Anchored in analysis of in-depth and semi-structured interviews with 23 Black women in Britain, this research explores how media and online content-sharing is implicated in the development of Black women’s diasporic identities. Such matters are unpacked via an interpretive analytic lens, with Black feminist and social constructionist underpinnings. Shaped by critical studies of marketing, media, race, and gender, this research addresses issues concerning identity, ideology and inclusion, amidst media and digital culture. This thesis analyses media-based coping mechanisms concerning experiences of marginalisation and searches for a sense of belonging, related to intersecting issues of race, ethnicity and gender. There is analysis of how content generated by Black online users is entangled in processes of cultural transmission, counter-cultural resistance, and the construction of a digitally-mediated collective Black consciousness. As such, there is discussion of the notion of Black digital diaspora, in relation to analysis of the online media experiences of Black women in Britain. As part of this thesis, the concept of Black British diasporic literacy is also outlined, to further understand the particularities of Black identity development in Britain and how it is influenced by media content. Whilst the narratives of interview participants are emphasised in this thesis, it expands upon research that embraces a self-reflexive quality, by including reflections on the author’s own experiences as a Black and mixed-race woman.

Scholars have utilized the Minority Stress Model to explore external and internal stressors, coping mechanisms, social support and mental health outcomes for sexually marginalized populations. However, scarce studies examine Latinx sexually marginalized experiences and associations within the model. Thus, the goal of this study was to integrate sexually marginalized Latinx experiences in the Minority Stress Model. The theoretical frameworks utilized were Minority Stress Theory, Intersectionality and Experiential Theory rooted in the Couple and Family Therapy field. First, an explanation of the Minority Stress Model, influences of prominent Latinx cultural factors (i.e., tradition, familism, gender, and acculturation) in model processes, and a proposed Latinx Minority Stress Model is provided. Further, clinical implications are discussed through intersectional multicultural competency and Experiential Theory techniques. Second, a quantitative study with a sample comprised of 76 Latinx lesbian women in romantic relationships will be discussed. Regression analysis indicated that participants with family closeness and positive romantic relationship quality reported lower internalized heterosexism (i.e., internal stress). Additionally, higher internalized heterosexism outcomes predicted higher reports of anxiety and depression. Positive relationship quality perception also statistically mediated internalized heterosexist thoughts and depression. Implications for clinical work are discussed using Experiential Theory. Finally, research and clinical implications are examined through an integration of the proposed Latinx Minority Stress Model and quantitative analysis results. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

There are many existing studies characterizing the informal sector in Latin America, but the literature fails to fully examine the interactions between gender and disadvantaging factors on the probability of informal employment and its returns to wage. This analysis uses survey data from Argentina (2001) and Uruguay (2006) to examine the heterogeneous effects of number of children under 5, education, minority status, and migrant status on male and female informal employment and income. Being female interacts with number of children under 5 to create no effect on probability of informal employment, in contrast to a significant negative effect for men. Education has a greater negative effect on probability of informal work for females, while minority status and migrant status have a greater positive effect on the probability of being employed informally for females. Additionally, working informally is associated with a negative effect on wage for both females and males, but this effect is less for females. Number of children under 5 also negatively affects female wages, while there is no such effect for men.

Behavioral and academic outcomes differ for students by race, ability, and gender within the K-12 public education system. Moreover, striking gaps exist at the intersection of race, ability, and gender, despite the similarity in severity and frequency of behavior between groups. Few studies, however, have examined the educational mechanisms that contribute to these gaps. Despite this, the scientific literature? shows that when educators have high expectations, students are more likely to be successful academically and behaviorally. Therefore, this study examines the inverse of this relationship by recognizing that biases likely influence behavior and academic student outcomes through expectancy bias for certain groups of students. The present study utilizes an intersectional framework of disability studies and critical race theory (DisCrit) to examine preservice educator expectations of behavior and academic outcomes of a hypothetical student at the intersection of student race, ability, and gender using a factorial vignette experimental design. Analyses consisted of factorial multivariate analyses of main and interaction effects including covariates for social desirability, tolerance, severity, and demographic characteristics. Results indicated significant and meaningful differences in expectations of behavior and academic experiences by race and ability. However, interaction effects were not detected. Implications and limitations of this study are discussed.

