This thesis identifies a claimant narrative tradition in nineteenth-century American literature and examines the role of that tradition in the formation of American national identity. Drawing on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The American Claimant Manuscripts and Our Old Home (1863) as well as Mark Twain’s The American Claimant (1892), I argue that these writers confronted the paradoxical nature of claimant narratives—what Hawthorne called a “peculiar insanity”—which combined a hereditary sympathy between the United States and Britain with exceptionalist rhetoric about American republican values. Hawthorne’s ambivalence toward the claimant tradition identified the paradox, but his writing merely pointed out inconsistencies, while Twain censured with satire and direct social criticism. America’s British sympathies persisted in later decades, and remained a popular subject of fiction throughout the century, making it ripe for parody by the time Twain wrote his own claimant story. Claimant narratives reinforced class differences in the United States even as they appeared to reject them. The transnational framework of Twain’s novel affords a pointed critical view revealing the latent cruelty of democracy when coupled with attitudes of exceptionalism.

<p>Refugee women experience important physical and mental health disparities which are often unmet during resettlement to host countries. These health disparities have been attributed to the gendering of the refugee process, such that women are more vulnerable to gender-specific violence and abuse during flight from war and conflict. Despite having unmet health needs, they face multiple barriers to leading healthy lives and healing during resettlement to a new host country. This paper seeks to respond to the need for research in understanding the health of refugee women in western nations within feminist geographical scholarship by exploring the ‘lived experiences’ of refugee and refugee claimant women during resettlement to Hamilton, Ontario. Data was collected through in-depth interviews and focus groups with key informants (n=9) and refugee women and refugee claimant women (n=37) from various source countries. Results from this study provide in-depth understandings on the experiences of resettlement including the particular challenges refugee and refugee claimant women face in attempting to rebuild their lives in Canada. Perceptions of good health are closely related to various dimensions of gender (roles and identities) and citizenship (status). This paper explores important health determinants as expressed by the participants: pre-migration experiences, citizenship (status), employment and housing experiences and health care during resettlement. Accounts from this study reflect the need to address ongoing immigration reform and refugee policy in a manner that will honour Canada’s commitment to international humanitarian agreements such as the 1951 Geneva Convention.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

