Although there is a growing literature on non-climatic drivers of vulnerability to climate change, there are only a few empirical case studies that demonstrate the process through which vulnerability is produced. Moreover, existing climate literatures offer very limited insights on the linkages between governance and vulnerability to climate change. Within the governance framework, this dissertation tends to contribute to the current body of knowledge by exploring the role of governance in producing vulnerability to climate change. Using southwest coastal Bangladesh as an example, this study addresses three specific research questions: (1) how mastaanocracy, a form of uneven power relations shapes vulnerability to climate change; (2) the impact of corruption, particularly bribery and extortion on livelihoods in the face of climate change; and (3) the linkage between social exclusion and climate change vulnerability. Findings suggest that unequal power relation and corruption reduces the ability of the population to cope with the stresses of climate change. Social exclusion adds an extra burden to already vulnerable segments of population. On the other hand, climatic change pushes marginalized community further away thus exacerbating social exclusion. Based on the findings, I argue that it is difficult to build resilience and achieve successful adaptation without addressing the structural factors of power and inequality.

Social exclusion is the restriction of participation in one’s community; it is the denial of access to rights, services, dignity and respect. Youth who are homeless experience social exclusion on numerous fronts, as they are marginal to the social, economic and civil worlds of Canadian society. This dissertation is a qualitative, participatory project on youth homelessness that prioritizes voice by employing a “methods from the margins” approach (Kirby & McKenna, 1989). During this project I worked with youth who have experienced homelessness (ages 16-25), first in focus groups (n=13) and, then, through interviews (n=30), to explore their views on topics connected to social exclusion. The youth guided the topics that I explored, which I connected to the features of social exclusion outlined by Silver and Miller (2003). Results of this study highlight that youth who are homeless do not describe their experiences in terms of social exclusion. The results of this work question the homogeneity of experiences of the youth in the age bracket of 16-25, and review findings through three specific age categories of youth being “not yet adults,” “new adults” and “adults.” My findings indicate that youth who experience homelessness perceive themselves to be more independent and mature than youth who have not experienced homelessness, questioning dominant constructions of both “youth” and “homelessness.” Youth respondents also mentioned a number of other difficulties they experienced because of homelessness, including discrimination and limited opportunities for education and conventional employment and access to housing. This highlights the multidimensionality of social exclusion. At various points in the thesis I discuss youths’ views on rights and social citizenship, pointing to the impacts of limited rights and social safeguards in a neo-liberal state. Recommendations are made for reducing the social exclusion of youth who experience homelessness through “housing-first” approaches to addressing homelessness.

Feminist geographic debates have drawn attention to the multi-scalar role of borders as processes of social differentiation that are reproduced and inscribed on the bodies of migrant workers in everyday life. This thesis explores these questions in the context of Singapore’s global city-state where the increasing visibility of low-wage foreign workers in local residential areas has become a subject of tense neighbourhood frictions that frequently bring borders into sharp relief. Using the case-study of a recent public furore surrounding the proposed location of a foreign worker dormitory in Serangoon Gardens, one of Singapore's well-known middle-class estates, it examines the ways that migrant exclusions in local residential areas are informed by border anxieties and practices that mark out the labouring bodies of foreign workers as alien and “out of place.” The Serangoon Gardens incident exhibited a moment of tension whereby gendered, racialised, and class-based meanings attached to specific forms of flexible labour (particularly foreign construction and domestic work) were inserted into wider debates about nation, community, and the socio-spatial preservation of middle-class identity and belonging. Insofar as Singapore’s growth remains undergirded by the systematic in-flow of low-wage foreign workers to service its infrastructural and social reproductive labour needs, a study of borders helps illuminate the inherent contradictions and barriers of mobility within the global city as an exclusionary landscape. This thesis argues that the deeply marginalised place of foreign workers in society stems predominantly from the constitutive role of the state’s managerial migration regime in shaping everyday social meanings and practices that construct these workers as unassimilable subjects within the city-state. The outcome of these multi-scalar forms of bordering practices has been to produce a transient, depoliticised, and governable migrant population in the interests of security and economic prosperity in Singapore’s global city-state. / Thesis (Master, Geography) -- Queen's University, 2010-05-11 15:31:12.683

