Yes / Imagine that you’re entering a cave on a sunny, warm summer day. There is a swift, and distinct, change in the temperature as you walk into the darkness – a cold, dampness that cuts through to the bone. The lack of internal light immediately plunges you into darkness as you journey further into the cave, and the inherent stillness and silence means any noise you make is amplified twofold. If the Underworld exists, this is likely where it would be situated. And yet, if you simply turn around to face the entrance of the cave, you are greeted by a completely different setting; you can see the bright sun, the clear blue skies. By walking back to the start, you can already feel the warm air, hear the natural noises that one associates with the outdoors. But stop right in the middle, between the entrance of the cave and its deeper chambers – here, you’re in between what can only be described as two completely different worlds. This is a liminal space – and its where I exist, as a researcher and as a queer, mixed woman.

This dissertation examines civilian mobilization amidst the Donbas war in Ukraine and the identity formation processes that it engendered. It focuses on ordinary residents of the frontline regions who voluntarily got together to address the humanitarian and military consequences of war in the absence of state support. It explores the micro-level dynamics of mobilization, particularly the demographic profile of volunteers, their motivations to join and their pathways to engagement. In so doing, it provides an account of how ordinary residents of seemingly passive regions became active in times of crisis. I use the concept of “identity formation” to analyze how war and war engagement have impacted citizen, gender, national and language identities of those active at the rear. The outbreak of war shattered habitual ways of thinking and acting and brought about new modes of belonging and meaning making for war volunteers. My findings suggest that successful volunteer efforts in wartime allowed volunteers to position themselves differently with respect to community, nation, and the state and to articulate new understandings of “good citizenship.” The shifting positioning of volunteers, as the research demonstrates, is inherently linked to the changing citizen regimes in Ukraine and the gendered conceptions of who counts as a legitimate member of the community. By employing ethnographic tools of inquiry, the dissertation provides an ethnographic account of wartime social change “from below” and speaks to larger social and political transformations in wartime using Ukraine as a case study. It does so with attention to the social-political environment within which collective action occurs and in relation to the new types of mobility, socializing and bonding it engenders.

In this dissertation, the participation of 5-year-old Spanish speaking children in a kindergarten classroom community was explored. The school was located in a working and middle-class community in Southern Arizona, where pursuant to state law; the language of instruction was English. Student participants spent four hours every day in an English Language Development classroom, segregated from their native-English speaking peers.The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore factors that affected the participation of kindergarten English Language Learners (ELLs) in knowledge construction in their classroom community. Research questions were addressed by examining ways teacher questioning strategies and evaluation responses enabled or constrained the participation of ELLs in mathematics, as well as the role ofpeers in the classroom. Data were analyzed through participant frameworks, whichilluminated the process of identity negotiation through positioning strategies. Questions were investigated through the theoretical framework of communities of practice, in which learning as apprenticeship in knowledge distribution among experts and novices is emphasized.Results indicated that teachers apprenticed ELLs into academic language in three ways: (a) using predictable, consistent language; (b) using choice and process elicitations in questioning strategies; and (c) repairing communication by revoicing student responses. In math table groups, ELLs participated by talking about resources,procedures, and initiating and extending topics. Results also showed how English-proficient peers apprenticed ELLs into negotiating inclusion and exclusion requirements, which were necessary to build an argument.

Around eighty percent of cross-border mergers do not succeed. Despite a substantial body of literature offering guidance on how to make them work, success remains elusive. Regardless of strategic direction, involving macro-level planning, restructuring of positions and improved remuneration, repeated failure indicates there is clearly a gap in our understanding. It is proposed that mergers and acquisitions (M&A) constitute a threat to social identity by disrupting longstanding patterns of relating between people. This is experienced as emotional anxiety, which is personally felt and collectively shared. In response, social defences are invoked that alleviate this distress but simultaneously inhibit the processes of recognition and conflict necessary to effect identity transformation. New relationships and connections do not therefore form and, consequently, new identity does not emerge. Hence, M&A fail. Attending to complex responsive processes of relating, particularly pertaining to the preservation and transformation of identity is crucial to the successful outcome of any M&A project. Using reflexive narrative, I have shown how anxiety and protective processes arise and offer insight into executive interventions that may be helpful. This research offers a new approach and an advance in our understanding of the social processes at work during M&A.

The Sisterhood of Dark Sanctuary is an original play about two sisters who are struggling to find their own identities away from their mother. The sisters have developed a functioning relationship wherein they alternate between the dominant partner and the passive partner, often assuming the roles of a mother and a child. This relationship has become so secure and stable for the sisters that they cannot develop healthy adult identities apart from each other.

