Migrants' experiences in space open a window to better understand how global dynamics of capital play out culturally, and within the local. Departing from the conviction that spatiality is a key component in asserting human rights (Lefebvre 1991; Mitchell 2003; Massey 2000; Marston 2000), how do hegemonic definitions of citizenship and immigrant in Spain and Ecuador affect migrants' perception and experiences of, as well as responses to, Madrid's urban spaces? How do Ecuadorian migrants experience and (re)make the city locally through transnational practices? To answer these questions, I use a transdisciplinary approach to analyze the cultural expressions emanating from spaces in Madrid that hold special significance in Ecuadorian migrants' everyday lives.The objectives of this dissertation are: 1) to analyze how Ecuadorians' different levels participation in Madrid's urban spaces, and the municipality's response to these practices, dialogue with definitions of citizenship, and with migrants' place in Spain and Ecuador's configurations of nationhood; 2) to show the interrelation between the material realities of Ecuadorian migrants in Madrid, access to space, and cultural production (and consumption), focusing on the historical specificity of postcolonial relations between Spain and Ecuador; 3) to document how Ecuadorian migrants are actively engaged in the urban planning of Madrid and Quito, making both cities through local transnational practices (Michael Peter Smith 2001, 2002).Altogether, this work shows how migrants are active subjects in the urban initiatives of both Madrid and Quito. Their local experiences in Madrid challenge and participate in global agendas of what a `modern' city should be, and show how definitions of `public' spaces become a most valuable resource to affirm private interests over the global city. Addressing the entwinement between transnational processes and migrants' experiences of locality this work shows how urban processes manifest culturally on both sides of the Atlantic.

This study explores how imagined communities based on U.S. mainstream values and social attitudes are embedded in multicultural children's literature through a critical content analysis of cultural representations in 24 Korean-American picture books. Korean-American culture is often defined through other Asian cultures in picture books and the collective interpretations of Asian culture perpetuate otherness and marginality of Korean-American culture. Otherness can be viewed through postcolonialism as a way to rethink and reconstruct the ways in which racial, ethnic, and cultural others have been repressed, misrepresented, omitted, and stereotyped by colonial mentality (Xie, 2000).The term "Asian American" was used after the Civil Rights movement by Asian Americans to claim a lawful right as representative citizens to reconstruct their own collective identities (Chae 2008). This collective identity of Asian American enhances misrepresentations of Korean culture as one of the Asian cultures. Korean-American culture in picture books is misrepresented through confusion with other Asian cultures, misunderstandings of Asian-Americans, and social mind-set of Korean-Americans. The study discusses the dominant social attitudes toward Korean-Americans as forever `new' foreigners because of the dominance of contemporary picture books which depict Korean-Americans only as recent immigrants. Ahmad (1996) states that postcolonial perspectives are often a polite way of saying "not-White" or Korean-Americans are "not-America-but-inside-America."A critical content analysis of 24 picture books published in the U.S. and 98 reviews of those books examines the representation and misrepresentation of Korean culture and Korean-American culture through the frame of critical discourse analysis and cultural studies. This study contributes to the previous studies of multicultural children's literature by differentiating from the collective approaches in which ethnic groups were grouped together in data collection and analysis.The findings of this study indicate that the "cultural diversity" celebbrated by U.S. multiculturalism has actually contributed to reinforcing the image of Korean-Americans as one of the Orientals by focusing too strongly on difference. The use of multicultural children's literature in classrooms needs to include a focus on difference as a tool used by readers to understand, not stereotype, a particular cultural group and should be combined with a focus on human connection and commonality.

In the 1990's, the U.S. saw one of the largest periods of migration to its shores in its history. This surge of immigrants can be classified predominantly as Latino or Asian, which will inevitably result in demographic changes within the country. The largest proportion of immigrants claim Mexico as their country of origin, and according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Hispanics now represent the country's largest minority population. Given these facts, it is important to examine a body of literature that warns of the "balkanization" of America and suggests an inability of this new wave of immigrants to assimilate into American society. Previous research on attitudes towards immigrants has found both cultural and economic indicators to be important determinants of public opinion on this issue. I will expand this research by examining how the public perception of the ability of immigrants to assume an "American" identity and assimilate into society will affect attitudes towards immigrants. My primary research questions are: 1) How do different conceptions of national identity affect attitudes towards immigrants? 2) How do perceptions of the ability of immigrant groups to integrate into American society affect restrictionist views on immigration policy? 3) What group and individual-level characteristics determine differing levels of support for the dimensions of American national identity? My findings suggest that the weight attributed to three distinct dimensions of national identity conditions attitudes towards immigrants and their incorporation into American society.