Many Indigenous leaders and public figures, as well as scholars of Indigenous culture and history, assert that non-Indigenous ignorance of Indigenous realities has systematically disadvantaged Indigenous peoples in Canada, weakened Canadian society, and makes it impossible to address the conditions of life for Indigenous people in Canada in a sustained or coherent way. Additionally, for many scholars silence and unawareness are deeply linked to colonialism and are implicated in the maintenance of unequal social relations. Drawing from this literature, I contend that in Canada, silence around Indigenous peoples and issues works as a spatial tactic of exclusion. I argue that unawareness is bound up in interests that work to render Indigenous peoples absent from the concerns of modern Canada, and that these interests are deeply intertwined with national and provincial identities such that silences around Indigenous peoples and issues are expressed differently in each Canadian province and territory. This thesis explores the nature of public unawareness of Indigenous realities in Québec. Using the remarkable public voice resource generated by the 2007 Reasonable Accommodation Commission in Québec, a public inquiry into Québec citizens’ opinions about the nature of Québec identity and its relationship to the integration of minorities in the province, I analyze the Commission’s mandate and geographical movements, as well as over 750 written briefs submitted to the Commission. I argue that unawareness of Indigenous realities is widespread in Québec and is unconstrained by participants’ social positions, interests, arguments, or level of engagement with the question of indigeneity in Québec. Though the Commission worked to exclude Indigenous content (and perhaps peoples) from its activities from the outset, eight Indigenous leaders submitted briefs and spoke powerfully and critically of the Commission’s exclusion. These authors point out that the question of Indigenous rights is far from settled, that the Commission’s and Quebecers’ unawareness of Indigenous realities is complicit in a long history of exclusion in Québec and in Canada, and assert that Quebecers will not be able to address their anxiety around immigration in any meaningful or coherent way until Indigenous rights are respected. In my focus on the Reasonable Accommodation Commission, I suggest the particular nature of exclusion in Québec. While exclusion of Indigenous peoples is a Canadian universal, its flavour varies. In this case, the provincial jurisdiction is important. / Thesis (Master, Geography) -- Queen's University, 2012-04-22 18:11:39.47

Recently there has been more critical attention given to the violent role of the North West Mounted Police (NWMP) in the unfolding of settlement and colonial laws in western Canada. However, few have offered a comprehensive analysis of the violent encounters that are recorded (and missing) in the archival records and correspondence of the NWMP, and other secondary sources. Similarly, few researchers have utilized the ‘past’ experiences of Aboriginal peoples to try and understand the ongoing chasm today between non-indigenous settlers and Aboriginal peoples of Canada. In making the “marginal central” (Fitzpatrick 1989), and simultaneously challenging the dominant colonial narrative, I offer a socio-historical analysis of western Canada during the NWMP era (1873-1905), to show how it was (and still is), like other colonial frontiers, a violent space and time. I explore this argument by situating the violent encounters between the NWMP, white settlers, and Aboriginal peoples within the colonial relations that were structured to maintain the marginalization and dispossession of Aboriginal peoples. Failing to recognize and resist this part of western Canadian history, and the underlying logic behind it, is denial and limits the rationality and potential of non-indigenous Canadian populations to work for, and even conceive of, achieving an authentic reconciliation with Aboriginal peoples.

The Changing Landscape of Financial Services in Manitoba: A Location Analysis of Payday Lenders, Banks and Credit Unions ABSTRACT This study traces the emergence and expansion of payday lending outlets in Winnipeg and the rural Manitoba communities of Brandon, Portage la Prairie, Thompson and Dauphin during the period 1980-2009, in order to look for shifts over time in the site location strategies of payday lenders relative to mainstream banks. Location analysis, in the context of financial exclusion theory, is used to examine the spatial void hypothesis that mainstream banks have played a role in the rise of payday lending in poor neighbourhoods where traditional bank branches are absent or under-represented. It also considers evidence for the spatial complement hypothesis that payday lenders are not geographic substitutes for mainstream banks but are instead spatial complements, serving different segments of shared markets. Results of the goodness-of-fit test and location analysis based on population data suggest that the payday lending industry in Manitoba is not exclusively located in lower income neighbourhoods or solely located in areas where there is an absence or reduced presence of bank and credit union branches. Moreover, newer, suburban and rural payday lender outlets are almost always located next to mainstream banks and credit unions. The exception would be Winnipeg’s inner-city, where payday lenders are more densely located and where mainstream banks have gradually retreated. While multi-service establishments are shown to have first gained a foothold in poor neighbourhoods as cheque-cashers, this study examines the extent to which a focus on payday loans as the lead product has been accompanied by a shift to middle-income, suburban neighbourhoods and rural communities over the study period. The results of descriptive and OLS multivariate regression analyses provide further evidence of the changing relationship of location patterns of payday lenders to neighborhood characteristics, including mainstream bank presence, income level, poverty status, population density, age, education, family type and ethnicity. The implications these findings have for ongoing policy discussions about the status of the payday loan industry in Canada are discussed. JEL Classification code: G21 - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Microfinance Institutions; Mortgages

