Studies of Mexican American integration have come to a methodological and theoretical impasse. Conventional investigations have provided limited insight as they are outsider-based perspectives examining native-born minorities within the context of the immigrant experience and race-cycle paradigms. Grounded in cultural ideologies and nationalist narratives, dominant descriptions of minorities have created a conceptual straight that circumscribes the discourse to assimilationists’ models of integration. Moreover, studies of marginal groups produce negative consequences by highlighting cultural differences that tautologically reinforce the grounds for exclusions. Little grounded work has been conducted specifically looking at racialized native-born minorities and the dynamics of their generational process of integration. Through embedded ethnography and the narratives of subject participants, this research provides direct insight into processes of contemporary integration and the social structural accommodation of native-born Mexican Americans. As a means of sidestepping conceptual barriers, this discussion theoretically frames the integration of Mexican American professionals within the context of modernity and liberal human development. By responding to the above critiques, this paper presents an alternative approach to the analysis and explanation of the roots of race-cycle paradigms in the first section. The second section establishes the context for the research and explains the basis for the papers structure and conceptual arguments. As a means of moving the discourse away from established models, the third section provides a critical overview of the classical and contemporary literature on minority integration through a process of textual deconstruction. In addition, the section also constructs a theoretical dynamic between structural determinations and individual adaptations to modernity that promotes integration. The fourth section describes the non-traditional method of data collection that provides direct insight into the processes of native-born minority cultural and structural incorporation. Through participant voices, the fifth section describes how individual interactions and institutional forces are shaping the social place that Mexican American professionals have created on the borderlands of American culture and society. What the interpretive findings suggest in the last section is that they are constructing and re-defining their own social and cultural place out of the elements that modern society provides and not as race-cycle theory predicts.

The origin of the Amerasia Basin, in the Arctic region, is nowadays a highly controversial topic due to the paucity of geophysical data available and the difficulties in interpreting possible seafloor spreading magnetic anomalies. The Chukchi Borderland, that extends into the Amerasia Basin north of the Chukchi Sea, has proven to be one of the more difficult features of the arctic to understand in any model for the tectonic evolution of the Amerasian Basin. In the summer of 2005, USCG Icebreaker Healy crossed the Arctic Ocean from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, to Troms�, Norway, to collect geophysical data and take shallow cores in an effort to gain greater insight into the paleo-oceanographic, depositional and tectonic history of the Arctic basins. 780 km of new seismic lines from the Chukchi Borderland are presented along with a preliminary interpretation of the tectonic evolution of the Amerasia Basin in light of the new observations. The data provide high quality images of the region down to the basement and, in areas, images below the basement. The pelagic sediment cover varies along the profiles with thicknesses ranging from less than 0.1 s to a maximum of 1.5 s TWT. Significant extensional normal faults, striking approximately north-south, are observed throughout the dataset with strong evidence of growth faults below a major unconformity. Along the reflection images oriented E-W, young sediments and possibly the seafloor show small offsets. While this may be due to differential compaction or fluid expulsion, the presence of low amplitude folds above the footwalls suggests a recent fault-propagation folding process. This may indicate recent reactivation and rotation of the crustal blocks, although the total amount of displacement and strain are very small. We do not observe compressional or inversion structures anywhere in the dataset. The orientation of the structures imaged is similar to those observed along the Mendeleev Ridge to the west, which may support recent models that propose the Chukchi Borderlands and Mendeleev Ridge comprise a single extensional province that rifted from the Siberian margin.

This thesis explores the role of political culture in the secession of two Virginia counties: Augusta and Rockbridge. These two counties, which in 1850 were staunchly loyal to the Union, shifted loyalties late in the secession crisis of 1860 and 1861. Comparing local reactions to national politics with local views on the nature and unity of political communities more generally moves the decision to secede in April 1861 into clearer focus. Specifically, comparing regional attitudes towards the sectional controversies surrounding Virginia's constitution with the national debates on slavery in the territories reveals a general concern with the unity of political communities, and the common interests and values needed to sustain such communities. In the context of cross-cutting borderlands between eastern and western Virginia and the northern and southern United States, these sectional questions took on important significance. Political decision-making in this region emerged from a combination of widely-circulating views on the nature of government in this borderland setting. By placing the Valley's secession within these contexts, this thesis argues that Augusta and Rockbridge seceded when they did because events in the North persuaded them that the moral and political character of white northerners had become suspect relative to the question of slavery. / Master of Arts

