Magister Educationis (Adult Learning and Global Change) - MEd(AL) / The notion of student persistence is one that remains a topic for lifelong learning. Many scholars pursue an understanding of this phenomenon yet it remains an unsaturated subject for further studies. Furthermore, many countries embrace international students in their universities and colleges for various reasons. South Africa is no different. The intake of international students at this particular institution of interest is mainly faith-based; many of these students are associated with the same faith or have some religious background. Combining the two phenomena (persistence and international studentship) seems an area that could open doors to new knowledge. So I ask the question: “Do foreign students persist more consistently than local students/nationals? And if so, why?” This then formed the basis for my key question in this study: “What are the relationships between social integration and student persistence?”

The thesis examines four films by Lee Han—Wandeugi (2011), Thread of Lies (2013), A Melody to Remember (2016) and Innocent Witness (2019)—that highlight disability problems in contemporary South Korea. While exposing the prejudice against and misunderstanding of people with disabilities embedded in society, these motion pictures promote social integration through development of trusted relationships and effective communication within familial structures. The representations of disability indicate that the cinematic images of exclusion can reinforce disabled characters' marginalized identity and promote inclusive efforts among the viewer at the same time. Through textual, cultural, theoretical analysis, it is argued that the films progressively decrease discriminative description of disability and gradually empower isolated individuals, making Innocent Witness an exemplary disability rights film.

With globalization and migration of people and ideas becoming an increasing reality around the world, the needs of immigrant families and students is vital for countries to consider, particularly within their educational systems. This is true especially in the Nordic countries, where the national discourse of equality and egalitarianism are increasingly questioned due to increased awareness of inequality in society as immigration from outside of Europe continues to rise, particularly in Finland. Multiculturalism and integration are thus a relatively new but pressing concepts gaining attention in the Finnish education system. Research in the Nordics that has looked at approaches to integration has typically looked at the institutional practices of integration, particularly in schools, but research on families’ responses to these efforts has often not been nuanced enough to consider their experiences holistically and in depth. Literature from the Nordics has often also taken deficit perspectives on immigrant families and their communities. This study takes an asset-based, narrative approach to understand the knowledge of immigrant parents of their experiences with schools in Finland and their aspirations for the education of their children. Using a sociocultural framework to understand identity as constructed through practice, it combines narrative inquiry with ethnographic approaches to decolonize research on immigrant families in the Nordics. Through the narratives of three racialized immigrant parents, their experiences with belonging and engaging in practices that span across national borders allow for new conceptualizations of integration that move beyond traditional assimilationist and deficit perspectives.

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In the literature on immigrants, the focus has been mostly on the migrants themselves or the way receiving societies react to their arrival. In sociology, there is also a long tradition dedicated to studying how residential contexts and neighborhoods impact the opportunities of the disadvantaged. Less attention, however, has been paid to the connection between these two areas of study. Despite the obvious parallel challenges that immigrants face for achieving social mobility in America’s cities and towns, we know less about how arriving to particular places impacts immigrant integration. This gap has grown larger by the tendency to recurrently study immigrant life in exceptionally populous and diverse cities like New York and Los Angeles, or in equally exceptional small, rural destinations. This dissertation seeks to answer one key question: How do different aspects of local context affect immigrant life chances and their ability to fully participate in the social life of their places of residence? The first chapter of my dissertation shows that the literature in migration studies is not fully examining the range of immigrant destinations. I show these tendencies in the literature by conducting a bibliometric analysis of integration studies published in major immigration journals and books from 2008 to 2018. To address the conceptual problems created by this tendency, I propose a framework that moves past populational criteria for case selection and focuses instead on components of context that existing research shows matter for intergenerational mobility and integration. I also introduce a typology of contexts based on possible combinations of these components and offer some hypotheses of how these types might affect integration. This first chapter sets up the principles that guide the rest of the dissertation. In the second, third and fourth chapters, I introduce an original survey and interview study (MATIS) examining the impact of one aspect of context – institutions – on Mexican integration in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Tucson, Arizona. These cities are selected because they are maximally similar with respect to relevant contextual features other than their institutions, and have comparable flows of Mexican immigrants. The study surveys 1.5 and second-generation Mexican immigrants in both cities, and triangulates this data with follow-up interviews on a subsample of second-generation survey respondents with low and high educational attainment. The results reveal that the generosity of college funding that exists in New Mexico through the lottery scholarship, a program that does not have an analogue in Arizona, facilitates entry and completion of college degree for the children of Mexican immigrants. Respondents in both cities explained their educational attainment in a variety of ways, including as a result of their parent’s education, their relationships in their communities and schools, and events in their lives, but only the generosity of college funding stood out as being different across cities. These explanations, and others, are explored using regression analysis which finds that Mexicans that attended high school in New Mexico are more likely to complete college than their counterparts in Arizona even when accounting for individual and family characteristics. Beyond demonstrating the important part that contextual features of place, in this case local institutions, can have on the mobility outcomes of immigrants these empirical findings have clear policy implications. The immediate finding is that increased generosity in educational funding for immigrants in college has direct and observable returns on college attainment, a finding which is aligned with a vast literature connecting college affordability and completion. Additionally, I discuss how the structure of the lottery scholarship, which de-emphasizes merit aid, may have egalitarian consequences for disadvantaged groups.

