Thesis (Ph. D.)--Wesleyan University, 2005. / CD-ROM includes recorded examples and figures. Includes bibliographical references (v. 4, leaves 957-999)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of New South Wales, 2002. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on July 18, 2005). Includes bibliographical references (p. 261-281).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisors: S. Craig Watkins and John D.H. Downing. Vita. Includes bibliographical references and filmography.

Cette étude compare les relations entre les communautés asiatique (indienne) et africaine dans la province de Nyanza et la Western province en suivant la problématique des relations inter-communautaires. Elle examine, compare les racines de la présence asiatique (indienne) et de l’occupation humaine dans ces deux provinces depuis 1901 ; elle explore les fondements et la dynamique des relations socio-économique entre les deux communautés. Des études ont portésur les Indiens au Kenya. Toutefois, aucune recherche scientifique n'a été faite pour comparer les relations entre les communautés asiatiques et africaines vivant dans différentes provinces du Kenya, dont la province de Nyanza et la Western province ; ce déficit a justifié une telle étude devenue nécessaire. Suivant un plan chronologique, des périodes politico-économiques, l'étude s'articule autour de quatre hypothèses de base sur un modèle, commun ou non, d’occupation duterritoire, sur les causes des conflits Afro-indiens, sur le rôle économique de la communauté, indienne sur les niveaux d'intégration inter-communautaires dans les deux provinces. L'étude utilise le cadre théorique postcolonial comme un outil d’analyse. L'étude révèle des espaces postcoloniaux comme des espaces chaotiques et pluriels, caractérisés par des contestations et négociations socio-économiques. Toutefois, ces contestations sont pacifiées et neutralisées par lanature hybride des qu'un certain nombre de valeurs indiennes ont été empruntées par les africains. / This chapter explores the concept of Indian diasporic communities within the local and global context. The argument put forth here is that the term diaspora evokes geographies of Identity and makes the whole Asian community a subject of study not only globally but also locally. The theoretical formulation underpinning this study is explored with the post-colonialtheoretical framework taking center stage as the tool of analysis. The Indian question within the Kenyan context is raised in this chapter as the basis upon which Afro-Asian socioeconomic and political contestations were anchored on. It is against this background that Afro-Asian socio-economic relations in Nyanza and Western provinces of Kenya are discussed. These discussions are supported by epistemological and empirical evidence obtained from oral informants, secondary and primary data across the two provinces of study.

An extensive review of research and policy literature revealed that links are made between: going missing and forced marriage; going missing and child sexual exploitation; and forced marriage and child sexual exploitation. However, despite these overlaps, no links are made between all three issues. Given that some South Asian young women will run away from home in order to avoid being forced into marriage and that young people who run away or go missing from home are at risk of, or abused, through child sexual exploitation a research proposition was developed on the basis that a three way link was theoretically possible. A case study methodology was developed to test the research proposition. Eight cases were identified in which South Asian young people (under 18 years of age) had experienced some combination of all three issues. However, the pattern identified within the research proposition was not the ‘final explanation’. Analysis of the research findings revealed that variation existed within the pattern proposed. Moreover, a second pattern was identified in which forced marriage emerged as a parental response to young people who were already being sexually exploited and going missing in this context. The patterns identified were confirmed through analysis of interviews undertaken with twelve subject experts (key informants) and resonated with a specifically selected group of nine young people who were presented with a composite case study during focus group discussion. I argue that awareness of patterns linking all three issues will help practitioners to identify and respond appropriately to cases where the issues of going missing, forced marriage and child sexual exploitation overlap. That said the complexity of the cases highlighted risks associated with overlooking diversities: social divisions related to age, gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality and disability were explored to see how they shaped the young people’s experiences. This process revealed that they were located within complex axes of power which then intersected with social systems, including family, community and public institutions. As a consequence, young people lacked relational support and had limited access to safe accommodation and economic resources. This resulted in some young people making attempts to try and self-manage the competing harms that they were facing. The practitioners who supported the young people highlighted the challenges involved in working with them. Analysis of practitioners’ accounts further revealed how power dynamics within multi-agency working arrangements also impacted their efforts to respond to the needs of young people. Through testing the research proposition, I addressed a recognised need for more focused research into the issue of going missing as it relates to young people from different ethnic backgrounds (Berelowitz et al. 2012; Berelowitz et al., 2013; OCC, 2012; Patel, 1994; Safe on the Streets Research Team, 1999; Stein et al. 1994) as well as furthering knowledge about how child sexual exploitation is experienced by young people from black and minority ethnic (BME) communities (Chase & Statham, 2004; CEOP, 2011b; Jago et al., 2011; Berelowitz et al., 2013; Thiara & Gill, 2010; Kelly, 2013; Ward & Patel, 2006). The development of a typology of patterns linking going missing, forced marriage and child sexual exploitation provides a unique contribution to the scholarly literature.

