Very few empirical studies in migration and citizenship focus on immigrants' perceptions of the concept of citizenship and its prominent features. Based on the semi-structured interviews of 8 Pakistani immigrants (Swedish citizenship holders and non-citizenship holders) in Sweden, this study aimed to understand how these immigrants perceive and define Swedish citizenship, and how do they value it in material, symbolic, and emotional terms. Through conceptual framework and literature review of citizenship in its symbolic, materialistic, and emotional term, three central approaches mobility, sense of security, and sense of belonging were derived and analyzed. The findings of this research suggest that immigrants who participated in this study tend to value Swedish citizenship. They are very concerned about their security and protection which is provided by the state to a citizen in every sphere of life; economically, socially, politically; protection against the deportation; and while traveling anywhere in the world. These immigrants perceived that passport makes a difference, and during travel, it enables and constrains inequalities, restrictions, and uncertainties in the mobility arena. Furthermore, when it comes to belongings: the interviewee relate it to work, spending time in the country, and participation in the society. Finally, this study recommends further research with different migrants groups in Sweden to understand the true essence of Swedish citizenship in immigrants' worldview.

The most contemporary approach to biodiversity conservation within South Africa is that of community-based initiatives, which seek to combine biodiversity conservation with socioeconomic development. As a challenge to the Western, science laden approaches to conservation there is an increasing need for community initiatives to reflect the values of local communities. Values of local communities and the management body, CapeNature, with regards to Driftsands Nature Reserve, Cape Town, were captured and analytically coded through the qualitative methods of interviewing and participant observation in order to develop a grounded theory and model. A discussion of the expressed values suggests that community-based conservation initiatives are doing little to include community values even though there is a large degree of agreement between these and corporate values. As such, it is questioned whether community-based conservation can be practised within an organisation which, due to procedures and protocols, is top-down in its approach. / Geography / M. Sc. (Geography)

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abstract: Plastic pollution has become a global threat to ecosystems worldwide, with microplastics now representing contaminants reported to occur in ambient air, fresh water, seawater, soils, fauna and people. Over time, larger macro-plastics are subject to weathering and fragmentation, resulting in smaller particles, termed ‘microplastics’ (measuring < 5 mm in diameter), which have been found to pollute virtually every marine and terrestrial ecosystem on the planet. This thesis explored the transfer of plastic pollutants from consumer products into the built water environment and ultimately into global aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. A literature review demonstrated that municipal sewage sludge produced by wastewater treatment plants around the world contains detectable quantities of microplastics. Application of sewage sludge on land was shown to represent a mechanism for transfer of microplastics from wastewater into terrestrial environments, with some countries reporting as high as 113 ± 57 microplastic particles per gram of dry sludge. To address the notable shortcoming of inconsistent reporting practices for microplastic pollution, this thesis introduced a novel, online calculator that converts the number of plastic particles into the unambiguous metric of mass, thereby making global studies on microplastic pollution directly comparable. This thesis concludes with an investigation of a previously unexplored and more personal source of plastic pollution, namely the disposal of single-use contact lenses and an assessment of the magnitude of this emerging source of environmental pollution. Using an online survey aimed at quantifying trends with the disposal of lenses in the US, it was discovered that 20 ± 0.8% of contact lens wearers flushed their used lenses down the drain, amounting to 44,000 ± 1,700 kg y-1 of lens dry mass discharged into US wastewater. From the results it is concluded that conventional and medical microplastics represent a significant global source of pollution and a long-term threat to ecosystems around the world. Recommendations are provided on how to limit the entry of medical microplastics into the built water environment to limit damage to ecosystems worldwide. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Biology 2020

To be successful citizen science projects need to do two key things: (1) they need to meaningfully engage the public and they must also provide people with the tools, expertise, and/or training needed to participate in rigorous research that can be used by the scientific community. In some ways, these requirements are potentially at odds. Emphasis on rigor and expertise risks excluding members of the public who do not feel qualified to participate in esoteric or technically difficult scientific research. Conversely, projects that eschew rigorous methods in favor of wider participation might lead to bad data that cannot be used to draw any meaningful conclusions to expand scientific understanding. How then do those who are aiming to design successful citizen science programs create tools and processes that facilitate both active engagement and meaningful scientific results for perceived non-expert researchers? This paper uses a case study of the Outsmart Invasive Species Project (Outsmart) to explore how visual media shape the experiences of citizen scientists participating in a data collection project. Outsmart uses visual media such as photographs and videos to train users in identifying invasive species, and asks them to submit their own location-tagged pictures to a central database for review by a trained research team. Using ethnographic field observation, we focused on how visual media serve to improve engagement in non-expert Outsmart users by building confidence and expertise. Our work can provide guidance to other citizen science projects in how to best use visual media to empower citizens and improve scientific outcomes.

