No description available.

This dissertation examines the practices and processes that shape Latino/a citizenship through an examination of the Latino/a population in St. Louis, Missouri. This research employs a practice-based notion of citizenship to examine the ways that the Latino/a population, regardless of legal status, is creating lived spaces of citizenship. The study particularly focuses on the ways that emergent geographies of Latino/a citizenship are being contested, and how efforts to establish and defend citizenship claims require scale-specific methods. This investigation draws on data collected during a fourteen month period of fieldwork that entailed the use of qualitative and quantitative methods, including participant observation, extensive in-depth interviews, a quantitative survey and discourse analysis of media reports and printed materials. Data generated includes more than 50 semi- structured interviews, conducted between October 2004 and August of 2005, with several follow-up interviews conducted during the summer of 2006. The study also includes a community survey of 586 Latino/a individuals from around the St. Louis region, which is used to establish a demographic baseline of an extremely fluid immigrant population. I argue that Latino/a residents are creating geographies of political presence in Missouri through the creation of alliances that include Latinos/as of all legal statuses as well as non-Latino/a organizations who support immigrant rights. In the context of municipal governance, in contrast, the Latino/a population is responding to the downward shift of the immigration debate. The Latino/a population in St. Louis is also establishing spaces of citizenship through partnerships between the federal government and local civil society organisations. This dissertation contributes to a growing number of studies theorizing the multi-scalar construction of citizenship.

No description available.

The geographic literature on highly skilled migrants has tended to focus on the impact of these workers on national and regional economies, including the extent to which they are contributing to a brain drain. What has not been explored in the same detail is why people leave or return to their home countries or how well they integrate into a new society including securing employment. This thesis argues that the individual social networks of highly skilled migrants are critical in helping them make migration decisions, assimilate into a new society and find jobs. My research shows that once migration occurs, it is not transnational or expatriate social networks that are most important, but rather the social relationships that highly skilled migrants form with the local population. I argue that a micro-level network perspective has been under-emphasised within the economic literature and yet is an important theoretical framework for understanding the impact of individual actors on the labour market. I show through analysing British- and Indian-born scientists working in Boston’s pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector that individual social networks are critical in four aspects of their lives. First, when they are making decisions to emigrate to the U.S. Second, when they are integrating into a new society. I show that most respondents are not participating in expatriate social networks but indigenous social networks with the local population. Third, when they are looking for new jobs. I argue that the debate of whether highly skilled workers use strong or weak ties for gaining information on new jobs is arbitrary because they use both types of ties depending upon the context and their personal circumstances. Fourth, when they are making decisions to return to and invest in their home countries. Although the recent literature on highly skilled migrants argues that some migrant groups do return and invest in their home countries, I argue that British and Indian scientists in Boston’s pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector do not demonstrate this trend.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.