Diss.-Strassburg.

Thesis (J.C.L.)--Catholic University of America, 1986. / This is an electronic reproduction of TREN, #029-0067. Bibliography: leaves 45-47.

Thesis--American University. / Cover title. Bibliography: p. 203-217.

Thesis--Paris, 1937. / Includes bibliographical references.

Inaug.-diss.--Bern. / Bibliography: p. 8-13.

Thesis (J.C.L.)--Catholic University of America, 1986. / Bibliography: leaves 45-47.

No description available.

South Africa is one of the top regional destinations for refugees and asylum seekers. The South African government has chosen to adopt local integration as its main strategy in dealing with the refugees and asylum seekers it currently hosts, as opposed to housing refugees in camps. This step has been hailed as progressive, and the Refugee Act has espoused the issuing of progressive identity documents to refugees and asylum seekers as the viaduct through which refugees and asylum seekers can become fully integrated. In this regard then, refugee and asylum seeker identity documents are critical and the study sought to investigate the extent to which this policy intent of using identity documents to facilitate integration had become a reality. The study began by looking at the evolution of refugee and asylum seeker law in South Africa. From there it looked at the differences between refugees and asylum seekers, and what distinguishes them from other migrants such as economic migrants. Thereafter the study looked at theoretical frameworks surrounding migration and integration, especially as pertains to the refugee and asylum seeker context. In particular, the study sought to present the experiences of identity documents in facilitating integration from two main perspectives namely the refugees and asylum seekers who are issued with and make use of these identity documents, and service providers who interact with these documents on a daily basis and provide services to the refugee and asylum seeker communities. The findings presented highlight that despite the progressive evolution of refugee law in South Africa, the role of these identity documents, in facilitating access to services and promoting integration, has largely failed, from the practical to the policy level.

This poetry manuscript is based on the experiences of a Bangladeshi-born American female. The narrator of these poems navigates the conflict between her two cultural identities while growing up as a first generation immigrant in the United States. This creative work interrogates issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality in post-9/11 America. This collection, written as a memoir-in-verse, draws from pop cultural icons and personal experiences in order to build a narrative arc that spans from the Bangladeshi-American female's birth to her mid-twenties adulthood. / MFA

This thesis explores the experiences of applicants for Refugee Status in the United Kingdom who had, at the time of the research, waited for between two and nine years for the conclusion of the asylum process. Despite extensive lamentation of the delays endured by asylum applicants in having their claims assessed, little social scientific scholarship has substantively and critically engaged with this phenomenon, or even with waiting as a universal condition. The present study fills this gap in knowledge, conceptualising waiting as an informative, consequential phase in the quest for protection, hope and security. The study is based on twelve months of participant observation among asylum seekers living in Glasgow under the dispersal regime. Narratives and tacit aspects of everyday life are presented to both draw a multi-dimensional ethnographic picture and acknowledge the asylum seekers’ agency. Their waiting entails a focus on negative and positive, concrete and symbolic objects, which are located in the future. However, their inability to affect or predict the arrival of these objects produces uncertainty and passivity. Asylum seekers narrate overwhelmingly negative experiences of asylum policies, such as dishonouring encounters with immigration authorities; social dislocation; enforced poverty; interrupted life cycles; and an inability to settle and belong in the UK. Yet despite the mutually reinforcing effects of UK policy and of waiting, asylum seekers have benefited from formal support structures provided under Scottish policy. Individuals have been able to re-construct social ties; pursue educational opportunities; enhance personal security; gain greater control over their ‘cases’; and undertake selective socio-cultural adaptation. They have also utilised a discourse of ‘integration’ circulating in Scotland to garner public support for their struggles for recognition and the right to remain. The thesis concludes by reflecting on changes occurring after a form of Leave to Remain was granted, and assesses the extent to which people were able to realise the ‘normal lives’ for which they had been waiting.