A travers l’étude de l’activité des postes frontaliers situés le long de la frontière chinoise, cette thèse de doctorat a pour objectif de retracer la manière dont l’administration française a tenté de maintenir l’ordre sur les confins septentrionaux du Vietnam de 1895 à 1940 conjointement avec leurs homologues chinois afin de maîtriser les illégalismes frontaliers commis sur le territoire tonkinois par des groupes venus de Chine, tout en élargissant le regard sur des pratiques migratoires à destination du Céleste empire condamnées et considérées comme du trafic d’êtres humains par les autorités françaises. En combinant à la fois approche statistique et analyse qualitative, cette recherche lève un pan de la vie quotidienne de la frontière à travers la criminalité transfrontalière. La faiblesse du maillage territorial, l’inexpérience relative des commandants de postes, l’insalubrité du climat et la complexité de la topographie de la région frontalière constituent autant de difficultés pour l’autorité coloniale afin de contrôler la frontière, malgré l’entretien d’un service de renseignements considéré par ailleurs comme peu fiable, et en dépit de l’action des partisans, véritable colonne dorsale du maintien de l’ordre frontalier. Cette porosité patente de la frontière se traduit par de nombreuses incursions : du simple vol de bétail aux raids commis contre des villages frontaliers en passant par les embuscades commises sur des chemins ou encore l’introduction frauduleuse de produits sur le territoire tonkinois, l’éventail des crimes transfrontaliers est vaste et soumet la frontière à une pression variable en fonction des évènements se déroulant du côté chinois. Si la répression menée par les troupes régulières est souvent couronnée de succès en cas d’incursions massives et s’apparente plus à des opérations militaires que des actions policières de maintien de l’ordre, en revanche la criminalité du quotidien échappe en grande partie à la vigilance des forces de l’ordre, témoignant par là même des difficultés pour l’autorité centrale d’affirmer son autorité sur une frontière dont la stabilité reste encore largement en devenir. / Through the study of the activity of border crossings, this research aims to analyze how the French colonial administration maintained order along the China-Vietnamese borderlands from 1895 to 1940 with their Chinese counterparts by checking various cross-border crimes committed on Tonkin by mobs from China: theft of cattle, raids against border villages, ambushes on roads, smuggling. But difficulties are important despite the action of the “partisans” who are the backbone to maintain order on the borderlands: weakness of the border crossings network, unhealthy climate, complexity of the topography. While the repression carried out by the regular troops is often successful in the event of mass incursions and is more akin to military operations than to policing law enforcement, cross border criminality of everyday life is checked with difficulties and underlines that stability on the borderlands are in the making.

This project seeks to expand Asian American studies and Asian North American studies to the Caribbean/South America by examining works of SKY Lee, Maxine Hong Kingston and Jan Shinebourne. I argue that these writers represent Chinese diasporic experiences by reconstructing Chinese immigration history to the Americas. Although different racial constitutions and different cultural and historical specificities occasion the racializations of the Chinese in these regions, the colonial and neocolonial powers deploy similar mechanism for racializations and cultural politics that favors the dominant. These writers’ evocation of the nomadic female subjectivity that traverses the multiple and shifting borderlands and contact zones in their narratives offers a comparative perspective on the construction of ethnic female identity across the Americas and leads to a critique of the function of (neo)colonial power in identity and social formation in the Americas. Engaging in a hemispheric study of the Chinese immigration to the Americas, this project also contributes to recent scholarship on diasporic studies as it challenges the conventional categorization of global diasporas, specifically Chinese diaspora as diaspora of trade, and destabilizes the homeland/hostland binary with an account of the secondary migrations within the Americas. Drawing on recent scholarship on diasporic, hemispheric and women’s studies, and global Asian immigration, the Introduction outlines the methodology of the project. Chapter one examines Lee’s "Disappearing Moon Café," arguing that in this family saga Lee repoliticizes the marginalization of the Chinese by exploring the relationship between Chinese and American Indians against the broad racial relationships in Canada. Chapter two reexamines autobiography as a genre and contends that Kingston documents anti-Chinese U.S. immigration history in "The Woman Warrior" and "China Men" by narrating her family genealogy, which mirrors the collective history of Chinese immigration to the Americas. Chapter three focuses on Shinebourne’s representations of creolized Chinese experiences in "The Last English Plantation" and "Timepiece" against the background of Afro- and Indo-Guyanese conflicts in colonial Guyana. While Lee and Kingston foster transpacific dialogues, Shinebourne’s works depict the intersecting experiences of Chinese, East Indian and African diasporas. Her works foreground the historical and political connection of Asian indentureship with African slavery as an alternative labor source for the colonial economy in the Caribbean and Latin America and hence make evident the extension of European Atlantic system to the Pacific

The subjects of my thesis are the specifics of the rural municipalities in the Czech borderland. More specifically it focuses on the development potential of a selected part of the region of Bohemian Switzerland. The theoretical part deals with definition of the terms countryside, borderland and periphery which helps to better define the selected region. As a basis for further examination serves the provided common characteristics of the Czech countryside along with an assessment of the individual specifics of the selected region caused by the historical development of the countryside. The practical part consists of a comprehensive description of the Bohemian Switzerland region, including a questionnaire inquiry. Results and findings resulting from the inquiry are further elaborated through a managed interview with the mayor of a selected municipality. The goal of the thesis is to analyse the development potential of the region and the effectiveness of the activities of mayors of the individual municipalities with regard to the region's potential.