The social integration of international students has always been a much-discussed topic. As more and more students around the world choose to study or exchange abroad, help for the social integration of these international students is being improved. Schools, local and international students and other local student organisations as stakeholders all play different roles in this social integration issue. For schools, more international students help them to gain access to international resources and improve academic standards, thereby improving their international ranking and gaining access to more resources. It can also help local students to gain a broader perspective and improve the quality of local students. As a result, a growing number of initiatives and services are being implemented by schools and student organisations to help international students integrate into their new environment and society, such as buddy programmes, student orientation, new student guidelines and so on. However, not all of these measures and services are well implemented in all schools. This paper examines the different measures and services used to help new international students at Linnaeus University and the effectiveness of these measures for international students and finds that they are not effective in helping to address the problems and social integration of new international students. The designer, therefore, used design methods to analyse and redesign the current measures and services at Linnaeus University by pointing out the problems with the admissions guidelines and buddy program - provided by Linnaeus University and organised by the Student Union. The innovation of the solution is bringing together Linnaeus University and the Students' Union efforts on the social integration of international students. The resources of both parties are integrated to provide better assistance for the social integration of international students.

Den sociala hållbarheten har på senare tid uppmärksammats som en viktig faktor inomstadsplaneringen i samband med städers expansion. För att få en förståelse för hur sociala problem uppkommer samt vilka förutsättningar som kan motverka en negativ utveckling behövsflertalet studier inom detta område. Vi har valt att fokusera på två begrepp inom den sociala hållbarheten eftersom detta är ett brett begrepp, dessa är integration och segregation. Vårt syfte äratt studera hur den sociala hållbarheten, med fokus på integration och segregation, har förändrats i ett Augustenborg i Malmö i samband med projektet Ekostaden samt få fram vilka värden som är viktiga för områdets sociala utveckling och integration.Det huvudsakliga metodvalet är en fallstudie över området Augustenborg i Malmö. I denna fallstudie har det genomförts observationer av området samt intervjuer med verksamhetsutövare i området och tjänstemän. Våra intervjuer bestod av både verksamhetsutövare och tjänstemän från MKB för att vi skulle få en bild över områdets förutsättningar och värden. Resultatet av denna undersökning har visat att det skedde en förbättring av samhörigheten och den sociala hållbarheten i området i samband med att invånare involverades i projektet. Denna positiva utveckling minskade dock i samband med projektets paus. Vi fann att de sociala relationerna och samhörigheten i området var grundläggande för den sociala integrationen. Dessa skapas av rätt förutsättningar så som föreningsliv, sociala aktiviteter och en inbjudande fysisk miljö. För att alla dessa värden ska skapas i ett område krävs en samverkan mellan invånare, MKB, som ägerstörsta delen av områdets byggnation, och Malmö stad.

This study was designed to gain a better understanding of whether electronic mail (email) was replacing traditional behaviors in which college students engage to achieve academic and social integration. Data consisted of printouts of email records, and corresponding logsheets detailing the relationship of the participant to the sender/receiver of each message and the general nature of the message. Additional data included answers to email survey questions and lists of traditional academic and social integration behaviors against which the email behavior categories were compared. Specifically, this study was designed to explore the following research questions: 1. For what purpose do students use email? 2. Do college students use email in lieu of traditional behaviors that lead to social integration? 3. Do college students use email in lieu of traditional behaviors that lead to academic integration? 4. Does students' use of email differ by gender? Two samples were selected for this study. The first consisted of a comprehensive list, compiled from nationally normed survey instruments, of traditional behaviors that students use to achieve academic and social integration. The second sample consisted of 23 traditional-aged freshmen who used email (11 males and 12 females). Results were based on an analysis of 4,603 messages sent or received by the participants and revealed several important findings. First, while the participants did use email for some academic and social integration purposes, the bulk of their email activity did not relate to either form of integration. Second, participants seemed to be using email to communicate extensively with family members and high school friends. Third, there were no major differences in either the extent of email use or the nature of that use by gender. Finally, the participants spent a considerable amount of time every day checking, writing, composing and sending email messages. These trends suggest that email has become an integral part of college student life and that college administrators need to explore new and effective ways to ensure that the use of email is beneficial, not detrimental, to the overall development of college students. / Master of Arts

Research suggests that college students persist in college when they feel connected to something or someone at their institution. These connections are often established through academic and social engagement. Tinto (1987) described these concepts as academic integration and social integration. Much research has been done regarding the importance of academic and social integration. Some have looked at technology's impact on the ways in which students achieve social and academic integration. However, there has been little research regarding how the current student population uses Instant Messaging to supplement traditional behaviors associated with academic and social engagement. The present study was designed to address these gaps in the present literature on social and academic integration. The purpose of this study was to examine how college students use Instant Messenger (IM). Specifically, the present study explored if college students use IM to supplement traditional behaviors associated with academic and social integration. Data were collected from emailed IM conversations, logsheets submitted by the participants, and answers to IM survey questions. The results of the analysis of these data were compared to Gatz's (1998) lists of traditional behaviors associated with academic and social integration. Results seem to suggest that college students use Instant Messaging for primarily social purposes. When students engage socially through IM, it is most often used to connect or stay connected with friends. Interestingly, the majority of the friends college students are Instant Messaging are fellow students from their home institution. When students do use IM for academic purposes, it is most often used to set up project meeting times or ask questions about a class. / Master of Arts