The majority of discussions of gay and lesbian experiences in the United States associate gay culture with urban areas. However, there is still a significant population of LGBT people living in the rural United States (Baumle et al 2009). Many of these individuals identify with rural spaces and seek to maintain “country” identities. As with rural spaces, there is an assumption that Christian identities directly conflict with those of non-heterosexual identities. This study examines the ways in which these individuals create and negotiate stereotypically conflicting identities regarding their sexuality, their rural identities and their religious identities. The goal of this project is to add to currently sparse literature on rural gay Christians and give an accurate portrayal of gay Christians in rural areas. I found that the sensationalized stereotypes of what it means to be a gay Christian in the country are often far cries from the actual experiences.

This dissertation deals with relations between parents and child institutions such as childcare, school and child health centers in terms of an institutionalization of childhood and expressions of parental identities in life stories. The empirical study consists of thematic life story interviews with parents focusing on their experiences of meeting and relating to these child institutions. A perspective on life stories as socially situated action and identity performance is adopted that views the life stories as co-constructed in between the interviewee and the interviewer. The aim of the dissertation is to contribute to an understanding of relations between parents and child institutions in Sweden that takes as its point of departure the expressions of parental identities. Methodologically, the dissertation also aims to further develop a way of working with life stories that makes the interviewer visible as co-constructor of life stories and expressions of identity. The analyses is focused on expressions of parental identities through the storytelling and in the stories told. Parental identities took shape and form as performances and constructions of, for example, social subordination in relation to preschool staff and other parents, helpful intervention in school helping an inexperienced teacher, worries about children being different from other children and not fitting in at preschool and of gratefulness for help and support from childcare staff when being short of time and money. The identity expressions were then analyzed in relation to recurrent discourses in research on relations between parents and childinstitutions. The results show that dominant discourses of relations between parents and child institutions tend to construct parents as a homogenous group, thereby concealing how gender, social class, ethnicity and age, and the subsequent different constructions of children and childhood, structure and influence the relations between parents and child institutions and thereby also the institutionalization of childhood. / Förskola och skola i samverkan. Ett reformerat utbildningssystem.

Magister Artium - MA / This study aims to add to the rich body of work which explores our understanding of identity performances in narratives. It explores how a close knit group of five female friends use narrative structure and strategies to fashion alternative gender identities for themselves as black women who are agentive, and who actively push back against the stereotypes used to judge and evaluate their behavior. Using an interactional approach to narrative and identity (De Fina, 2003; De Fina and Georgakopoulou, 2008, 2012), this study explores how participants, in their everyday conversations, exploit story form and narrative strategies to orient to, constitute, legitimize or resist gender ideologies. Drawing on data which consist of twenty-one hours of naturally occurring casual conversation between the five friends, I identify and group the stories in their conversations, and propose generic structures to describe them: reports, hypothetical stories and projections. With a flexible approach to structure, I show how these stories create a space for the negotiation of difference or for constructing presentations of ‘self’ versus ‘the other’. I argue that through structure and other evaluative devices, praise and blame are ascribed within stories, allowing participants to take certain positions in relation to the themes explored and relevant identity options. I also show the ways in which stories enable the participants to quite literally imagine possibilities for self and others within circumstances that have not and and may never happen. This creates a space for the affirmation of dreams and ambitions, and an exploration of the type of women they see themselves becoming: successful, rich, famous, strong, and admired African women.

Master of Arts - Forced Migration Studies / The purpose of this study is to establish the impact of socio-economic interactions between Hutu Burundian refugees (living in Johannesburg) and South African populations on Burundian refugees’ national and ethnic identities. Although this is a case study on Burundian Hutu Refugees in Johannesburg, Rwandan refugees and South Africans were also included for comparative purposes. The snowballing technique was used to identify respondents and in-depth face-to-face interviews were used to collect data. Questions probed respondents’ pre-relocation national and ethnic identity loyalties; the nature and frequency of interactions between them and local populations and other foreign nationals; and the respondents’ current national and ethnic identity loyalties. The study finds that despite regular contact with the host populations, refugee respondents maintained their ethnic and national identities, thus challenging the assumption that to become uprooted and removed from a national territory automatically causes people to lose their identity, traditions, and culture. Further, apart from the adoption of some new situational practices particularly by refugee respondents, the study finds no significant ‘renegotiation’ or ‘contestation’ of group identities in the cosmopolitan Johannesburg as both South Africans and refugees/migrants in the city seem to be firmly holding on to their distinctive identitive ideals. Although not conclusive, the study suggests that the negative nature of interactions between refugees and the host society, which compromises the possibility of assimilation and integration, as well as other internal and external factors such as the refugees’ belief in the temporariness of their situation, may be among important factors that accounted for this maintenance of group identity.

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