Looking to the places we live to inform our understandings of identity and belonging, this métissage of place-based stories draws on personal narratives and intergenerational stories to re/create meaning in new spaces and contexts. Through the interweaving of personal and academic stories, this research provides a space for critical engagement, creative scholarship and learning. The pedagogical possibilities of places and understanding of curriculum as both the lived experiences and knowledge/s that shape and in/form our identities and understandings. As newcomers, settlers, and treaty members, living on Turtle Island/North America, perhaps we must begin by looking at the places where we live and dwell, to better understand our responsibilities to both the land and peoples. Unsettling narratives that disrupt textbooks histories, and the re/telling of new/old stories. Using bricolage to gather up the fragments and/or pieces left behind – artefacts, memories and stories, I begin to re/trace the footsteps of my grandmothers - the re/learning his/her/stories, stories of shifting cultural identities and landscapes - and be/longing to places, while also examining how notions of be/longing are transformed through intergenerational stories and our connections to places. Stories that may help to move and guide us forward in a good way. From wasteland to reconciliation, this work examines the meaning of places to our lives and learning, as well as our responsibilities to land and peoples – those who came before, and the generations before us.

The fieldwork for this study was conducted in the West Kimberley region of Western Australia between 1997 and 1999. Qualitative and quantitative information provided by 170 Aboriginal participants enabled an exploration of the context and patterns of Aboriginal alcohol use; Aboriginal perceptions of the alcohol issue, existing interventions, research findings, 'culture' and its role in prevention and intervention; and participants' incorporation of these perceptions into an Aboriginal model for alcohol misuse prevention, intervention and evaluation. Findings were based on the results of individual and focus group interviews, serial model-planning focus groups, documentary data and observation.Study findings generally suggest that in addition to self-determination and support components, 'cultural context' retains an important role for many remote area Aboriginal people. The findings from a small sub-sample tentatively suggest that 'cultural' disruption, in addition to the socio-economic consequences of colonisation and dispossession, may play an important role in alcohol misuse. Consequently, it appears that in combination with self-determination and support components, the strengthening of a locally-defined 'cultural' context may have an important role in alcohol misuse prevention and intervention - an approach frequently unrepresented in existing symptom-focused models and one inviting further investigation. The model developed by study participants expands significantly on existing symptom-focused approaches through a comprehensive life-enhancement focus on aspects of identity, opportunity and hope. This approach adds depth and meaning to understandings of cultural appropriateness and of culturally relevant models for substance misuse prevention and intervention.

<p>This investigation is aimed to analyze and gain insight into how young people of the "second generation immigrants" identify themselves in a society where they are seen as immigrants of the environment in view of the name. Also, how they identify themselves during trips to their home/country of origin are of relevance to see if they are affected in their own identification, depending on how they believe they are seen from the outside.</p><p>Through a survey, the statistics were produced, which serves as a preliminary to the larger part of the investigation where six individuals were interviewed in order to give deeper answers to the questions sought. The answers that emerged were then analyzed in relation to selected theories.</p><p>In connection with the investigation it has emerged that the young people in question often identify themselves in such a way that they think that the surroundings look at them. It is in relation to how others see them as they see themselves, which creates a distance between the surroundings and themselves. With increased knowledge on both sides, this distance between the environment and the young people in this investigation maybe could reduce.</p> / <p>Denna undersökning är skriven i syfte att analysera och få en inblick i hur ungdomar av "andra generationens invandrare" identifierar sig själva i ett samhälle där de ses som invandrare av omgivningen med tanke på benämningen. Även hur de identifierar sig under resor till deras hem/ursprungsland är av relevans för att se om de påverkas i sin egen identifiering beroende på hur de tror att dem betraktas utifrån.</p><p>Genom en enkätundersökning så har statistik tagits fram som fungerar som ett förstadie till den större delen av undersökningen där sex individer intervjuats i syftet att ge djupare svar på de frågor som sökts. De svar som framkommit har sedan analyserats i förhållande till utvalda teorier.</p><p>I samband med undersökningen så har det framkommit att ungdomarna i fråga oftast identifierar sig på så sätt som de tror att omgivningen ser på dem. Det är alltså i förhållande till hur andra ser på dem som de uppfattar sig själva, vilket skapar ett avstånd mellan omgivningen och dem själva. Med ökad kunskap på bägge sidor så skulle dock detta avstånd mellan omgivningen och ungdomarna kunna minska.</p>

