ABSTRACT POST-DIVORCE EXPERIENCE OF HIGHLY EDUCATED AND PROFESSIONAL WOMEN Kavas, Serap Ph.D., Department of Sociology Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Ayse Gunduz Hosgor July 2010, 327 pages Based on life-story interviews with women this dissertation analyzes post divorce experience of highly-educated and professional women. Economic, social, psychological well-being of divorced women / specifically, how they manage to adapt to their new lives after legal dissolution were examined. As is shown in our research while divorce caused various difficulties including financial, social and parenting problems, it, on ther other hand provided relief, for the participants. The participants developed wide range of survival strategies in the face of difficulties and challenges they experience which attested to their agency during and after the divorce process. To the study, while an urbanite, educated and professional woman&rsquo / s termination of a failing relationship itself can be considered as liberation on her part, it will be an overstatement to say that women are enjoying their independence and start anew, just as men do. In this connection, this study searched for insights into the question: How does act of divorce affect these women with respect to their empowerment? Feminist theory is used over the duration of this study. The study scrutinized on the emergent themes such as societal attitudes, single parenting, remarriage, intergenerational and intra-family transmission of divorce, financial consequence, and women&rsquo / s varying coping strategies as well as many other common themes emerged. Studying post-divorce experience of women, which is an unexplored area in Turkish context, employing qualitative method and dwelling on grounded theory approach as an inductive way of data analysis, this study intends to be a considerable contribution to the literature.

This thesis is a subset of a larger “parent” project under the direction of my supervisor, Dr. Cecilia Benoit. The purpose of the larger project is to seize an unique research opportunity that has emerged with the development and implementation of the HerWay Home (HWH) program, a community-based initiative for pregnant and early parenting women who face substance use and other challenges in the Greater Victoria Area. My research has capitalized on the pre-implementation phase of the HWH program between 2010-2011. Thirteen in-person semi-structured interviews were conducted with women who would likely be clients for the HWH program, based on their pregnancy experiences, substance use concerns and other life challenges. The goal of this research has been to explore these women’s pregnancy and postpartum narratives and investigate what, in their view, should be crucial components of the HWH intervention in the short and longterm. My findings indicate that, consistent with the literature on pregnant and early parenting women facing substance use and other life challenges, a range of complex, intertwined disadvantages exist in their lives that translate into multiple barriers to accessing continuous health and social care during their pregnancy and after the birth of their child. An adapted model of the Health Lifestyle Theory is used to frame the analysis of the data collected from this research. The results from this research support the argument that the life choices of the participants are constrained by structural life chances and socially determined inequities that systematically disadvantage and disempower them. The findings also reveal an implicit sense of agency in the women’s narratives, as well as key specifics about what they view as the main gaps in care and their desired program services. The findings will be relayed to HWH organizers, and used to inform the development and implementation of the program’s services. / Graduate

This research is born from a conscious reflection on the roles and judgements that traditional scientific analyses imprint in its objects of study, especially in the field of social movement theory. It aims to understand whether and, to which extent, autonomous resistances knowledges constructed on the ground challenge the academic interpretations of those movements. For this reason, the first part of this dissertation focuses on unravelling how traditional ontologies have been built and underpin majoritarian scientific analyses. Thus, I review most current debates in the field. Traditional social movement research tends to focus on dualist discussions related to new and old social movements, European and American approaches, behavioural or cost-benefits views, structural and agency approaches, identity-based interpretations, etc. In opposition to that, I argue for an ontology breaking with dualist views, placing Deleuze’s concept of difference at the centre of my argument and feminist ontologies of the body as the medium affecting the political experience. I propose an autoethnographic method focused on presenting a cartography of urban resistance movements composed by difference and rhizomatic relationships in opposition to the homogenisation of ideas and demands of academic research for pilling up patterns, variables or categories. Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the BwO is presented here as a theoretical tool that helps to introduce the case study in relation with its contexts, relationships, affects and networks. The second part of this research narrates and analyses how the proposed theory is unwrapped in the field. In doing so, I analyse my participation with and from within one of those collectives, Can Batlló and, more specifically, a project named La Fondona. Can Batlló is an autonomous and self-organised social centre in the neighbourhood of La Bordeta in Barcelona with which I worked during six months between 2013 and 2014. Throughout this period, I participated actively not only in Can Batlló but also in the actions and events that took place in the neighbourhood of Sants-Montjuïc and Barcelona. Hence, I present an analysis of the internal processes, relations and knowledge-practices as well as the relationships that this collective maintains with the community, its sociopolitical space and historical context. I argue those relations are constructed through rhizomatic principles as well as drawing from feminist approaches which put life and the body at the centre of their arguments. These outcomes will be finally reflected in chapter IX of this dissertation under the lenses of the research question posed in this thesis. That is whether current urban resistances challenge majoritarian social movements’ analyses. / Marie Curie Fellow Program and University of Utrecth

