Conventional wisdom suggests that ‘nations without states’ are seeking to preserve cultural and linguistic homogeneity within their homeland by advocating for independence or political autonomy. Accordingly, large-scale immigration has typically been seen as a threat to national minorities because newcomers tend to integrate into the culture of the majority group. In addition, even if immigrants learn the minority’s language, they are unlikely to sympathize with the nationalist movement or vote for nationalist parties. This dissertation seeks to explain why Basque nationalism, despite its historical grounding in racism and exclusivity, developed a group-based multicultural approach in response to foreign immigration. To account for this unexpected outcome, I develop two interrelated causal arguments that integrate the role of ideas and the imperative of nation building for nationalist elites. Nations are forged by a rich legacy of memories and nationalist history requires both an act of collective remembering and collective amnesia. The ideas that stem from the memories of repression constrained the choices of Basque nationalists, preventing the rise of ideas of racial purity and exclusion in favour of multiculturalism and openness. A second argument that I advance is that changing contexts are motivating nationalist elites to find new policy areas with which to distinguish the values of the majority and minority nation. The emergence of a stricter immigration framework in Spain and a backlash against multiculturalism in Europe provided Basque nationalists with an opportunity to link open citizenship and multiculturalism to the distinctiveness of the Basque nation. I apply the arguments developed through an in-depth study of the Basque case to the nationalist movements in Scotland, Quebec, and Flanders and conclude that diversity is an effective, but risky, new value that minority nationalists are employing to further their case for independence.

Abstract “Grappling on the Grain Belt: Wrestling in Manitoba to 1931,” explores the history of wrestling in the geographic region now demarcated as Manitoba, from the pre-Confederation period to the Great Depression, with particular emphasis on the period after 1896 when the Canadian West experienced its most remarkable demographic growth. Wrestling was a frequently controversial, often divisive, but ultimately dynamic, popular, and persistent cultural form that proved adaptable to changing social conditions. Far from being ‘merely’ a sport, residents of Manitoba found greater meaning in its practice beyond the simple act of two people struggling for physical advantage on a mat, in a ring, or on a grassy field. This study examines wrestling as a social phenomenon that echoed larger, and fluid, debates over sport’s ‘proper’ purpose, expressions of masculinity, respectable public conduct, and views concerning the position of immigrant and minority communities in a predominantly Anglo-Protestant society. It likewise explores the meanings that various groups in the province, demarcated by such factors as ethnicity and occupation, attached to wrestling in the decades before the Great Depression. In doing so, it illuminates wrestling as a complex and socially-significant cultural activity which, to date, has been virtually unexplored by Canadian historians looking at the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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.

No description available.

This research used tuberculosis (TB) as a lens to elucidate how migration, settlement, local agency and support networks influence migrants’ health in New Zealand. The study also examined specific characteristics of TB such as delays in diagnosis and the stigma attached to the disease to gain a broader understanding of TB experience for migrants in New Zealand. The research addressed these aims through the analytical framework of political ecology and incorporation of interviews, participant observation and media analysis. Participants in the research included immigrants from Mainland China, South Korea, and India, and New Zealand health care professionals. The study found that immigration policies, social discrimination and isolation have created structural inequalities between dominant host populations and Asian migrants in New Zealand. These inequalities compounded settlement problems such as language difficulties and limited employment opportunities, resulting in low income levels and perceived stress for Indian, Korean and Chinese people, which has affected their health and well being. Transnational policies and experiences of health care systems in immigrants’ countries of origin and in New Zealand strongly influenced health seeking behaviour of migrants, along with structural barriers such as lack of Asian health care professionals and interpreting services. Local cultural and biological factors including health cultures and physical symptoms also affected these practices. In relation to TB, structural processes along with clinic doctor-patient relationships and social stigmas created barriers to diagnosis and treatment. Factors that facilitated access to health care in general, and TB diagnosis and treatment in particular, included the use of support networks, particularly local General Practitioners from countries of origin, and Public Health Nurses, along with flexible TB treatment programmes. This study shows that the incidence and experience of TB is shaped by migration and settlement processes. It also builds upon other medical anthropological studies that have employed political ecology by demonstrating its usefulness in application to developed as well as developing countries. In addition, the study contributes to the growing area of Asian migration research in New Zealand, illustrating that migration and settlement processes are complex and need to be understood as multidimensional, thus demonstrating advantages in approaching them from a political ecological framework. / Human Research Council, University of Auckland

