As an immigrant in Sweden, I connect this study to my embodied experiences in the labor market and reflect throughout this research as I discuss the experiences of other immigrants who struggle with labor market integration. This qualitative study focuses on the phenomenon of the integration of immigrants in the Swedish labor market from an intersectional perspective and from my position as an immigrant which enriches the discussions. I analyzed how immigrants are integrated into the Swedish labor market and how gender intersects with other human factors to influence labor market integration. The study was based on a reflexive ethnography methodology in which interviews and documentation studies were used in collecting the empirical data. A semi-structured interview guide was used during the interviews and the documentation study was focused on scrutinizing integration policy documents in Sweden. The findings provide a detailed account on the genesis of immigration policies and how they have evolved into integration policies in Sweden. It traces this from the 1950s when integration policies were intertwined with immigration policies. Also it provides an account of how the integration policies are implemented in Sweden focusing on the activities of two main organizations namely Arbetsförmedlingen and the Linköping’s municipality. Furthermore the findings highlights that, men and women experience labor market integration differently therefore there is the need for this subject to be studied from a heterogeneous perspective instead of a homogenous perspective. It also highlights that women’s gender intersects with other human endowments factors such as education, gender roles, marital status, language and skills that complicate their labor market integration. In addition the findings highlight the transnational lives of some of the participants who hold on to traditional ideologies from their countries of origin. Furthermore, immigrants conceptualized labor market integration according to their own understanding. The results shows that the conceptualization of some of the immigrants was similar to what is common in the literatures but there was one new conceptualization of the term labor market integration that can be added to the already existing conceptualizations.

This thesis explores how introducing intersectional theory to self-identified activists in a Swedish folkbildning context challenges the theory/practice-divide. The study has been carried out through thematically structured discussions with students and teachers at Kvinnofolkhögskolan, Gothenburg, Sweden. In this thesis I argue that the deconstruction of the theory/practice-divide is dependent on perceptions of what theory and practice entails, students’ expectations of Swedish folkbildning in general and Kvinnofolkhögskolan in particular and pedagogical considerations on how to teach intersectionality intersectionally.Additionally, the thesis addresses issues of institutionalization, feminist pedagogy and the broadening of intersectional theory. Finally, the thesis highlights the need for extensively addressing the issue of the theory/practice divide in the curriculum, for students and teachers to discuss what is perceived as theory and practice respectively and for teachers to consider time and place as part of an intersectionally aware pedagogical practice.

This narrative inquiry explores how Black tradeswomen negotiate the intersections of race and gender in their long-term careers in the U.S. building trades. Much of the literature on women and minority groups in the trades has focused on the success, or lack of success, of these groups in apprenticeship programs. To my knowledge, none has collected rich data focused on the long-term retention of Black women in the trades, nor has any discussed the personal, interpersonal, and institutional strategies this non-traditional group uses to continue working in the construction industry. This study draws on theory and empirical studies from the fields of Peace and Conflict Studies, Black Studies, Gender Studies, Labor Studies, and Psychology to provide a nuanced analysis of the systemic nature of Black tradeswomen’s struggles for gender and racial equity within the workforce, and elucidates the personal, interpersonal, and institutional strategies these women have developed to continue in this field. In-depth interviews conducted with fifteen tradeswomen revealed how they described and made sense of (1) their experiences of entering the trades and how their experiences in the trades changed over time; (2) barriers to their continued success as tradespeople; and (3) the skills and knowledge they developed to sustain themselves professionally. Findings include recommendations for interventions at the levels of pre-apprenticeships, apprenticeships, foremen, and higher to support the retention and promotion of Black tradeswomen in the industry. Tradeswomen highlight the necessity of combining anti-racist and anti-sexist struggles to promote greater inclusion of non-traditional workers. Black tradeswomen illuminate the importance of the cultivation of self-esteem and personal networks on and off the job as mitigating factors in a microaggressive work environment.