This dissertation examines how young people with Kurdish backgrounds form their identity in Sweden with regards to processes of inclusion and exclusion. It also sheds light on the ways these young people deal with ethnic discrimination and racism. Further, the study outlines the importance of these social processes for the discipline of social work and the ways social workers can work with disadvantaged and marginalized groups and endorse their struggle for social justice and full equal citizenship beyond racist and discriminatory practices. The empirical analysis is built on interviews with 28 young men and women with Kurdish backgrounds in Sweden. Postcolonial theory, belonging and identity formation constitute the central conceptual framework of this study. The young people referred to different sites in which they experienced ethnic discrimination and stigmatization. These experiences involved the labor market, mass media, housing segregation, legal system and school system. The interviewees also referred to the roles of ‘ordinary’ Swedes in obstructing their participation in the Swedish society through exclusionary discourses relating to Swedish identity. The interviewees’ life situation in Sweden, sense of ethnic discrimination as well as disputes over identity making with other young people with Middle-Eastern background are among the most important reasons for fostering strong Kurdish nationalist sentiments, issues that are related to the ways they can exercise their citizenship rights in Sweden and how they deal with exclusionary practices in their everyday life. The study shows that the interviewees respond to and resist ethnic discrimination in a variety of ways including interpersonal debates and discussions, changing their names to Swedish names, strengthening differences between the self and the other, violence, silence and deliberately ignoring racism. They also challenged and spoke out against the gendered racism that they were subjected to in their daily lives due to the paternalist discourse of ”honor-killing”. The research participants had been denied an equal place within the boundary of Swedishness partly due to a racist postcolonial discourse that valued whiteness highly. Paradoxically, some interviewees reproduced the same discourse through choosing to use it against black people, Africans, newly-arrived Kurdish immigrants (”imports”), ”Gypsies” and Islam in order to claim a modern Kurdish identity as near to whiteness as possible. This indicates the multiple dimensions of racism. Those who are subjected to racism and ethnic discrimination can be discriminatory and reproduce the racist discourse. Despite unequal power relations, both dominant and minoritized subjects are all marked by the postcolonial condition in structuring subjectivities, belonging and identification.

This investigation is aimed to analyze and gain insight into how young people of the "second generation immigrants" identify themselves in a society where they are seen as immigrants of the environment in view of the name. Also, how they identify themselves during trips to their home/country of origin are of relevance to see if they are affected in their own identification, depending on how they believe they are seen from the outside. Through a survey, the statistics were produced, which serves as a preliminary to the larger part of the investigation where six individuals were interviewed in order to give deeper answers to the questions sought. The answers that emerged were then analyzed in relation to selected theories. In connection with the investigation it has emerged that the young people in question often identify themselves in such a way that they think that the surroundings look at them. It is in relation to how others see them as they see themselves, which creates a distance between the surroundings and themselves. With increased knowledge on both sides, this distance between the environment and the young people in this investigation maybe could reduce. / Denna undersökning är skriven i syfte att analysera och få en inblick i hur ungdomar av "andra generationens invandrare" identifierar sig själva i ett samhälle där de ses som invandrare av omgivningen med tanke på benämningen. Även hur de identifierar sig under resor till deras hem/ursprungsland är av relevans för att se om de påverkas i sin egen identifiering beroende på hur de tror att dem betraktas utifrån. Genom en enkätundersökning så har statistik tagits fram som fungerar som ett förstadie till den större delen av undersökningen där sex individer intervjuats i syftet att ge djupare svar på de frågor som sökts. De svar som framkommit har sedan analyserats i förhållande till utvalda teorier. I samband med undersökningen så har det framkommit att ungdomarna i fråga oftast identifierar sig på så sätt som de tror att omgivningen ser på dem. Det är alltså i förhållande till hur andra ser på dem som de uppfattar sig själva, vilket skapar ett avstånd mellan omgivningen och dem själva. Med ökad kunskap på bägge sidor så skulle dock detta avstånd mellan omgivningen och ungdomarna kunna minska.

