so, how it iscapable todo that. Based on a social constructivistperspective,in this study I indicate that children constructgender through interaction with othersin different social contexts. Additionally, based on intersectional perspective, I suggest that it is the relationship between various categories such as ethnicity and gender which is detrimental in constructing gender for preschool children. For example, in meeting with other cultures boys may gain more value than girls. The method of the study is based on interviews and observations and for interpretation of the collected data Iused literature and web based documents. The results show that preschool teachers have some degree of awareness when it comes to gender and equality between sexes. In accordance with this study teachers have enough knowledge about the importance of language in communication with children and they show good ability to distinguish what kind of influence language might haveon children's gender making. On the other hand, in pedagogical practical activities, for example in the design of physical environment one can notice some lack of knowledge among preschool teachers when it comes to creation of gender equality between children. Mystudy also indicates that parents from other ethnicities create inequality between children's gender, and preschoolteachers emphasize thatit is their duty to counteract such inequalities via intercultural pedagogy.

This study aims to answer two interlinked central questions with respect to Montenegrins’ divide over statehood and identity: Why and how Montenegrins, whom were once called ‘the purest and the best of Serbs’, sought to end their century-long common state experience with Serbia and instead establish their own nation-state in 2006, and what explains the rise of Montenegrin national identity and its transformation into nationalism? In attempting to answer these questions, it traces the historical development of Montenegrin national thought dating back to the early 20th century when Montenegro was annexed by the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Through the use and examination of opinion polls, newspaper articles, political and ethno-cultural state policies implemented by the ruling political elites, and their interviews, public speeches, and press conferences, this study also seeks to unveil how Montenegrin-ness evolved over time. The central argument running through this thesis is that Montenegrin nationalism as a political phenomenon was precipitated through elite competition. In their competition over social, political, or economic resources, the Montenegrin elites, through the implementation of political and ethno-cultural state policies and the active use of media outlets, managed to turn certain facts and events into points of reference for the citizens of Montenegro in the way they identify themselves. Thus, those events have become the basis of people’s belonging to a certain community and helped demarcate that specific community (Montenegrins) from that of Serbs. Backed by the reconstructed meaning of Montenegrin-ness, this emerging Montenegrin national consciousness facilitated the breakup with Serbia and the declaration of independence on 21 May 2006.

This dissertation offers an alternative lens to understand Canada’s gradual embrace of multiculturalism. Scholars have typically “worked back” from Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s famous 1971 declaration to unearth the origins of multicultural legislation, focusing on departmental policies, intense lobbying by ethnic organizations, and changing attitudes during the sixties’ container of “third force” (of neither English nor French origin) activism. This story of Canadian multiculturalism is told from the grassroots level of immigrant leisure, where a pluralistic envisioning of English Canada was foreshadowed, renegotiated, and acted out “from below.” It argues that the thousands of European immigrant men who played and watched sports on Toronto’s sport periphery were agents of change. They created a competitive model of popular multiculturalism that emphasized cultural distinctiveness during a period of rapid social and political transformation and national self-reflection. By the 1980s, the first-generation immigrants and community leaders moved this model of competitive pluralism into transnational spheres and interacted with other diasporic projects when they sent their Canadian-born children on “homeland trips” to Europe to discover their roots in the context of sport tournaments. At the same time, popular multiculturalism moved into the mainstream when the City of Toronto appropriated soccer fandom as the example for its own rebranding as a metropolis of urban harmony and conviviality. This dissertation also studies how and why one immigrant community played an outsized role in the grassroots organization of diversity. Italians were the first to establish a profitable model out of ethnic sport, and the estimated 250,000 people who celebrated unscripted on the streets of Toronto after Italy’s 1982 World Cup victory, it is argued, produced a watershed moment in the history of Canadian multiculturalism. The World Cup party inaugurated new modes of citizen participation in the public sphere, produced the narrative with which Italians formed a collective memory of their post-migration experience, and prompted mainstream political and commercial interests to represent themselves to the public in the symbols and language of multiculturalism as sport. This dissertation also shows how the movement of a male-driven, competitive pluralism to the centre, sometimes accompanied by outbursts of rough masculinities, revealed the paradoxical problem that in the new vision of inclusivity, cultural distinctiveness had to be identified, maintained, and sometimes defended to survive. / Graduate / 2019-02-05