Como as práticas baseadas nos lugares de Mercado podem ser analisadas sob uma ontologia diferente? Esse trabalho é baseado na discussão de alguns prismas teóricos fundamentais na epistemologia de estudos de comportamento de consumo. Estudos envolvendo consumo geralmente focam-se no consumidor como indivíduo final, monolítico – portador de agência e voz. Portanto, esse trabalho busca compreender o descolamento aparente entre os humanos e os não-humanos (coisas). Para tanto, utilizei-me do conceito de coisa, advinda do campo da Antropologia, para estudos de comportamento de consumo. Escolhi, como tema, a sexualidade – visto que é um tema com pouca expressividade no campo de comportamento de consumo. Inicio meu argumento com três pilares teóricos: o conceito de coisa; o conceito de performatividade para gênero e sexualidade; e o conceito de interseccionalidade. Depois, apresento o método utilizado para unir os três pilares na análise empírica in loco. Por fim, ofereço uma discussão sobre a convergência da fundamentação teórica e o método. Meus achados iluminam como atores humanos envolvidos em uma malha de relações, que dividem práticas com outros atores, engajam-se em oclusão de consumo: a necessidade de esconder uma prática de consumo dentro de uma malha próxima de relações. Também iluminam como a cooptação de locais de mercado de forma institucional – adicionando lugares focados em diversidade – não preclude a exclusão. Observei a continuação das práticas exclusionárias dentro de ambientes de mercado considerados abertos à diversidade, ou exclusão interseccional. Ambos achados foram resultado da abordagem ontológica delimitada previamente, que resultou no conceito de gayscape – um conceito puramente qualitativo que contém a malha de interrelação dos atores (humanos e não-humanos) do campo de consumo gay. / How do the marketplace-based practices can be analyzed with a different ontology? This work is based on the discussion of some theoretical approaches fundamentally attached to consumption behavior studies. These studies are usually focused on the consumer as a finished, monolithic individual – bearer of agency and voice. Therefore, this work tries to comprehend the apparent detachment between humans and non-humans. To achieve this I use the concept of thing, from the anthropology field to study consumption behavior. My chosen theme is sexuality – seen it is regarded as an understudied in consumption behavior studies. I start my argument based on three theoretical pillars: the concept of thing; the concept of performativity connected to gender and sexuality; and the concept of intersectionality. Following this, I present the method that was used to unite these three pillars for data collection. Lastly, I offer a discussion about the convergence of the literature review and the method. My findings illuminate how human actors are involved in a mesh of relationships – sharing practices with other actors – engage in what I call Consumption Occlusion: the need to hide a consumption practice within a tightly woven mesh of relationships. I also illuminate how institutional marketplace cooptation – for example, adding diverse marketplaces – does not preclude exclusion. I observed the continuation of exclusionary practices within marketplaces regarded as open to diversity, or intersectional exclusion. Both findings are the results of a previously delimited ontological approach, resulting in the concept of gayscape – a purely qualitative concept that brings forth the relationship mesh among actors (humans and non-humans) of the gay consumption field.

This study explores the role of public relations in the formation of a collective identity of the activists of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) between 1980 and 1990. CISPES was a radical U.S.-based organization comprised of a majority of white college-educated members. CISPES had two goals: 1) stop the U.S. military assistance to El Salvador, and 2) support the Salvadoran revolutionary movements that were fighting a U.S.-backed government. Through interviews, discourse analysis and historical research, this work shows that CISPES used as currency the whiteness of its activists, in conjunction with its educational background, to influence public opinion and policy-making in the U.S. The formation of CISPES as a white organization was partially achieved by continuous negotiations with Salvadoran radicals living in the U.S. Early in the 1990s, CISPES' collective identity as a white organization entered in crisis as internal debates on gender and race along with social changes in the national and international levels challenged dominant views and the status quo of whiteness and what this implies in political, social, and cultural spheres. This work proposes two models: the intersectional recruiting process and the ideological identity model of public relations. Both models were created using dialectical methodologies that understand public relations and social movements as processes of permanent contradictions between social conditions and ideology/discourse creation. This dissertation has real applications because it reveals how activist public relations can help the global struggle for social justice.

Canada is currently the world leader in the number of per capita prosecutions of HIV nondisclosure (Hastings, 2017). Many of these cases garner the attention of media and receive sensational and dramatic coverage. This thesis provides a feminist critical discourse analysis of the juridical and mediated content on Trevis Smith who was a former Canadian Football League linebacker convicted of aggravated sexual assault for not disclosing to his sexual partners that he was living with HIV. Mobilizing an intersectional (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991) and masculinities (Connell, 2005/1995; Messerschmidt, 2012; 2016) theoretical framework, I specifically explored the ways in which the media and juridical content constituted Smith by considering how the different discourses were shaped by race, gender, class, criminality, sexual orientation, and seropositivity. The analysis revealed three main discourses: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The “Sodom and Ghomorrah of Shared Sexual Partners” and Playing a Dangerous Game. These discourses demonstrate that Smith was initially shown sympathy by way of his construction as a philanthropist, and sports hero. However, as the case progressed his masculinity was discursively linked to racialized tropes of hypersexuality, dangerousness, and criminality due to his failure to disclose that he was HIV positive. I conclude that these discursive connections are part of a broader historical narrative that subjugates and controls Black men while also working to symbolically and literally segregate the Canadian HIV-negative social body from the hypersexual Black ‘AIDS fiend’.