Тема диссертации – «Книга стихов М. Цветаевой “После России”: пространство пограничья», данная работа посвящена интерпретации последней прижизненной лирической книги М. Цветаевой «После России» в аспекте пограничья (пространства, времени, сознания). В рамках исследования был выявлен ряд пространственных моделей пограничья, условно поделенные на городские (городские окраины, вокзал (железная дорога), мост, балкон) и природные (лес, овраг, гора). Темпоральные пограничные модели цветаевской книги представлены широким спектром разнодлящихся темпоральных промежутков (минута, час), а также классических для мировой литературы «переходных», многозначных образов-символов (утро, рассвет, ночь). Пограничье сознания в контексте книги стихов реализовано посредством категорий сна и смерти. Данное исследование актуализирует и репрезентует пограничность (пространства, времени и сознания) в поэтике М. Цветаевой как категорию метапространственную, эстетическую и метафизическую, которая сплетает различные пространственные модели, выделенные в данной научной работе, в единую, целостную ткань лирической книги М. Цветаевой «После России». / The topic of the dissertation is “The book of poems by M. Tsvetaeva “After Russia”: the space of the borderland,” this work is devoted to the interpretation of M. Tsvetaeva’s last lifetime lyrical book “After Russia” in the aspect of the borderland (space, time, consciousness). As part of the study, a number of spatial models of the borderland were identified, conditionally divided into urban (city outskirts, station (railroad), bridge, balcony) and natural (forest, ravine, mountain). The temporal boundary models of Tsvetaeva’s book are represented by a wide range of temporal intervals of different durations (minute, hour), as well as “transitional”, polysemantic images-symbols, classic for world literature (morning, dawn, night). The borderland of consciousness in the context of a book of poems is realized through the categories of sleep and death. This study actualizes and represents borderliness (of space, time and consciousness) in the poetics of M. Tsvetaeva as a metaspatial, aesthetic and metaphysical category, which weaves various spatial models highlighted in this scientific work into a single, integral fabric of M. Tsvetaeva’s lyrical book “After Russia."

The dissertation thesis covers the theme of the relationships between the changes of administrative borders and the peripheriality of space on the territory of Czechia since the mid-19th century. The author first defines the fundamental objectives and discusses the bases of the research of changes of administrative borders in Czechia in the process of polarization of space, as well as the general background and approaches to the issue of borders and regions, while emphasizing the concept of inner peripheries and internal borderland. The thesis attempts to contribute to the debate regarding: the importance of administrative borders of regions of different scales in the polarization of space; identification, analysis and evaluation of areas that changed their administrative affiliation at the level of mesoregions (regions) and microregions (districts) on the territory of Bohemia and the Vysočina Region in particular; evaluation of the degree of stability of administrative regions and stability of centers of these regions; and to assessment of the importance of the borders of regions in the context of problems associated with the development of peripheries. Discussion of changes in administrative borders and related development of territorial administration and local government places focuses on the...

Situated on the north-eastern coast of Morocco, the Spanish enclave of Melilla is a paradigmatic case of an unusual yet increasingly common kind of community. These are small, rather isolated communities with no industry or natural resources of their own, which rely heavily on capital and labour drawn from outside. Together with Ceuta, Melilla is one of the two only land borders between Europe and Africa. The enclave’s economic and political set up reflects its geopolitical importance. Across the border from Melilla lies the Moroccan province of Nador, home to one of the largest communities of Moroccan emigrants in Europe and a steady source of unskilled labour on which the Spanish enclave relies. Connections across the border are strong, including kinship links, employment networks and a wide range of both legal and illegal commercial transactions. Based on twelve months of fieldwork conducted on both sides of the border, this thesis departs from prevailing images of the borderland as either an abstract space of ‘creolisation’ and ‘hybridity’ or a locus of resistance to state power, and suggests, instead, that we carefully consider the large-scale political and economic processes through which places like Melilla and Nador are produced, and analyse the ways in which such global structures shape local reality. A fundamental aim of the thesis, therefore, is to elucidate the nature of the relations between space, place and capital at the Spanish-Moroccan frontier, and understand how such relations affect the lives of those who inhabit the region. This involves thinking about the language of a ‘community’ and the discourses and practices of morality that sustain it; analysing discourses of ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ in contexts of institutionalised economic inequality; and understanding local conceptions of identity, morality and legitimacy, and how the three interact.

This thesis deals with the post-war years of the Rumburk district, more precisely with post-war expulsions and mainly with resettlement. The work was based on archival materials (SOkA Děčín), especially on the administrative ones, secondly, the comparison of accessible secondary literature was made and lastly, the actual memories of those who still remember were composed into the research. The accessible literature and sources are introduced to the reader right in the introduction. The thesis is divided into three basic parts. The first part focuses on the topic of post-war expulsions, what the author considers to be crucial for understanding of the phenomena of resettlement. Furthermore, this part consists of two parts: perception of post- war expulsions generally in the whole Czechoslovakia and concretely in the Rumburk region. The second part of the thesis includes the topic of resettlement, generally and concretely, as well. The last section deals with the Rumburk region from the view of historical sources and those who still remember. It also contains a chapter about the regional social and cultural life (culture and sports clubs, religion, towns and landscape transformation). The aim of the presented paper is not informing the reader about past-war expulsions or resettlement but it is...