Studies on prostitution have typically focused on the experiences, problems, and histories of prostitutes, rather than examining men who seek to purchase sex. Race has also been overlooked as a central factor in shaping the sex industry and the motivations of men who seek to purchase sex. This study utilizes online reviews of prostitutes to examine the way men who purchase sex discuss Asian prostitutes in comparison to White prostitutes. This paper traces the history of colonialism and ideas of the exotic Orient to modern stereotypes of Asian women. These stereotypes are then used to frame a quantitative and qualitative analysis of online reviews of prostitutes and compare the ways in which Asian prostitutes and white prostitutes are discussed. Further, the reviews are used to examine more broadly what services, traits, and behaviors are considered desirable by men who use prostitutes. The study finds that there are significant quantitative and qualitative differences in how men discuss Asian and White prostitutes within their reviews, and that these differences appear to be shaped by racially fetishizing stereotypes of Asian women. Prostitution also appears to reinforce male dominance and patriarchy in the form of masculine control and the feminine servicing of male sexual and emotional needs.

This qualitative dissertation uses an Indian dance studio based in the suburbs of a mid-sized Florida city as an entry point to examine how racism impacts the local upwardly mobile Asian Indian community. Utilizing two and a half years of ethnographic data collected at the studio as a Bollywood instructor, 24 in-depth interviews with Indian immigrant parents and their children, 12 self-portraits drawn by children during their interviews, and home visits with 13 families, this project examines the strategies of accommodation and resistance that Indian families use to construct a sense of home and belonging. Applying socialization, visual research methods, critical race, and feminist scholarship to the exploration of how the local Indian immigrant community builds a sense of home and belonging within a nation whose success is a product of racial domination, this project makes four innovative and distinctive contributions to sociological research on socialization, U.S. immigration, and contemporary race relations. In the first data chapter, I coin and develop the term cultural cultivation to describe strategic ethno-cultural socialization efforts immigrant parents use to preserve a culture ‘left behind’ (Ram 2005). Cultural cultivation adds a nuanced dimension to ethno-cultural socialization studies by demonstrating that these efforts are laborious, often regarded as women’s work, and effectively operate as an ‘added step’ to Hochschild and Machung’s (2003) work on the “second shift.” The second data chapter utilizes an innovative research technique of having children draw self-portraits. While cultural cultivation helps children develop a meaningful attachment to Indian culture, self-portraits and interview data uncovered experiences of being teased and feeling ‘left out.’ As a result, many children forged what Portes and Rumbaut (2001) call a “reactive ethnicity” as a way to cope with prejudice and discrimination and construct a sense of identity and belonging. The third data chapter examines the ways families minimized and internalized experiences of prejudice and discrimination. Rather than recognizing them as a part of structural racism, many immigrant parents regarded racial offenses as a deserved response to individual misbehaviors or inadequacies that were to be pointed out and corrected. This internalization prompted several of the interviewees to police their and their children’s actions when in the presence of non-Indians in an attempt to preemptively minimize prejudicial statements and discrimination. For the last data chapter, by revealing the enduring hardships related to socialization and assimilation, I argue that high levels of assimilation and acculturation were also commonly accompanied by what I call immigrant outsiderness, or the subjective dimensions of the migration experience which are marked by 1. Lack of cultural inclusion, 2. Lack of social inclusion, and 3. Feelings of emotional disconnect. Data demonstrate that in spite of meeting the objective benchmarks typically associated with successful structural integration, acculturation, and assimilation, the immigrant experiences of this “model minority” are bounded and characterized by cultural and social exclusion as well as an emotional disconnect. This dissertation concludes by urging both a critical exploration and integration of how Asian Indians and South Asians fit into the contemporary racial landscape beyond terms like “model minority” and “honorary white” so that we can have a more honest and complex understanding of the role racial domination plays in our everyday lives.