The overall aim of the five studies that make up this thesis is to elucidate constructions of being old from the perspectives of gender and ethnicity. One of the studies uses quantitative data and four use qualitative data. The sample in study I consisted of 125 participants from the Umeå 85+ study, aged 85 to 103 years old, who were able to use Likert scales in responding to questions. Studies II and III involved content analysis of interviews with old persons scoring on the extremes of the resilience scale. In study IV, interviews with nine Sami women were analysed using grounded theory. In study V, four interview situations were subjected to discourse analysis. Study I showed statistically significant correlations between the scales measuring resilience, sense of coherence, purpose in life and self-transcendence. These scales were supposed to measuring a common dimension, which is here interpreted as “inner strength”. There was a significant correlation between women’s “inner strength” and perceived mental health. The femininities found were associated with “being connected”, “being an actor”, “living in the shadow of others” and “being alienated”. The masculinities found were associated with “being in the male centre”, “striving to maintain the male facade” and “being related”. The femininity associated with “being an actor” and the masculinity associated with “being in the male centre” were pronounced in those participants assessed as having high resilience. Old Sami woman were found to be balancing within various discourses, including being a reindeer owner versus not owning reindeer, being Sami versus being Swedish, speaking in Sami versus speaking in Swedish, dreaming about the past versus looking to the future, being equal to men versus living in the shadow of the male herders, and changing for survival versus striving to retain uniqueness as a Sami. Study V revealed that shifts in power between the interviewer and the interviewed can be related to the discourses of age, gender, education, body, ethnicity and ideology. This thesis presents a complex picture of what it means to be among the oldest old. The ageing, gendered and ethicised selves cannot be seen as socially and culturally fixed. For the women, the femininity expressed in “being connected” involved being satisfied, content and having positive relationships. “Being an actor” involved a stress on the person’s own strength and own choices. The femininities experienced as “living in the shadow of others” and “being alienated” generated narratives about dissociation and loneliness. For the men, it seemed important to relate to themselves and to other men. However, the masculinity expressed in “being related” involved an alternative form of masculinity, focusing on the importance of daily work, new relationships, and reflecting on the meaning of life. The Sami women showed strength in being able to position themselves between various discourses, but their narratives also showed tender sadness when they spoke of their longing for the past and for their mother tongue. The reflection on how narratives are constructed by both the interviewed and the interviewer in relation to their access to various discourses of age, gender, education, ethnicity and ideology in different interview situations can be important for increasing awareness of the role of these discourses. Various ways of constructing femininities and masculinities must be studied if we are to avoid ageism developing in society. Analyzing and reflecting on the importance of age, gender and ethnicity from a constructivist perspective may reduce stereotypical descriptions of the oldest old.

Ethnicity is one of the powerful concepts in social sciences. It encourages social scientists coming from different academic disciplines to think over its roles, influences and power within communities which are shaped at various level. Particularly in the globalised world, traditional approaches such as primordalism, essentialism or instrumentalism have difficulty to provide a powerful framework to understand complexity and power of ethnicity in diasporic spaces which host different identity formations, experiences and cultural hybridisation. Accordingly, these traditional approaches miss differences among human beings who associated themselves with certain ethnicities. For this reason, social scientists tend to understand the concept of ethnicity with alternative approaches. Unlike traditional approaches, social constructionism does not seen ethnicity as fixed, stable homogeneous things. Rather, ethnicities refer to a cognitive process which is shaped by people’s attitudes, perceptions or interactions. Approaching to ethnicity as a cognitive process allows us to go beyond universality and sharp definitions of ethnicity. Also, it emerges out various interpretations in diasporic spaces where ethnicity can be reproduced in various ways. By relying on this theoretical framework, this research seeks to understand the reproduction of Armenianness in diasporic spaces. Through focusing on Turkish, Lebanese and British Armenians, it searches answers for following questions a) What are the components of Armenianness in Turkey, Lebanon and Britain? b) How are the components of Armenianness interpreted in diasporic communities in Turkey, Lebanon and Britain? c) How is Armenianness reproduced among Armenian youngsters in Turkey, Lebanon and Britain? It is hypothesised that Armenianness is not a holistic form, it can be observed as “a patchwork” consisting of various patterns and colours. In order to materialise research aims and goals, the research was supported by field works in Istanbul, Beirut and London between 2011 and 2013. Throughout the data collection period, in-depth interviews, ethnography and participant observation were preferred to not only identify components of Armenianness, but also to create datasets for comparing and analysing the cases. The datasets have been analysed by ANCO-HITS to demonstrate similarities and differences among various reproduction forms of Armenianness in numerical ways. As a result of the ANCO-HITS analysis, Armenianness was ranked in each case according to participants’ scores. Later on, two participants (having the most negative and positive) were introduced through referring findings and fieldwork notes which derived from ethnography. This research shows that Armenianness is observed in various forms. It is highly heterogeneous in diasporic spaces and experienced in different ways. Interpretations of youngsters are varied. It sometimes seems to be ethnic, nationalist, political, moderate or congregational. It also demonstrates that attitudes, perceptions as well as interactions of youngsters with Armenians and non-Armenians can be effective parameters differentiate Armenianness in diasporic spaces.