Canada’s public immigration discourse is usually racialized in using an ideological framework to evaluate, select and make judgements of immigrants on whether they are culturally, socially, or economically desirable to Canada. Some social and economic affairs may present a discursive context for debates over immigration and the value of immigrants to Canada. By using a critical discourse analysis of news articles on immigration in Canada’s national newspaper The Globe and Mail in four historical phases after the end of the Second World War, this study examines how the contents of “desirable immigrants” were changed throughout history. This study questions whether some social political affairs in a country or an extreme economic situation such as high unemployment can change the social boundaries of exclusion for immigrants of certain racial and ethnic backgrounds and allow more direct and exclusionary racial messages to be expressed in the discourse. The findings indicate that during economic recessions, it is more acceptable for the media and the public to express more directly racist messages about non-white immigrants, and some political factors and major social events may also influence how different ethnic groups of immigrants can be socially constructed. While a liberal democratic country like Canada may not accept overt racial discrimination, I argue that a social crisis or economic recession can change the social boundaries of exclusion for immigrants of certain racial and ethnic backgrounds and justify using more blatant racial messages in discussing immigrants.

The Path of Good Citizenship illuminates the role of public schools in attempts by white Americans to organize republican citizenship and labor along lines of race and ethnicity during a time of anxiety over immigration and the emergence of the U.S. as a global power. By considering U.S. schools as both national and imperial institutions, it presupposes that the formal education of children served as multilayered exchanges of power through which myriad actors constructed, debated, and contested parameters of citizenship and visions of belonging in the United States. Using the discursive narratives of American exceptionalism, scientific racialism, and patriotism, authors of school curricula imagined a uniform Americanness rooted in Anglo‐Saxon institutions and racial character. Schools not only became mechanisms of the U.S. imperial state in order to control belonging and access supposedly afforded by citizenship, but simultaneously created opportunities for foreigners and “foreigners within” to shape their own relationships with the nation. Ideological attempts to construct a nation that excluded and included on the basis of race and foreignness had very real implications. Using comparative case studies of Atlanta’s African‐Americans, San Francisco’s Japanese, and New York’s European immigrants, this dissertation shows how policies of segregation, exclusion, and Americanization both complicated and sustained designs for a national body of citizens and workers. Schools trained many of these students for citizenship that included subordinate labor roles, limited social mobility, and marginalized national identity rooted in racial difference. These localized analysis reveal the contested power dynamics that involved challenges from immigrant and non‐white communities to a racial nationalism that often slotted them into subordinate economic and social categories. Taken together, curricula and policy reveal schools to be integral to the mutually sustaining projects of nation‐building and empire‐building.

In Jamaica, sexual acts between men are still punishable by law. Numerous incidents of violence against gay men and lesbians have prompted human rights groups to distinguish it as one of the most homophobic places on earth. There are many cases of gay Jamaican men seeking resettlement and refuge in Canada. While any transition to a new country and culture can be challenging for immigrants, there is limited research that speaks to the experiences of the gay Jamaican men. This paper is based on stories gathered from four gay Jamaican men who came to Canada as refugees and highlights issues of acculturation related to connection with Canadian culture, letting go of the home culture, challenges in support systems and the inability to feel comfortable, confident and settled in the new Canadian environment. The project resulted in a compilation of visual stories and audio clips that were placed on a website (http://queeryingjamaica.tumblr.com/). Using the tools available through social media, the stories provide a source of representation.

The Lonely Planet advises visitors to Granada, Spain to "turn off...into the cobbled alleys of Calderería Vieja or Nueva and in a few steps you've left Europe behind." La Calderería is known for its Arab influences and North African immigrant businesses. A tourist's ability to easily step off one continent and enter another realm demonstrates an imagined border between Europe and the Orient, especially North Africa, that is created by historical narratives, policy discourses and daily practices. The antagonism between an imagined white, Catholic and European Spain vis-à-vis its North African Muslim neighbors is fundamental to the history of the Spanish nation. This East/West divide has recently been recast as Moroccan immigration, inspired by proximity and colonial legacies, since the 1980s has made Moroccan the largest immigrant group by nationality in Spain. Supranational borders, neighborhoods and specific streets participate in an intense debate about cultural difference, based on a complicated mixture of racial, ethnic and religious categories. Concurrently, more regional autonomy within the Spanish state has led Andalusia to reclaim its Islamic heritage, especially in Granada where tourism is important economically. This has dovetailed with gentrification of the Albayzín. Both the appropriation of the Islamic period of Iberian history and the contemporary social exclusion of Moroccan immigrants are realized through Orientalism. In La Calderería, tea, souvenirs, male Moroccan vendors, Western female tourists, pavement, cultural conservation, public space ordinances and police surveillance create a site where public and private space blurs and ‘practical orientalism’ constitutes subjects performing and resisting the identities prescribed to them.

