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Burmese migrant workers leave Myanmar and come to Thailand because of the ongoing economic and political discrimination at home. Drawn to the greater work opportunities available in Thailand, these migrant workers are actively working and looking for jobs in Thailand’s menial job sectors such as agriculture, domestic work, fisheries, construction and manufacturing. They suffer from low-paid, difficult and dangerous work conditions which are largely unprotected by labor laws. Taking into account Thailand’s new minimum wage, the Thai economy’s labor shortage problem and the coming of the ASEAN Economic Community in 2015, the Thai government should coordinate the efforts of its own various agencies, employers, migrant associations, civil society, the Thai public, ASEAN and the international community to improve Burmese migrant workers’ rights. Beyond the process of clarifying the rights of migrants in the workplace to Thai employers and labor unions, as well as enforcing existing laws, the Thai government should provide migrants with health care services, education, and the option of citizenship, so that the migrants can live a quality life in their adopted country.

Neoliberal agrarian reforms in Latin America have lead to both advances and set backs for the women’s and indigenous movements. While most neoliberal policies were the same in terms of goals, like creating institutions that encourage a capitalist markets, the results were somewhat heterogeneous in part due to the role of the women’s and indigenous movements in individual countries. The rise of the international women’s movement, which was marked by the UN’s decade on women from 1975-1985, coincided with an unfavorable economic climate in Latin America.

This thesis explores West African Muslims in New York as a case study of the immigrant experience in America through discussion of the main theories of assimilation and modes of incorporation into American society. As foreign-born, black Muslims, the Murids of Senegal rely on cohesive social networks to protect themselves from discrimination. This thesis argues that through a process of “segmented assimilation” and reliance on the ethnic enclave, which provides a critical network of support, immigrants like the Murids of Senegal can better manage the challenges they face in the host environment and achieve upward social and economic mobility in urban America while maintaining their cultural identity.

This paper is divided into four chapters. The first one examines the shift in policies from Nasser to Sadat paying close attention to the effects on women. It contextualizes the space in which Islamic movements would come about. The second chapter traces the historical role of women in nationalist projects. It also looks at historical tensions between secular and Islamic women. Then the paper surveys the demographics of Islamic movement and the role of women within four parts of it: the Muslim Brotherhood, the Jama‘at, local mosque communities, and charity work. The third chapter then reviews liberal feminist critique of Islamic female activism. This critique is divided into three sections: tradition v. modernity, patriarchy in Islam, and the veil. The chapter then looks at three problems (universality, lack of context, and positionality) with this critique and briefly looks at the material consequences of such an 4 approach. The fourth chapter gives a background of postcolonialism, applies it to Islamic female activism, and demonstrates why it is crucial to work within a postcolonial framework.

Diaspora’s have existed for millennia but are only recently receiving scholarly attention. India and China possess two of the world’s largest diaspora and their populations are projected to grow significantly in the first half of the 21st century. As a result, their contributions are expected to play a far more prominent role in India and China’s political economy. Through a comparative analysis of India and China’s diaspora policies in three sample countries, this thesis explores the relationship between Indian and Chinese government institutions and the performance of their global diaspora. Lacking the extensive network and sophistication of China’s diaspora institutions, the Indian government can do more to build on the progress of the past decade. The primary policy implication for the Indian government is that if it is to boost investment, knowledge transfer, and perceived soft power, it should adapt the Chinese institutional model as a blueprint for its own overseas engagement policy and institutional infrastructure.

The Cuban government, like other Marxist systems, derives its legitimacy in part by the provision of social welfare. The expansion of government needed to encompass all of the welfare services, produces a disproportionate need on legitimacy as proposed by Jurgen Habermas. Through the government's control of the media, social statistics have been used to satisfy the legitimacy needs of the state. Statistical categories with political value are especially susceptible to government manipulation. Furthermore, the economic crisis brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union, has produced changes in the Cuban government's campaign for legitimacy. The crisis conditions have prompted the government to promote international solidarity for both internal and external reasons. The traditional invocation of achievements in health and education have been reduced to a less prominant role.

Labor unions have played an important role in Latin American society. This is particularly true in Argentine, where the labor union movement gained strength in 1946 under the populist government of Juan Domingo Peron. When Carlos Menem, from the Peronist party, assumed presidency in 1989, the CGT, Argentina's labor confederation, expected traditional populism to return. Instead, Menem abandoned populism and aligned with the Conservative right to implement a neoliberal agenda. This thesis explores the processes by which Argentine labor unions lost strength during the dual processes of democratization and market reforms. By analyzing the CGT since Menem become president, this study attempts to explain the role of labor unions under democracy, and the relationship between organized labor and government in the context of economic reforms and political transformation. Furthermore, this thesis argues that the decline of the CGT resulted form the implementation of neoliberal reforms.

The current study seeks not only to place into focus the general patterns of social and economic organization prevalent in Colombia in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth (such political and economic organization has been ably illustrated by several authors), but also strives to elucidate the systems of thought or 'ideologies' to which such socio-economic and political structures gave rise. It is concerned with the thought-systems that influenced the development of the Colombian labor movement, those of actors external to organized labor and indigenous systems of thought of labor activists themselves. The hypothesis is that class and party-based interests channelled the early development of organized labor toward a path that would further, or failing that, not conflict with dominant elite interests. Artisans, proudly independent, exerted inordinate influence over the movement, hindering the development of working class consciousness. As the result of dominance by élites external to the labor movement itself, workers were never able to forge an independent voice that would allow them to define their own interests in society.

This dissertation examined the effect of United States counter-drug policy on nationalism in small states, focusing on Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. The states were selected for their roles and geostrategic importance in the illegal drug trade; Jamaica being the largest drug producing country in the Anglophone Caribbean and having strong links to the trade of Colombian cocaine, and Trinidad being a mere seven miles from the South American coast. Since U.S. counterdrug policies have frequently been viewed in the region as imperialistic, this dovetails into ideas on the perceptions of smallness and powerlessness of Caribbean nations. Hence, U.S. drug policies affect every vulnerability faced by the Caribbean, individually and collectively. Thus, U.S. drug policy was deemed the most appropriate independent variable, with nationalism as the dependent variable. In both countries four Focus Groups and one Delphi Study were conducted resulting in a total of 60 participants. Focus Group participants, recruited from the general population, were asked about their perception of the illegal drug trade in the country and the policies their government had created. They were also asked their perception on how deeply involved the U.S. was in the creation of these policies and their opinions on whether this involvement was positive or negative. The Delphi Study participants were experts in the field of local drug policies and also gave their interpretations of the role the U.S. played in local policy creation. Coupled with this data, content analysis was conducted on various newspaper articles, press releases, and speeches made regarding the topic. In comparing both countries, it was found that there is a disconnect between government actions and the knowledge and perceptions of the general public. In Trinidad and Tobago this disconnect was more apparent given the lack of awareness of local drug policies and the utter lack of faith in government solutions. The emerging conclusion was that the impact of U.S. drug policy on nationalism was more visible in Trinidad and Tobago where there was a weaker civil society-government relationship, while the impact on nationalism was more obscure in Jamaica, which had a stronger civil-society government relationship.