What were the knowledges, scientific evidence and terms of recognition that constituted the object minority in the Indian subcontinent? How was minority produced simultaneously as a generalizable identity and as a naturalized marker of the Muslim identity? Focusing on the late colonial and the early postcolonial period, this dissertation is an analysis of the emergence of minority in relation to the nation-state in India. In doing that, I examine how minority came to be constituted as much by scientific knowledge produced about non-dominant communities, as by the discourse around electoral politics and constitutional rights. I demonstrate the possibilities and limitations in the way minority came to be constructed as a marginalized subject in governance and at the same time a difference from the national norm that threatened the ideal of the homogenous nation. Drawing on and contributing to scholarship in political history, history and sociology of science, and race and religious studies, this dissertation offers a reimagination of the relation between minority, nation and population.

Through an ethnographic examination of two New York City South Asian organizations, Worker's Awaaz and the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO), this study attends to the classed subjects produced at the different points of convergence of neoliberal policy in India and the United States. The project is concerned with the workings of South Asian organizations as the demographic profile of this population changes due to new migration patterns marked by gender, class, nationality and status, and new subjectivities borne of organizing and activism that have emerged around these. With attention to the nexus of capital, labor and rights, I argue that each organization represents two sides of neoliberal tendencies, and that this materializes in the subjects of worker and diasporic entrepreneur that are mobilized in Worker's Awaaz and GOPIO, respectively. Structural adjustment programs (SAPs) in South Asia compelled the migration of the low-wage female membership Worker's Awaaz. Once in the United States, where carework has become increasingly privatized, many of these women find employment as domestic workers whose labor is necessary to the households of upper-middle class and wealthy South Asians. SAPs also opened up South Asian markets to direct foreign investment. Needing outside capital for schemes of privatization and deregulation, the government of India turned to the diaspora, and deployed financial investment by overseas Indians as diasporic duty. This is a role that GOPIO has been at the forefront of organizing. I specifically explore how economic beings constructed through neoliberal discourse of human capital inhabit, rework, and contest these very discourses and practices. In Worker's Awaaz debates regarding who constituted a worker were contestations over the meanings of class and labor rooted in global migration flows. Within GOPIO the class inflected subjectivity of entrepreneur found nationalist luster as the articulation of entrepreneurialism was cast as a trait of Indian diasporic culture. The subject positions borne from these activities produced different struggles over the terms of national belonging and rights. The dissertation understands these positions as generated from the disjunctive tendencies of neoliberalism, and as sites that give insight into the workings of current capital regimes. / text

This thesis describes studies on the analysis of arsenic (As) in human biological samples, mainly urine but also hair and fingernails using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GF-AAS). The relationship between ethnicity and arsenic metabolism was investigated for the first time for a population in the United Kingdom. This investigation has been carried out through comparative analysis of arsenic in human urine, hair and fingernails in volunteers from three different ethnic groups (Whites, Asians and Somali Black-Africans) who are only exposed to background levels of arsenic. Results obtained with 63 volunteers showed ethnic differences in urinary arsenic excretion as well as differences in arsenic levels in fingernail samples. The averages of total arsenic levels for the Somali Black-Africans (urine 7.2 µg/g creatinine; fingernails 723 µg/kg) are significantly (P< 0.05) different from both the Asians (urine 20.6 µg/g creatinine; fingernails 153.9 µg/kg) and Whites (urine 24.5 µg/g creatinine; fingernails 177.0 µg/kg). The Somali group also shows a higher percentage (50%) of dimethylarsinate (DMA) and a lower percentage (48%) of arsenobetaine (AB), compared to Asians (16% DMA and 83% AB) and Whites (22% DMA and 77% AB). The effect of fasting on urinary arsenic species distribution was also investigated by monitoring urine samples from 29 Ramadan fasting volunteers, with each volunteer providing a sample at the beginning (RF1) and at the end (RF2) of an approximately 12 hours fast. The results obtained showed the frequency of MA detection for RF2 was 12 and 2-fold higher than for the non-fasting and RF1 groups, respectively. This suggests fasting may alter the pattern of arsenic metabolism and excretion. However, there was no significant difference (P> 0.05) in the average of total level of arsenic for RF1 (18.3 µg/g creatinine) and RF2 (17.7 µg/g creatinine). A relationship between excretion of arsenic and selenium in individuals exposed to background levels of arsenic and selenium was investigated through analysis of urine samples from 93 volunteers from Leicester, UK. A positive correlation between arsenic and selenium was found and the As:Se ratio was 0.7 ± 0.4. The intra-individual variation of As:Se ratio does not alter significantly over time, as determined by monitoring urine samples from a volunteer over a period of one year. Furthermore, within a single day, with urine samples collected at the beginning and after a 12-hour fast, the As:Se ratio was found to be similar (0.7 ± 0.5). These findings suggest a close relationship between these two metalloids, the biological significance of which needs to be explored in the future.