This dissertation examines how a group of street vendors in Yogyakarta City, Indonesia, experienced a government-organized relocation from Mangkubumi Street to a newly renovated marketplace. In particular, I explore the strategies taken by the leaders of a street vendor organization called Pethikbumi to refuse the relocation and claim their right to the street. Contestations over streets, street vending and street vendor relocations constitute important moments during which citizenship, democracy and belonging are negotiated in the city. I argue that the conflict over belonging and democracy took the form of a social drama and was shaped and structured by specific moral appeals, public performances, and processes of imitation (cf. Turner 1974). The study begins with an exploration of the history of street vending and the pedagang kaki lima (street vendor) in Indonesia. I outline how the pedagang kaki lima were viewed as “dirty”, a simplified code for the transgression of social, spatial and legal boundaries. I move on to explore the way the street vendors of Pethikbumi drew on ideas of “the people” (rakyat), democracy and transparency in claiming their rights. I analyze the ways that Pethikbumi drew on important moments in Indonesia’s past and present, situating this relocation conflict as significant and as part of “history”. The relocation was also rooted in an epistemology of “skepticism” derived from an awareness of the ambiguity and tension between appearances and realities (cf. Anderson 1990). Pethikbumi engaged in tactics to both reveal and conceal the “unseen powers” that were imagined as working behind the scenes to generate conflict. The conflict over the relocation to a marketplace was not only a fight over who had access to the street but also a struggle over what constitutes democracy, how to achieve transparency, and who belongs in post-Suharto Indonesia.

Varje elev i den svenska skolan har rätt att få kunskap om och insikt i demokratiska principer. Detta är stadgat i den svenska Skollagen och i läroplanen sedan 1946. Skolverket gav 2004 alla svenska skolor i uppdrag att arbeta på ett hälsofrämjande sätt. Elevinflytande och delaktighet i skolan är positiva hälsofrämjande faktorer, genom att eleverna ges möjligheter att själva få påverka sin situation och därmed skapa tillhörighet, sammanhang och meningsfullhet med skolarbete. Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka hur åtta grundskoleelever från åk 9 förklarade och upplevde elevinflytande och delaktighet. Kvalitativ undersökningsmetod användes i form av intervjuer och resultatet från intervjuerna analyserades och relaterades till två huvudområden; det demokratiska och det hälsofrämjande perspektivet. Resultatet av intervjufrågorna visade att informanterna till viss del kunde förklara begreppen elevinflytande och delaktighet, och även relatera till demokratiskt arbete i skolans kontext. Upplevelserna av detta arbete beskrevs som positiva, trygga och meningsfulla. Kopplingen mellan elevinflytande/delaktighet och hälsa blev dock inte tydligt i undersökningen, därtill krävs ytterligare studier. / Every child in Swedish schools should have the right to gain knowledge about and insight in democratic principles related to school matters. This is stated in the Swedish Education Act and in the national curricula since 1946. In 2004 all Swedish schools were commissioned by the National Agency of Education to work in a health promoting way. Democracy, as in influence and autonomy, help young people to protect their health and give opportunities for connectedness and sense of belonging to adolescents own school situation in a positive healthy way. The aim of this study was to investigate how eight pupils from a comprehensive school class (9th degree) perceived and expressed influence and autonomy at school. A qualitative methodology through interviewing was used. The results of the interviews was analyzed and related to two perspectives; the democratic and the health promoting perspective. The findings showed that the informants to a certain extent were able to explain the meaning of, and also relate to some situations connected to influence and autonomy. They described the experiences as being positive, confident and meaningful for them. However, it became difficult to find a distinct connection between the informant´s experienced democracy work and health. Further studies about this coherence are needed.

This study aimed at supplementing the Swedish National Agency for Education’s (Skolverket) study (2006) I enlighet med skolans värdegrund? which investigated whether textbooks in various school subjects went against the fundamental values in the curricula Lpf94 and Lpo 94. Due to this study’s supplementing intention, this study uses a similar title as Skolverket. By adding a new subject (Swedish) to Skolverket’s study, this study also strived to show how discrimination might be present in other subjects than the ones Skolverket involved in their study. More precisely, this study examined how the aspects ethnic belonging, functional limitation, gender, religion and sexual orientation (Skolverket used the same aspects in their study) are presented in a textbook for the Swedish subject in order to find out whether or not discrimination occurs. In the analysis I have used a combination of intersectionality and discourse analysis in order to understand and explain findings from the textbook.This study shows that the initial thought that discrimination occurs in more school subjects’ textbooks than the ones involved in Skolverket’s study, was valid. Many examples of differentiation between the norm “We” and the diverged “Them” were found. Moreover, people in the book were seldom presented as foster more than one of the investigated aspects (ethnic belonging, functional limitation, gender, religion and sexual orientation) leaving thebook one-dimensional and focused on normalcy.