In this thesis I use the case study of Portuguese construction workers in Toronto to provide an assessment of how Canada’s skill-based immigrant selection policies treat workers with low human capital. Government rhetoric and much academic writing has presented skill-based immigration programs as responding effectively to the needs of the labour market, and as a progressive move away from the racist and particularistic exclusions present in previous policies. However, the case study presented in this thesis provides a less optimistic reading of the situation. A persistent labour shortage in manual trades, and a selection system that excludes ‘blue collar’ workers from permanent membership, suggest an immigration policy that is neither in synch with the needs of the labour market nor justly administered. Through a discursive policy analysis, I critique Canadian citizenship and immigration policy in two areas. First, policies have been built on flawed assumptions about how certain segments of the labour market function, leading them to place too high a premium on human capital. Second, workers with low human capital tend to be denied permanent membership and held on precarious legal statuses. The result is a differential access to key social, civic and economic rights depending on a migrant’s skill category. An image of ‘fragmented citizenship’ therefore appears more realistic than writings proclaiming an expansion of universal rights and the emergence of a postnational mode of belonging. The new exclusions of skill-based selection systems have not gone unchallenged. In the case of Toronto’s Portuguese community, protests in 2006 surrounding the deportation of undocumented construction workers served to visibly challenge the state’s definition of what constitutes a ‘desirable citizen’. The protests generated wide public support by engaging a traditional logic of national citizenship, arguing that the Portuguese fit the bill as ‘good Canadians’, though this came at the cost of reinforcing the barriers to entry for other groups of migrants.

This thesis is a study of the current backlash against immigration and multiculturalism policies. The author looks at current arguments against both policies, and compares them to evidence. These arguments are drawn from the media; the writings of critics like Richard Gwyn, and William D. Gairdner; and the policies of the Reform Party. It will provide a historical review of the experiences of immigrant groups in adapting to Canadian society. From this review, the author identifies several consistent themes in anti-multiculturalism and anti-immigration literature, which include: multiculturalism is little more than "flash and dance", the policy is unanimously unpopular among the general public, immigrants take jobs from Canadian-born, immigrants are a burden to society, and that immigrants are not needed to offset the ageing of the Canadian population. The author concludes that these criticisms are based on misconceptions and distortions of facts. In some cases, the criticisms reflect more of an attack on minority groups rather than on these policies, and reveal a movement to reverse the pluralistic nature of Canadian society. This research comes at a time when the debate over these policies is clouded with emotion. The author makes several recommendations as to how the public education system can help counter the use of these themes in the media.

The Path of Good Citizenship illuminates the role of public schools in attempts by white Americans to organize republican citizenship and labor along lines of race and ethnicity during a time of anxiety over immigration and the emergence of the U.S. as a global power. By considering U.S. schools as both national and imperial institutions, it presupposes that the formal education of children served as multilayered exchanges of power through which myriad actors constructed, debated, and contested parameters of citizenship and visions of belonging in the United States. Using the discursive narratives of American exceptionalism, scientific racialism, and patriotism, authors of school curricula imagined a uniform Americanness rooted in Anglo‐Saxon institutions and racial character. Schools not only became mechanisms of the U.S. imperial state in order to control belonging and access supposedly afforded by citizenship, but simultaneously created opportunities for foreigners and “foreigners within” to shape their own relationships with the nation. Ideological attempts to construct a nation that excluded and included on the basis of race and foreignness had very real implications. Using comparative case studies of Atlanta’s African‐Americans, San Francisco’s Japanese, and New York’s European immigrants, this dissertation shows how policies of segregation, exclusion, and Americanization both complicated and sustained designs for a national body of citizens and workers. Schools trained many of these students for citizenship that included subordinate labor roles, limited social mobility, and marginalized national identity rooted in racial difference. These localized analysis reveal the contested power dynamics that involved challenges from immigrant and non‐white communities to a racial nationalism that often slotted them into subordinate economic and social categories. Taken together, curricula and policy reveal schools to be integral to the mutually sustaining projects of nation‐building and empire‐building.