This research used tuberculosis (TB) as a lens to elucidate how migration, settlement, local agency and support networks influence migrants’ health in New Zealand. The study also examined specific characteristics of TB such as delays in diagnosis and the stigma attached to the disease to gain a broader understanding of TB experience for migrants in New Zealand. The research addressed these aims through the analytical framework of political ecology and incorporation of interviews, participant observation and media analysis. Participants in the research included immigrants from Mainland China, South Korea, and India, and New Zealand health care professionals. The study found that immigration policies, social discrimination and isolation have created structural inequalities between dominant host populations and Asian migrants in New Zealand. These inequalities compounded settlement problems such as language difficulties and limited employment opportunities, resulting in low income levels and perceived stress for Indian, Korean and Chinese people, which has affected their health and well being. Transnational policies and experiences of health care systems in immigrants’ countries of origin and in New Zealand strongly influenced health seeking behaviour of migrants, along with structural barriers such as lack of Asian health care professionals and interpreting services. Local cultural and biological factors including health cultures and physical symptoms also affected these practices. In relation to TB, structural processes along with clinic doctor-patient relationships and social stigmas created barriers to diagnosis and treatment. Factors that facilitated access to health care in general, and TB diagnosis and treatment in particular, included the use of support networks, particularly local General Practitioners from countries of origin, and Public Health Nurses, along with flexible TB treatment programmes. This study shows that the incidence and experience of TB is shaped by migration and settlement processes. It also builds upon other medical anthropological studies that have employed political ecology by demonstrating its usefulness in application to developed as well as developing countries. In addition, the study contributes to the growing area of Asian migration research in New Zealand, illustrating that migration and settlement processes are complex and need to be understood as multidimensional, thus demonstrating advantages in approaching them from a political ecological framework. / Human Research Council, University of Auckland

Indian immigrant women are a growing minority group within the multicultural spaces of New Zealand society. Despite Indian immigrants being the second largest, and one of the oldest, Asian immigrant groups to this country, their experiences of settling in a new and unfamiliar environment have been largely overlooked. This grounded theory study using dimensional analysis was aimed at answering the question: ‘How do Indian immigrant women engage in occupations when settling in a new environment?’ In-depth interviews and observations of participants performing daily occupations were conducted with 25 Indian immigrant women living in one of three cities/towns located in the North Island of New Zealand. Theoretical sampling with constant comparative analysis was used to guide both ongoing data collection and data analysis. Categories were examined for their relationships and dimensions to arrive at a substantive grounded theory which has been named ‘Navigating Cultural Spaces’. Performing occupations that reflected either the Indian or New Zealand cultures, or a combination of the two, were core elements in how Indian immigrant women settled in New Zealand. These ways of doing everyday tasks have been conceptualised as Working with Indian Ways, Working with New Zealand Ways and Working with the Best of Both Worlds. Working from each of these perspectives, the women sought to Create a Place in which they could ‘be Indian’ in a ‘New Zealand’ context. In order to achieve the purpose of Creating a Place, Indian immigrant women constantly shifted between the three ways of working; thus, performing occupations that allowed them to reveal as much of their Indian culture as they felt comfortable with at any given time and situation. Their actions were influenced by the people, objects and social spaces that constituted the environment in which they engaged in occupations. The significance of this study is that it reveals how the everyday occupations of Indian immigrant women are constantly modified through their interaction and interpretations of the environment, thus allowing them to move between and within the multicultural spaces of New Zealand society. This gives rise to Navigating Cultural Spaces which frames settlement as an ongoing and dynamic process and challenges the applicability of current models of acculturation in a New Zealand context. It is recommended that future research examines the migration process from an occupational perspective in order to assist with the development of migration policy and support services that best facilitate Indian immigrant women Creating a Place in New Zealand.

This research used tuberculosis (TB) as a lens to elucidate how migration, settlement, local agency and support networks influence migrants’ health in New Zealand. The study also examined specific characteristics of TB such as delays in diagnosis and the stigma attached to the disease to gain a broader understanding of TB experience for migrants in New Zealand. The research addressed these aims through the analytical framework of political ecology and incorporation of interviews, participant observation and media analysis. Participants in the research included immigrants from Mainland China, South Korea, and India, and New Zealand health care professionals. The study found that immigration policies, social discrimination and isolation have created structural inequalities between dominant host populations and Asian migrants in New Zealand. These inequalities compounded settlement problems such as language difficulties and limited employment opportunities, resulting in low income levels and perceived stress for Indian, Korean and Chinese people, which has affected their health and well being. Transnational policies and experiences of health care systems in immigrants’ countries of origin and in New Zealand strongly influenced health seeking behaviour of migrants, along with structural barriers such as lack of Asian health care professionals and interpreting services. Local cultural and biological factors including health cultures and physical symptoms also affected these practices. In relation to TB, structural processes along with clinic doctor-patient relationships and social stigmas created barriers to diagnosis and treatment. Factors that facilitated access to health care in general, and TB diagnosis and treatment in particular, included the use of support networks, particularly local General Practitioners from countries of origin, and Public Health Nurses, along with flexible TB treatment programmes. This study shows that the incidence and experience of TB is shaped by migration and settlement processes. It also builds upon other medical anthropological studies that have employed political ecology by demonstrating its usefulness in application to developed as well as developing countries. In addition, the study contributes to the growing area of Asian migration research in New Zealand, illustrating that migration and settlement processes are complex and need to be understood as multidimensional, thus demonstrating advantages in approaching them from a political ecological framework. / Human Research Council, University of Auckland

No description available.