The thesis develops solutions to two main problems for mental realism. Mental realism is the theory that mental properties, events, and objects exist, with their own set of characters and causal powers. The first problem comes from the philosophy of science, where Psillos proposes a notion of scientific realism that contradicts mental realism, and consequently, if one is to be a scientific realist in the way Psillos recommends, one must reject mental realism. I propose adaptations to the conception of scientific realism to make it compatible with mental realism. In the process, the thesis defends computational cognitive science from a compelling argument Searle can be seen to endorse but has not put forth in an organized logical manner. A new conception of scientific realism emerges out of this inquiry, integrating the mental into the rest of nature. The second problem for mental realism arises out of non-reductive physicalism- the view that higher-level properties, and in particular mental properties, are irreducible, physically realized, and that physical properties are sufficient non-overdetermining causes of any effect. Kim’s Problem of Causal Exclusion aims to show that the mental, if unreduced, does no causal work. Consequently, given that we should not believe in the existence of properties that do not participate in causation, we would be forced to drop mental realism. A solution is needed. The thesis examines various positions relevant to the debate. Several doctrines of physicalism are explored, rejected, and one is proposed; the thesis shows the way in which Kim’s reductionist position has been constantly inconsistent throughout the years of debate; the thesis argues that trope theory does not compete with a universalist conception of properties to provide a solution; and shows weakness in the Macdonald’s non-reductive monist position and Pereboom’s constitutional coincidence account of mental causation. The thesis suggests that either the premises of Kim’s argument are consistent, and consequently his reductio is logically invalid, or at least one of the premises is false, and therefore the argument is not sound. Consequently, the Problem of Causal Exclusion that Kim claims emerges out of non-reductive physicalism does not force us to reject mental realism. Mental realism lives on.

This qualitative research study aims to document the lived experiences of several primary-aged Māori students, and the impact on their caregivers, when these students have been stood down, suspended or excluded from their school. In order to contextualise the students’ narratives, data from primary school site personnel, the principals and Board of Trustees chairperson of the students’ schools were gathered. The research also involved interviews with Ministry of Education and Group Special Education personnel, to gain an understanding of the Ministry’s perspective on how it meets the differing needs of students, caregivers and schools. An analysis of the two schools’ policy and procedures, and relevant documents, with regard to stand-down, suspension and exclusion of primary-aged students was also undertaken. Qualitative research methodologies enabled me to explore the lived experiences of these young people excluded from primary school, from the subjects’ own frame of reference. Data were collected using participant observations, document analysis, and in-depth semi-structured interviews. Kaumātua support for both the researcher, and the whānau involved, was sought with the aim of ensuring that the research proceeded in culturally appropriate and safe ways. The research aimed to keep the students’ stories central to the discussions. One of the key themes that emerged from the students’ narratives was the impact of being repeatedly framed by focusing solely on their behaviour. The impact of institutionalised racism evident within these educational life histories highlights the children’s struggle to persevere and survive in what they describe as hostile, racist, uncaring school environments. A key issue as outlined by the caregivers in this study has been the lack of understanding and support from or genuine partnership with their children’s education providers. The caregivers spoke of the effect that the disciplinary exclusion had on their relationship with their child and on their lives. Eventually the caregivers too become angry about, disengaged from and disillusioned with an education system that allows young people to be removed from schools, based solely on their behaviour. The themes that emerged from discussions with schools centred on lack of support and follow-up from government agencies. School personnel were critical of the length of time it took to access support packages from the Ministry of Education. They discussed the impact of Tomorrow’s Schools, particularly the current legislation on stand-downs, suspensions and exclusions. School personnel suggest their ability to manage high needs students is further complicated by the existence of kiwi suspensions and geographical school zones. This thesis stresses that it is critical for the students’ voices to remain central to discussions concerning their own education, so their creative ideas for possible solutions can help to create pathways forward.

Upon the introduction of the Universal primary education in 1997 by the government of Uganda, the idea of integrated education was put into practice. As of now, children with disabilities are accessing education through the mainstream schools though facing many challenges. However, our study has found out that CWDs are still facing many challenges in accessing special education in Uganda. This includes lack of good physical infrastructure, educational materials, easy access to classrooms, and other services.                                       In addition, teachers are not motivated to take care of the needs of CWDs, resulting in low morale. Corruption among officials within the system is yet another factor affecting special education provision for CWDs.    The study was conducted through qualitative method with semi structured interview questions. In one of the districts in Uganda, four teachers in one primary school and four education officials in the same district were interviewed. The aim of this study was to find out the challenges facing children with disabilities, and the possibilities of providing special education to them.

The WM sector in Nairobi is a failure. Collection rates are deplorable, regulations go unenforced and the municipal landfill is desecrating the environment and killing neighbouring slum dwellers. This paper focuses on the exclusion and marginalization of the slums adjacent to Nairobi’s landfill, Korogocho and Dandora, and uses a post-structuralist theoretical framework to conceptualize a just response to these exclusions and theorize an inclusive approach to waste policy in Nairobi. Building on the work of Jacques Derrida, I present a ‘deconstructive ethic’ for development that is dedicated to mitigating and overcoming the production of alterity, and reintegrating excluded communities and knowledges into the sites of knowledge and policy creation. This ethic is used to formulate a five-part response to the conditions of exclusion experienced in Korogocho and Dandora, and to engage these populations in finding participatory solutions to the city’s waste problem.