The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of middle school students particularly focusing on the academic achievement of economically disadvantaged students. Existing data show that there is an increasing cohort of school children experiencing poverty, either short or long term. For poor middle school students, the risk for school failure is amplified by the general risks associated with middle school transition and early adolescence development. The cumulative nature of these risks is often associated with undesirable school outcomes including grade retention, behavior problems, absenteeism, delinquency, teenage pregnancy, school dropout, fewer years of schooling, and lower academic achievement. However, there is evidence that some students succeed in spite of adversity, which is often attributed to protective factors present in the students’ own immediate environment – school, home, and community. This current study, therefore, examined the relationship between two potential protective factors–parent involvement and school belonging–and student achievement. Previous research has established that parent involvement and school belonging are both associated with positive school outcomes including academic motivation, self-efficacy, internal locus of control, pro-social and on-task behavior, school engagement, educational aspirations and expectations, and better academic achievement. Consequently, this study examined three main questions: (a) How is parental involvement associated with academic achievement for economically disadvantaged eighth grade students? (b) How school belonging associated with academic achievement for economically disadvantaged eighth grade students? (c) Do the relations between parent involvement, school belonging, and eighth grade achievement vary as a function of prior achievement and middle school? To answer these research questions, this study used the nationally representative longitudinal data from Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten (ECLS-K) Class of 1998/99. The findings for this study showed that when parent involvement and school belonging were considered together, the association between parent involvement and student achievement diminished while school belonging consistently emerged as a significant predictor of achievement. However, while school belonging emerged as a significant predictor of achievement, this study established that students’ prior achievement was the single strong and significant factor explaining achievement for poor eighth grade students. / text

Ce mémoire de maîtrise vise à comprendre la problématique de l’intégration des migrants Nord-Coréens en Corée du Sud à travers l’analyse de la dynamique des relations entre Nord et Sud-Coréens. Les objectifs particuliers sont d’identifier un processus d’ethnicisation dans la nation coréenne, de déterminer la place des cultures nord et sud-coréennes dans l’identité coréenne et de définir la reconfiguration identitaire nécessaire afin d’accéder à la reconnaissance du groupe majoritaire. Un séjour en Corée du Sud a été effectué en septembre 2010 afin de réaliser quatre entrevues avec des Nord-Coréens, en plus de rencontrer les gens travaillant dans des organismes promouvant l’intégration des Nord-Coréens en Corée du Sud. L’analyse des données a permis de comprendre de quelle manière la division de la nation coréenne persiste et comment elle influence le processus d’intégration des Nord-Coréens. En premier lieu, l’appartenance au groupe Hanminjok (nation coréenne) est conférée, mais la mise en relief de « marqueurs culturels » contraint l’accessibilité au groupe majoritaire. Deuxièmement, la présence de discours essentialistes exacerbent des représentations sociales négatives qui entravent l’intégration sociale et symbolique à la société sud-coréenne. Finalement, les résultats démontrent que le manque de liens sociaux entre Nord et Sud-Coréens tient une part importante dans la problématique de l’intégration, en plus de nuire à l’accessibilité au marché du travail ce qui compromet l’intégration économique. / This Master’s thesis aims at furthering the understanding of the integration process of North Korean migrants into South Korean society, through the analysis of the relationships between North and South Koreans. The specific objectives hereof are to identify an ethnicisation process, to define the place of North and South Korean culture in the Korean identity and to identify the identity reconfiguration necessary in order to access the recognition of the majority group. Fieldwork was completed in South Korea in September 2010, allowing for the interview of four North Koreans and the meeting of people working in organisations promoting North Korean integration into South Korea. The data analysis led us to a better understanding of how the division of the Korean nation is persisting and how it is influencing the integration process of North Koreans in South Korea. In the first place, belonging to the group Hanminjok (Korean nation) is granted, but the prominence of “ethnic markers” is restraining accessibility of North Koreans to the majority group. Secondly, the presence of essentialist discourses is deepening negative social representations which are deleterious to the social and symbolic integration of North Koreans into South Korean society. Finally, the results show that the lack of social relations between North and South Koreans plays a major role in the problematics of integration and is compromising accessibility to employment and therefore to economic integration.