This thesis focuses on the dynamics of benefit receipt in the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) using individual-level administrative data from 2003 to 2013. This thesis is comprised of three self-contained essays. The first essay examines the dynamics of disability benefit receipt in Ontario. A five-year cohort analysis is carried out for those who first received disability benefits in any year between 2004 and 2009 to estimate the proportion exiting from such benefits within five years of first benefit receipt. This analysis is extended to type of exit (e.g., died, moved, or disqualified) and nature of exit (e.g., sustained or temporary). We find that only about 18 percent of benefit recipients exit, most within one and a half years of initial benefit receipt, and that more than one-third of those who exit return within five years. Recipients are both less likely to exit and more likely to return if single, divorced, or widowed rather than married or living common law, if they have children, or if they have mental rather than physical disabilities. The second essay identifies factors that influence ODSP benefits duration. We employ a flexible parametric technique to investigate the duration of disability benefit receipt. We also employ cure models to account for the proportion of recipients that never exit ODSP over the ten-year sample period. Of the whole sample, 20 percent of recipients completed a first spell and the remaining 80 percent were right censored. We find that time spent receiving ODSP benefits is negatively associated with education and positively associated with both age and severity of disability. Individuals who are single, divorced, separated, widowed, or immigrants have longer benefit spells as compared to those who are married, common law, and Canadian born. Individuals with children also spend longer time on ODSP than those relative without children. We provide evidence that recipient characteristics are associated with different probabilities of exiting or re-entering ODSP; that suggests that differentiated, and not ‘one size fit all’, policies are required to facilitate transitions from program dependence to economic independence. The third essay analyzes differences in the benefit receipt rates by immigration status and age. A flexible parametric duration analysis is employed to investigate how age at entry into benefits interacted with immigration status and, for immigrants, how age at arrival in Canada affects the exit rate from disability support. We find strong evidence of differences in age-dependence of benefit receipt and exit rates across immigration status categories. At younger (18-34) and middle (35-54) ages the Canadian-born have much higher benefit receipt rates than immigrants but lower rates at older (55 and over) ages. We speculate that the difference at younger and middle ages can be explained largely by the “healthy immigrant effect” (i.e., a selection effect of relatively healthier immigrants) and at older ages by differential eligibility for, and expected income from, alternative benefit programs such as the Canada Pension Plan, Old Age Security, and the Guaranteed Income Supplement. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (MA (Sociology and Social Anthropology))--University of Stellenbosch, 2011. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Limited academic work has paid attention to the memories generated by claimants engaged in the restitution process. My thesis thus sought to investigate the role of memory in urban land restitution, with specific focus on the Stellenbosch context. In my discussion, I highlight how claimant memories are not only generated by the restitution process but how the master narrative of restitution shapes the memories produced. I argue that claimant memories function and gain wider meaning within the collective memory, through which the master narrative of restitution shapes how they remember – and in so doing, how claimants reconstruct the place from which they were removed. My thesis elucidates how, through the individual narratives of removal and dispossession (and thus, the making of place), claimants position themselves as part of a particular and new form of “imagined community” of land claimants. The context of my research is focussed on the area previously known as Die Vlakte which was located in urban Stellenbosch. Dispossessed and displaced to the outskirts of Stellenbosch town in the early 1960s, the advent of democracy provided the former residents of Die Vlakte the opportunity to claim the land lost. The qualitative methodology of five selected case studies, sought to explore the following objectives of my study: Firstly, to examine how claimants remember and reconstruct the places from which they were removed (that is, the making of place); and secondly, to investigate whether these memories or individual narratives of place are shaped by the master narrative of restitution. By means of engaging prominent theorists and scholars on memory and the master narrative of restitution, my study analyses the various aspects of memory construction and reconstruction within the collective framework. The research points to the interdependent relationship between individual memory and that of collective memory. It is argued that individual memory can only function as part and in reference to the collective memory. Within the restitution process, research shows that the master narrative of restitution not only shapes but controls and organises memory on a collective and hence, individual level. My thesis argues that the individual memories of dispossession and removals of the claimants are similar to national narratives and hence, my thesis illustrates, that the five claimant memories of the place from which they were removed in Die Vlakte is shaped by the master narrative of restitution. Through relaying these narratives of removals and dispossession they thus draw on the master narrative of restitution (from which they derive legitimacy), in order to legitimise their own claim to land and in so doing, placing themselves within the “new” form of imagined communities of land claimants. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Beperkte akademiese werk het aandag geskenk aan die herinnering wat deur eisers, wie betrokke was in die restitusieproses, gegenereer is. My tesis poog dus om die rol van herinnering in stedelike grondrestitusie, met spesifieke fokus op die Stellenbosch konteks. In my bespreking beklemtoon ek hoe eiserherinnering nie net gegeneer word deur die restitusieproses nie, maar hoe die meesternarratief van restitusie die herinnering wat geproduseer is, vorm. Ek voer aan dat eiserherinnering funksioneer en wyer betekenis verkry binne die kollektiewe herinnering, waardeur die meesternarratief van restitusie vorm hoe hulle onthou – en deur dit te doen, hoe eisers die plek waaruit hulle verplaas is waarvandaan hulle verwyder is, heropbou. My tesis verduidelik hoe, deur die individuele narratiewe van verwydering en onteiening (en dus, die skep van plek), eisers hul posisie inneem as deel van 'n besondere en nuwe vorm van "denkbeeldige gemeenskap‟ van grondeisers. Die konteks van my navorsing is gefokus op die area wat voorheen bekend was as Die Vlakte wat voorheen geleë was in die dorp Stellenbosch. Onteien en verdring tot die buitewyke van Stellenboschdorp in die vroeë 1960s, die koms van demokrasie voorsien aan die voormalige inwoners van Die Vlakte die geleentheid om die verlore grond te eis. Die kwalitatiewe metodologie van vyf gekose gevallestudies poog om die volgende doelwitte van my studie noukeurig te bestudeer: Eerstens, om te ondersoek hoe eisers die plekke waarvan hulle verwyder is onthou en heropbou; en tweedens om te ondersoek of hierdie herinneringe of individuele narratiewe van plek deur die meersternarratief van restitusie gevorm word. Deur gesprekvoering met prominente teoretici en kundiges op die gebied van herinnering en die meesternarratief van restitusie, analiseer my studie die verskeie aspekte van herinnering-opbou en heropbouing binne die kollektiewe raamwerk. Die navorsing wys na die interafhanklike verhouding tussen individuele herinnering en die van kollektiewe herinnering. Daar is aangevoer dat individuele herinnering slegs kan funksioneer as deel van en in verhouding tot die kollektiewe herinnering. Binne die restitusieproses wys navorsing dat die meesternarratief van restitusie nie net herinnering vorm nie, maar dit ook beheer en organiseer op 'n kollektiewe en dus individuele vlak. My tesis voer aan dat die individuele herinnering van onteiening en vverwydering van die eisers soorgelyk is aan nasionale narratiewe en dus illustreer my tesis dat die herinnering van die vyf eisers oor die plek waarvan hulle verwyder is in Die Vlakte, gevorm is deur die meesternarratief van restitusie. Deur hierdie narratiewe van verwydering en onteiening te vertel, ontleen die eisers aan die meesternarratief van restitusie (waaruit hul wettiging voortkom), om sodoende hul eie eis om grond wettig te verklaar, en deur dit te doen, hulself te plaas in die “nuwe” vorm van verbeelde gemeenskappe van grondeisers.