Magister Psychologiae - MPsych / Due to the history of Apartheid in South Africa, cross-racial adoption is a fairly recent practice which was only legalised when the law was amended in 1991 so that prospective parents were allowed to adopt a child from a different race to them. As the consequences of the past linger, the most common form of cross-racial adoption is White parents adopting Black children. Studies on cross-racial adoption have been extensively conducted internationally, but research in South Africa is sparse. In this research study an explorative case study of a cross-racially adopted young adult was conducted in order to explore and describe the formation of his identity. The study adopted a Social Constructionist approach to knowledge and transcripts from the interviews with the participant were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). IPA allows for a detailed exploration of the personal lived experience of a research participant and focuses on understanding how people construct their experiences and make meaning. Identity Process Theory (IPT) which is consistent with a social constructionist epistemology, was the theoretical framework used, through which the findings in this study were integrated. Findings indicated that the participant of the case study had challenges forming a coherent self-identity and that his adoption status and ethnicity played an important role in his identity development. Furthermore, findings showed that the social context both promoted and impeded his search for identity. Promotion of identity formation was always associated with a clearer understanding and sensitivity of people regarding the plight of the participant as a cross-racial adoptee. With the knowledge gained, it is hoped that families and psychological and welfare professionals will become better informed and better equipped in so far as empathy, sensitivity and best practice relating to the support for cross-racial adoptees are concerned.

This dissertation employs network analysis in the study of crime. This methodological approach is the common factor in the three studies included in the dissertation. The overall objective is to see what the network analytical approach has to offer to the study of different aspects of crime. The data employed in the analyses comprise offences registered by the Stockholm police that have also been tied to a suspect. In the study of supporter violence, this data is supplemented with information on offences for which persons have been convicted. The first study focuses on supporters whom the police regard as particularly prone to violence. The criminal networks of these supporters are studied for the years 1994-1997. The supporters are also compared with their known co-offenders. The study shows that a large proportion of the crimes committed by the supporter group are violent offences. For the most part, the supporters’ are involved in loose-knit criminal networks and in general their co-offenders are more criminally active than they are themselves. Certain of the supporters appear to constitute links between the supporter group and more serious criminals active in the Stockholm area. The second study examines the ethnic composition of networks of youths suspected of violent offences during 1995, as well as the persons against whom these young people commit their offences. The study shows that the registered violent crime committed by youths in Stockholm is characterised by ethnic heterogeneity. The conclusion is that whom these youths commit crimes with and against respectively is primarily decided by factors other than the youths’ ethnic background. The third study focuses on gender factors relating to networks of youths suspected of violent offences during the course of 1995. The study compares the structure of the registered violent offending of girls and boys respectively. The study is based on the theoretical assumption that acts of violence may constitute an opportunity to construct gender. The study shows that apart from previously established differences in the levels of violent activity presented by girls and boys respectively, the structure of their violent offending is strikingly similar. A further conclusion is that the violent crime of girls and boys is characterised by sexual homogeneity. This is seen as indicating that gender construction by means of violent crime primarily takes place between boys and other boys and between girls and other girls. The assertion of superiority that violence involves is thus most often directed at persons of the same sex, girls primarily attempt to assert superiority over other girls, and boys over other boys. The dissertation also contends that as a method, network analysis has made several important contributions to the study of the research questions. In all three pieces of research, network analysis has made possible important insights into the phenomena under study, which would not have been identified had alternative methodological approaches been employed. / <p>Alternativ titel: Tre perspektiv på brottsliga nätverk: Supporterbråk, etnicitet och genus</p>

This thesis examined how skin-tone, gender, and sexuality, within the entertainment industry, help shape the micro-level process by which racial identity is constructed in American culture. The thesis analyzed and critiqued existing ideologies of race across the Americas, with specific reference to Jamaica and the United States. Issues and questions of re-representation within American popular culture are central concerns: in particular, the ways that Black women's roles are defined and redefined through the positionality of female performance artists within the male-dominated music culture. The thesis argued then that skin-tone is fundamental to the understanding of blackness, as American society continues to view race through the lens of the popular entertainment industry. The study examined the positionality of the light-skinned/or biracial Black woman's identity is fixed sexually within the racialized context of American society. The thesis concluded that the glorification of the light-skinned/or biracial Black female recreates a socio-historical and cultural-political context that simultaneously devalues the darker-skinned Black woman.