The aim of the diploma thesis is to describe the relationship between the citizen and public space, and to answer the question why the topic of public space should be incorporated in secondary school curriculum. The first chapter introduces the concept of public space. I look at public space through the lens of normative theory, based on which I assess its characteristic features. In the first chapter, I also deal with the mass media and social networks, which are an integral part of public space. The second chapter focuses on urban public space. In this chapter I look for answers to the questions: what is the relationship between the citizen and the public space, how do they influence each other. The citizen and the public space are inextricably linked, because it is the citizens who transform a physical place into public space. Further, the question of the quality of public spaces is raised, to which I answer using the basic principles of architecture and urbanism. The second chapter also answers the central question of the diploma thesis: why the topic of public space should be taught in school. The third chapter presents the results of a simple questionnaire survey. It captures the opinions of interview participants on the current state of public space in Slovakia, its positive and negative...

Maintaining order is a core function of the state. Yet, in many contexts, actors other than the state are involved in combating crime and violence. Such actors range from private security companies who sell protection to vigilante mobs who brutally punish criminal suspects. This dissertation explores how states maintain order when they are faced with private crime prevention efforts. Taken together, the three chapters of the dissertation provide insights into the determinants of law enforcement policy, the sources of citizens' willingness to cooperate with the state, and the social drivers of crime and violence. Chapter 1 presents a formal model that sheds light on the incentives of political parties to invest in law enforcement when citizens can purchase private protection. Private security measures like burglar alarms, camera systems, and security guards are pervasive in high income communities around the world. I model the supply of crime and the demand for private protection together with a political process that determines public spending on the police. The model provides conditions under which parties may over- and underspend on law enforcement relative to other government services. In relatively poor societies, left parties are prone to spend less and right parties are prone to spend more than the socially optimal amount on policing. The reverse is true in relatively rich societies, where the base of the right party can afford private protection. The results call into question the conventional wisdom that tough-on-crime policies are the domain of parties on the right, and provide an explanation for why such policies in various contexts have been implemented by left-wing politicians. Throughout the developing world, criminal suspects are often assaulted or even killed at the hands of their community. Chapter 2 considers the micro-dynamics of how state capacity affects citizens’ choice between the state and mob vigilantism. I present results from a field experiment in South Africa that creates variation in the capacity of police to locate households. Findings from mid- and endline surveys suggest households exposed to an increase in police capacity became more willing to rely on police and less willing to resort to vigilantism. Results from a mechanism experiment point towards increased fear of state punishment for vigilante violence rather than improved perceptions of police service quality as the link between state capacity and vigilantism. The broader implication is that citizens’ cooperation with capable state institutions may not necessarily reflect citizens’ satisfaction with state services. Instead, citizens may draw on state institutions because states limit citizens’ choices by sanctioning those who participate in informal practices that the state deems illegal. Chapter 3 draws on original surveys with more than 10,000 respondents from hundreds of communities in Uganda, Tanzania, and South Africa to show that women are more likely than men to support mob vigilantism. This result runs counter to a large literature in public opinion that finds women are less supportive of violence than men across a variety of domains throughout industrialized contexts. Drawing on qualitative evidence, a vignette experiment in Uganda, and additional survey measures from Tanzania, the chapter shows that men and women differ in their beliefs about the downsides of mob vigilantism. Men are more likely to think mob vigilantism creates risks of false accusation for those who do not commit crime. The chapter traces this divergence in beliefs to differences in the extent to which men and women are at personal risk of being accused of a crime that they did not commit. The results highlight the role that beliefs play in the link between gender and views about violence.

The thesis discusses the participatory governance establishment in Georgia and Ukraine with a focus on the elements of deliberative public participation. Through the analysis of the established practices of citizen engagement, the research attempts to find out whether Georgia and Ukraine managed to construct the system of the inclusion of the people in policy-making and set up the opportunities for deliberative public participation. The thesis contains the analysis of the legislative frameworks and the implemented Open Government Partnership initiatives in Georgia and Ukraine to find out which platforms of citizen engagement are set up in both countries and identify their character: do these platforms include the elements of deliberative public participation? If yes, to what extent? Each of the main mechanisms of citizen engagement is analysed according to the four categories defined in the evaluation framework. After identifying the level of deliberative public participation in both countries, the thesis discusses the environments both in Georgia and Ukraine to understand which factors underpinned the process of the development of deliberative public participation, and also, which factors held back the progress.

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Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are growing fields in both global job markets and educational spaces. The problem related to this study was the lack of understanding of how gender and ethnicity might relate to differences in the science self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and task interest of students who have participated in STEM intervention programs at the middle school level. The purpose of this quantitative study was to explore the extent to which there were differences between the dependent variables of science self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and task interest in U.S. middle school students based on the independent variables of gender and ethnicity after participating in a citizen science STEM intervention program. Social cognitive career theory was the theoretical framework for the study. This study was a nonexperimental comparative investigation based on survey responses from students who had participated in a water quality, citizen science STEM intervention from 2017-2019. The participating students’ school district has a history of multiple, systemic STEM learning experiences. The results of two-way MANOVA indicated that there were no statistically significant differences in career choice variables between male and female students and between non-Hispanic and Hispanic students after participating in a citizen science intervention program. This study has the potential to help students from underrepresented populations to envision success in their STEM educational and career pathways by seeing other students experience success in those areas. Educators may also be better able to design programs that address the specific needs of underrepresented student populations, which may lead to better student outcomes for those groups.