The thesis analyses compensations of damages caused by great cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) in fish farms in South Bohemian Region pursuant to Act. No 115/2000 Sb. till 2011. In the introductory section is described a development of population of nesting and migrating Great cormorants in Europe, particularly in the Czech Republic from the 80th of last century, and reasons for conflict between this species conservation and fish farming including legal conditions for compensation to pond owners and a development of compensation issues in the Czech Republic. This thesis assesses an overall status of the compensation of damages already paid in South Bohemia, analyses claimants according subject type and compares the amount of compensation of damages in relation to the number and the pond area including the frequency of submitted apllications by different types of claimants and the relationship to individual districts of South Bohemian Region. The survey in five chosen ponds in Třeboňsko region evaluates a current secondary damages caused by Great cormorants in the form of injured fishes obtained during fishing out.

MSCAEC / Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness

The EU jurisdictional scheme, known as the “Brussels Regime”, confers competence to national courts to adjudicate over international matters. The main rule in Article 4(1) of the Brussels Ibis Regulation sets out that the defendant should generally be sued in the courts of the Member State where he is domiciled. For certain subject matters, the scheme allows the action to be brought elsewhere. The raison d’être is to provide an adequate counterbalance to the one-sided rule of Article 4(1). Articles 7(1) and (2) enable the claimant to launch the suit, “in matters relating to a contract”, at the court of the Member State where the contractual obligation was to be fulfilled, and, in “matters relating to tort”, in the courts for the place where the harmful event occurred. Whether to invoke Article 7 is entirely the claimant’s choice, but the final decision on its interpretation is vested in the Court. Thereby, the manner in which the Court views the provisions will effectively decide the extent of the claimant’s choice to invoke so-called special jurisdiction. It also means that greater emphasis on special jurisdiction will reduce the importance of the main rule in Article 4. Conversely, if the Court were to interpret Article 7 narrowly, its intended effect within the system would be denied. In both cases, the balance between Articles 4 and 7 has been upset. In the former case, the claimant is favoured because of the increased possibilities to choose the forum for the dispute, while in the latter case, the defendant is favoured because he retains the advantage of litigating in his home turf. The starting point for this essay is this very idea of a purported balance between litigants’ interests in EU cross-border litigation. The thesis analyses whether the Court’s case-law on general vis-à-vis special jurisdiction has transitioned from being generally defendant-friendly to claimant-friendly. It is argued that already from the first judgments rendered on the original Brussels Convention in 1976, increasingly more disputes have been launched at special fora, which has amounted to a claimant-friendly scheme. It is also argued that this development has been at the expense of the defendant. Greater choice for the claimant means in turn that the defendant’s ability to foresee before what courts he may be sued has been largely impaired. The thesis highlights how this imbalance is the result of inherent challenges in the Brussels Regime, particularly in relation to how the relevant connecting factors are designated. It is proposed that the unwanted effects of the Court’s practice as well as the shortcomings of the scheme itself are to be considered in the Commission’s evaluationof the Brussels Ibis Regulation, which is presently in the works.