Muslim family members constitute a significant migration flow to the UK (Kofman et al., 2013). Despite such observations, this form of mobility is under-explored in geographic scholarship on migration. Accordingly, this thesis examines the subjective experiences of migration of a small group of Muslim women, who migrated either with or to join their families in Scotland. Participant observation, focus groups and the life narratives of eight women are used to gain an in-depth understanding of both the reasons for and the consequences of migration for this group of Muslim women. In addition, this thesis examines the role of a secular community-based organisation in supporting migrants in their everyday lives. Drawing on conceptual approaches to migration, this study reveals diverse and complex motivations among participants in “choosing” to migrate. Far from “victims” or “trailing wives”, participants privileged their children's needs but also the possibility to transform their sense of self through migration. The study draws attention to the struggles of daily life in Scotland where, bereft of extended family, the synchronisation of migration with childbirth resulted in some participants enduring years of isolation. Such struggles resulted in changes in the home, with husbands providing both physical and emotional support. The experience of migration affected the women's religious identities, providing solace as well as a way to assert belonging in Scotland by drawing on Islamic theology. The community-based organisation provided a “safe space”, bridging the secular and non-secular and offering women the chance to socialise, learn and volunteer. The study shows that volunteering provided not only a way into paid work but also shaped women's subjectivities and home lives. However, the re-direction of national government funding towards “Muslim problems” threatens to undermine the organisation's ability to continue to meet the local needs of Muslim migrant women.

When Canada took on the leadership role of the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team (K-PRT) in Afghanistan, the liberation of women and children via multi-departmental collaboration was promoted by the government as a critical goal of the operation. Research from the fields of public administration, international development, and critical security studies hypothesizes that collaborative approaches to governance, particularly in fragile states, ensures that greater resources are available to address human rights issues, including gender equality. It is therefore surprising that the gendered implications of Canada’s collaborative governance commitments within the K-PRT have not been deeply explored. Through a feminist frame analysis, informed by critical and post-structural feminist theory, this dissertation asks whether the Canadian collaborative approach permits more attention to be paid to policy and programming on gender equality. Framing the case of the K-PRT from a feminist perspective, this dissertation identifies the hegemony of masculinity within the policy context that guided the Canadian collaborative approaches in Kandahar, highlighting how international guidelines for collaboration legitimized the leadership of the military and instrumentalized gender for militarized purposes. It also exposes the masculine structure of the K-PRT, identifying how the design of the PRT favoured the might of the military, and presented the exceptionalism of women as the only marker of gender. Finally, this dissertation highlights the narrative of masculinity that is threaded throughout the K-PRT, working to normalize the militarization of civilian departments and actors implicated within the Canadian collaborative approach. The application of a gender lens to the case of the K-PRT reveals the necessity of feminist analysis of collaborative approaches, as these are increasingly being seen as best practices for addressing state fragility worldwide.

Bibliographic Note Sundal, Kendra. 2013. La Frontière/Il Confine: French and Italian Migration Discourse. 85 pages. Master's thesis. Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Political Studies. Supervisor doc. PhDr. RNDr. Nikola Hynek, M.A., PgDipRes, PhD Abstract This work analyzes the historical background and discourse on migration in Italy and France, focusing on migration from and through former colonies in North Africa. Drawing on a feminist methodological approach, the work discusses how migrants may be perceived or treated differently based on gender, and how this impacts (or is impacted by) policies. In particular, one illustrative event, the closure of the Franco-Italian border in April 2011, is analyzed more deeply using the theory of domopolitics as introduced by William Walters. By tracing the history and the discourse about migration and integration from colonial times to the present, this event and other recent debates related to Mediterranean migration are contextualized. Key Terms: migration, France, Italy, borders, Arab Spring, domopolitics, feminist methodology, discourse analysis, historical representation

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This thesis examines the experiences of girl child soldiers in Uganda in order to explore the gender gaps that exist in post-conflict programming and to engender meaningful policy solutions that target these gaps. This thesis uses a gender lens to analyze the challenges faced by Ugandan girls and to explore how entrenched gender norms feed into a singular narrative of conflict – dangerous boys and traumatized girls – that renders particular combatants – and their unique needs – invisible. Adopting a feminist methodology that prioritizes the importance of girls’ narratives and self-perceptions, the author argues that girl child soldiers must be meaningfully included in the design and implementation of programming aimed at serving their needs. A participatory action research methodology is presented as a promising way forward. It can help address specific gendered challenges in the post-conflict environment, while also recognizing and drawing upon the resiliency and strengths of the girl child soldiers themselves.