Corporate Citizenship, Corporate Social Responsibility, socialt ansvarstagande, hållbarhet

The purpose of this study was to analyze Canadian Citizenship Guides as a proxy for an official policy voice of the Canadian government about what it means to be a Canadian citizen and what is expected from a Canadian citizen. This study analyzed six Canadian Citizenship Guides in the English language developed between 1947 and 2012 and identified how the selection of historical, governmental and social topics, and the use of different words and rhetorical strategies within each contemporary historical context constructed a narrative about what constitutes a Canadian citizen. To construct the narratives of Canadian citizen present in each Canadian Citizenship Guide, the study analysed the narratives about Canada, adaption to Canadian culture, and expected citizenship participation present in each guide. The study also sought continuities and disruptions in the narratives to explore how the narratives changed over time. The study concluded that while the narratives constructed by each guide (good character citizen, responsible citizen, wholesome citizen, politically active citizen, citizenship student, and loyal citizen) had unique elements, at the macro-level it could be said that from 1947 to 2012 there seemed to be more continuities than disruptions in the construction of the narratives of the Canadian citizen, and the narratives about Canada, adaption to Canadian culture, and expected citizenship participation.

Over the last twenty years, the academic work on citizenship education and democracy promotion has grown exponentially. This research investigates the United States federal government’s cultivation of a ‘politics of citizenship’ through the Corporation for National and Community Service and the AmeriCorps program. Drawing on Marxist-feminist theory and institutional ethnography, this research examines the ways in which democratic learning is organized within the AmeriCorps program through the category of ‘civic engagement’ and under the auspices of federal regulations that coordinate the practice of AmeriCorps programs trans-locally. The findings from this research demonstrate that the federal regulations of the AmeriCorps program mandate a practice and create an environment in which ‘politics,’ understood broadly as having both partisan and non-partisan dimensions, are actively avoided in formalized learning activities within the program. The effect of these regulations is to create an ideological environment in which learning is separated from experience and social problems are disconnected from the political and material relations in which they are constituted. Further, the AmeriCorps program cultivates an institutional discourse in which good citizenship is equated with participation at the local scale, which pivots on a notion of community service that is actively disengaged from the State. Through its reliance on these forms of democratic consciousness, the AmeriCorps program engages in reproductive praxis, ultimately reproducing already existing inequalities within U.S. society. The primary elements of this reproductive praxis have been identified as ‘a local fetish’ and the ‘democratic management of inequality.’ The local fetish refers to the solidification of the local as the preferential terrain of democratic engagement and is characterized by an emphasis on face-to-face moral relationships, local community building, and small-scale politics. The democratic management of inequality refers to the development of discursive practices and the organization of volunteer labor in the service of poverty amelioration, which is in turn labeled ‘good citizenship.’ This research directs our attention to a more complicated notion of praxis and its relationship to the reproduction of social relations. Also, this research brings into focus the problem of the conceptualization of civil society and its relationship to democracy and capitalism.

Youth influence in Örnsköldsvik municipality -A thematic analysis of young people's ability to gain more influence in Örnsköldsvik This study is based on three focus group interviews with minors living in Örnsköldsviks municipality. The aim is to investigate what minor individuals want to gain more influence in that concerns their citizenship rights. It also aims to investigate what obstacles there is in their surroundings that prevent them from influencing it. I have conducted semi-structured interviews with the focus groups. The theoretical framework consist of T.H Marshalls theories about citizenship, with the division of civil, political and social rights. Important theoretical conclusions from Tom Bottomore and Rut Lister theories about different group’s substantial opportunities to use their rights in their citizenship has also been used. The conclusion is that the minors living in Örnsköldsvik want to get more influence on their school, places to meet and the opportunity to create a culture place for them to practice music and other culture. The minors experience several obstacles to being able to gain real influence on their citizenship rights. Their young age was one explanation, but there are also laws and rules that prevent them from participating and gaining influenceof their rights in their citizenship

In this thesis I use the case study of Portuguese construction workers in Toronto to provide an assessment of how Canada’s skill-based immigrant selection policies treat workers with low human capital. Government rhetoric and much academic writing has presented skill-based immigration programs as responding effectively to the needs of the labour market, and as a progressive move away from the racist and particularistic exclusions present in previous policies. However, the case study presented in this thesis provides a less optimistic reading of the situation. A persistent labour shortage in manual trades, and a selection system that excludes ‘blue collar’ workers from permanent membership, suggest an immigration policy that is neither in synch with the needs of the labour market nor justly administered. Through a discursive policy analysis, I critique Canadian citizenship and immigration policy in two areas. First, policies have been built on flawed assumptions about how certain segments of the labour market function, leading them to place too high a premium on human capital. Second, workers with low human capital tend to be denied permanent membership and held on precarious legal statuses. The result is a differential access to key social, civic and economic rights depending on a migrant’s skill category. An image of ‘fragmented citizenship’ therefore appears more realistic than writings proclaiming an expansion of universal rights and the emergence of a postnational mode of belonging. The new exclusions of skill-based selection systems have not gone unchallenged. In the case of Toronto’s Portuguese community, protests in 2006 surrounding the deportation of undocumented construction workers served to visibly challenge the state’s definition of what constitutes a ‘desirable citizen’. The protests generated wide public support by engaging a traditional logic of national citizenship, arguing that the Portuguese fit the bill as ‘good Canadians’, though this came at the cost of reinforcing the barriers to entry for other groups of migrants.

Organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) is extra-role behaviour that is not formally required by organizations, but benefits the organization and its members (Organ, 1988). OCB is considered to be a core dimension of job performance (Rotundo & Sackett, 2002) with research showing that OCB contributes to the health and productivity of organizations (e.g., Podsakoff, Whiting, Podsakoff, & Blume, 2009). As a result, both organizational researchers and organizations have long been interested in understanding the origins of this behaviour. However, research into the antecedents of OCB has important limitations. Notably, this research has conceptualized OCB as a static construct, which recent theorizing and research indicates is an inaccurate assumption (e.g., Beal, Weiss, Barros, & MacDermid, 2005; Ilies, Scott, & Judge, 2006). Additionally, OCB research has relied on a single theoretical framework, social exchange theory, to explain previous findings, creating narrowness in the field. The current dissertation sought to address these important limitations by conceptualizing OCB as a dynamic construct (i.e., one that has sizable day-to-day within-person variability) and examining the ability of state gratitude, a novel and theoretically relevant antecedent, to predict OCB. Drawing on the Moral Affect Model of gratitude, Affective Events Theory, and Broaden and Build Theory, I propose that state gratitude is an important driver of day-to-day fluctuations in OCB. In two daily diary studies, my findings revealed that, as predicted, dynamic fluctuations in OCB were significantly predicted by state gratitude. Additionally, in the second of two daily diary studies, state gratitude was successfully induced by a “count your blessings” task and state gratitude was found to be a significant mediator of the induction and OCB. Overall, the results lend support to the notion that OCB is dynamic and that state gratitude, a discrete positive emotion, can be an effective driver of OCB.

This thesis investigates the dual concepts of place as home and place within the canon for diasporic communities, immigrants, and minorities within Canada. This thesis argues that a new understanding of “home” is necessary as the immigrant, forced within an in-between place of “there” (the birth-country) and “here” (the host-country), does not experience “home” as a singular, rooted location. “Home” for the immigrant is a feeling of belonging that spans multiple places simultaneously. This investigation of politics through poetics is grounded in the belief that national literature reflects national identity. As the immigrant presence within Canada has heretofore been perceived as secondary to the national identity, and diasporic and immigrant literature as other-to the Canadian canon, this thesis purposes to re-imagine that national identity in a way that includes minority literature. I focus on the work of two widely known Caribbean Canadian poets: Cyril Dabydeen and Lorna Goodison.

This thesis examines a moment in recent U.S. immigration history where an opportunity was created to move towards merit-based immigration, but that proposal was rejected. In addition to the highly publicized proposal for the legalization of undocumented immigrants residing in the United States, the 2007 Immigration Reform Bill proposed a merit-based immigrant selection policy, or “Point System.” The new system would have evaluated potential immigrants according to characteristics deemed to be in the U.S. “national interest.” Critical discourse analysis of policy documents, media coverage in The New York Times and San Diego Union Tribune, and political rhetoric on the floor of the U.S. Senate reveals a distinct moral geography to selection policy. Whereas in Canada, economic immigration is the popularly endorsed mode of immigrant selection, the U.S. “Point System” proposal launched a diatribe by politicians and pundits, who called merit-based immigration “an experiment in social engineering” (Barack Obama 2007), against a “natural” human and “moral imperative” to reunite families (Robert Menendez 2007). This thesis demonstrates the complexity of the relationship between race and class, and how its complexity, when considered against the backdrop of immigration policy reform, becomes bound up in state endeavours to form and perpetuate national identity through discourses of citizenship. The U.S. economy’s need for transient labour conflicts with the state’s nation-building project: one that excludes Hispanic migrants. The moral crisis over the dismantling of family reunification in the U.S. serves as a competing discourse to the existing anxiety about Latino immigration and undocumented migrants, and as discussion, albeit veiled, of whether or not it is morally right to construct an immigration policy that disadvantages certain groups, most notably Latinos. / Thesis (Master, Geography) -- Queen's University, 2008-06-30 12:35:39.393

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