Purvi Patel is an Indian American woman who, in 2015, was the first U.S. citizen to be convicted under feticide statutes for allegedly attempting her own abortion. Though her 2015 conviction was overturned the same year, the feticide conviction was significant as a legal precedent as well as part of a larger trend criminalizing pregnant women of color. With an eye towards the greater pattern of the criminalization of other pregnant women of color (Boyd, 1999; Faludi, 1991; Humphries, 1999; Mahan, 1996; Roberts, 1997), in this thesis I employ a feminist legal studies methodology and the theoretical frameworks of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991) and Reproductive Justice (Ross and Solinger, 2017; Silliman et al., 2004) to analyze five pro-Patel briefs, two from Patel’s appellate lawyers and three from amici curiae. The four themes present are: fetal personhood; racialized gender; medical privacy and trust; and surveillance, knowledge, and legitimacy. I argue these briefs were not always consistent with the tenets of intersectionality and Reproductive Justice, even as the briefs may have been effective in convincing the Court of Appeals to overturn Patel’s conviction. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of Patel’s case for public health and law. I suggest that criminalization of abortion is harmful to public health and that the feticide mandate as it stands now does not do what it was intended to do, which is to protect the pregnant woman from harm.

The number of women incarcerated in Canadian federal penitentiaries and segregation units has steadily increased over the last decade. Out of the total admissions to segregation, Indigenous women are over-represented, accounting for 31% of the cases (Office of the Correctional Investigator, 2015). To address issues of inequity and social injustice exemplified through the over-representation of women, especially Indigenous women, in segregation, this thesis provides an Intersectionality-Based Policy Analysis (IBPA) which examines the experience of federally sentenced women as documented in reports published by the Office of the Correctional Investigator and statements published by the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. I explore the gendered and racialized ways in which the CSC interprets the behaviours, attitudes, and even personalities of the women they place in segregation. Through examining mental health, gender and culturally responsive policy within the context of risk/need management, I conclude that the CSC does not protect marginalized women via policy, but rather converts the needs of marginalized groups into risks to be managed. Through omitting any mention of the intersecting social locations that shape women’s experiences, the CSC perpetuates a ‘one-size-fits-all’ understanding that fails to disrupt the stigmatization and over surveillance of ‘unfeminine’ and racialized women. I identify and examine alternative policy responses and solutions by developing a strategic plan specifically aimed at producing the social and structural changes necessary to reduce inequities and promote social justice. The steps in the strategic plan reflect current priorities of the government, CSC, academics, and legal/medical professionals.

Many studies have interpreted the positive and negative consequences of China's One-Child Policy on Chinese women, but few have relied upon contribution from Chinese women and only children themselves. However, by valuing personal, lived experience, researchers may discourage the propagation of Western media stereotypes of what it means to be a young Chinese woman in urban China. The use of an intersectionality framework showcases how Chinese women's lived experiences must be framed more widely than a single aspect of their identity and that gender, educational experiences, family dynamic, and single child status (among other identity markers) form a more complex and holistic identity than any marker considered individually. This thesis argues that the intersectionality of lived experience makes it necessary to consider each individual's story as valuable and that commonalities and differences are both crucial to understanding how individual's lives intersect in the context of this complex birth policy

The purpose of this study was to explore the intersection of multiple minority identities in men who have sex with men (MSM) of color, focusing on the relationship between experiences of minority stress and negative health outcomes. Specifically, this study aimed to identify how minority stress levels in MSM of color impact the following negative health outcomes: poor mental health, substance abuse, and risky sexual behavior. The role of ethnic identity belonging and religious practice as potentially moderating the relationship between minority stress and negative health outcomes was further explored. A cross-sectional online survey was utilized to test the research questions. The sample consisted of 152 participants who identified as racial/ethnic minorities and MSM between the ages of 18 and 29. Direct effects of minority stress reflected in self-reports of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual (LGB) victimization, internalized homophobia, and perceived ethnic discrimination on negative health outcomes were tested using analysis software IBM SPSS. The findings revealed that greater minority stress was associated only with increased mental health problems. As hypothesized, evidence emerged that ethnic identity belonging moderated the relationship between minority stress and both mental health and substance use outcomes, suggesting that ethnic identity belonging may serve as a protective factor for MSM of color. Under conditions of high minority stress, MSM of color with greater engagement with formal religious practice were associated with the highest negative mental health outcomes, whereas lower degrees of religious practice predicted better mental health outcomes. This study identified MSM of color to be at risk for poor mental health and has highlighted the importance of ethnic identity belonging as a potential buffer against mental health and substance use issues. Further research is necessary to determine whether religiosity serves as a protective factor or risk factor for MSM of color. These findings will help researchers to better understand MSM of color and may have a potential impact on prevention and intervention efforts by identifying risk and protective factors that help to explain the aversive effects of minority stress.