My research is centered upon my ongoing project GenderFail, a publishing and programming initiative featuring the perspectives of queer and trans people and people of color. GenderFail: The Queer Ethics of Dissemination is a collection of writings on queer collaboration, archiving as a collective act, and publishing as a site of queer community. The following text also illustrates the importance of creating and maintaining an intersectional platform as a non-binary white queer subject. I examine and define the role of “queer identity” in my own work while mapping the history of failure by white queers, including myself, in the of articulation of intersectionality. By understanding how intersectionality is important in a queer-focused collaborative practice, I seek to emphasize the messiness of citation, collaboration, and community in relation to my discursive uses of printed matter.

As recent research finally starts to recognize colorism, a form of discrimination where light skin is valued over dark skin within an ethnic group, as a legitimate form of discrimination in the Black community, research on colorism in higher education still wanes. A limited amount of scholarship focuses on the manifestation of colorism in education and even less research examines the implications of complexion on Black college students and their intersectional identities. As empirical studies describe how complexion often denotes institutional degradation for dark-skinned Black students in K-12 and beyond -- from teacher perceptions, to the school-to-prison pipeline, to social dynamics with peers and more, this study privileges the voices of these marginalized students. This qualitative study uses phenomenology to detail the experiences of dark-skinned Black college students at a PWI (predominately white institution) to illustrate their lived experiences, the often intricate relationships between dark skin and intersectional identities like gender and ethnicity, and the unique phenomenon of being dark-skinned on campus. This work aims to complicate, adding rigorous research and thick qualitative description to burgeoning scholarship on colorism in education.

Thesis advisor: Leigh Patel / Despite the 1982 Plyler v. Doe court decision, which upheld the constitutionality of undocumented youth having access to public K-12 education in the United States, Latina students who are undocumented face unique educational and societal barriers. Material and psychological conditions of “illegality” permeate these young women’s social worlds (Muñoz, 2015). Latina students continue to lag behind their Latino and white peers as a result of historically built gendered and raced school structures of dispossession (Cammarota, 2004; Fine & Ruglis, 2009). This institutional ethnography used the lens of intersectionality theory (Crenshaw, 1991; Collins, 1998) to examine how ten Latina students navigated “illegality” in schools, the state house, and an immigrant youth-led organization. Intersectional analyses of the Latinas’ multiple experiences within and across institutional structures shed light on the specific ways that “illegality” and heteropatriarchy manifested, changed or remained stagnant, interconnected with race and class, and how these junctures were negotiated in undocumented spaces of resistance. Based on intersectional analysis of policies, interview, and observation data, it became apparent how nationalistic discourses of citizenship were embedded in structures of white racism and heteropatriarchy. The Latinas of color in the study predominantly endured interlocking forms of gendered and racialized oppression, including sexual violence, which became a dimension of intersectional disempowerment that men of color and white women seldom confronted. Based on findings from interview and observation data, this institutional ethnography challenges gendered and raced nativist conceptions of U.S. citizenship, reclaiming pathways for undocumented communities as well as action-oriented educational policies, theories, and pedagogies rooted in intersectional frames aimed at decentering heteropatriarchal whiteness in the construction of the nation state (Collins, 1998), and more in accordance with the fluid, complex realities of interlocked global economies, local cultures, and transnational citizenry. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Many social scientists consider race, class, and gender to be the three main axes of inequality and a plethora of research covers these topics. As such, a wealth of knowledge has accumulated about how they affect individuals' life chances and trajectories. Much is also known about how race and gender affect interaction, but what about social class? Little is known about the role of social class during interaction compared to gender and race. Thus, the focus of this thesis is to better understand the effect of social class during interaction. Moreover, I examine social class in combination with gender. I first present meta-theoretical orientations to interaction, social class, and gender. I orient my empirical studies with the theoretical research program of Expectation States Theory (EST). In Chapter 2, I explicate Status Characteristics Theory (SCT), a robust theory from EST. Here I provide two innovations. First, I link implicit social cognition to SCT, and second, I provide illustrations of the mechanisms of SCT. In Chapter 3, I present descriptions of a "rich guy" and "poor guy" from focus groups of University Iowa undergraduates. Two very distinct profiles emerged. In Chapter 4, I present a 12-condition experiment to test explicit and implicit cues of social class on status processes in isolation and in combination with gender. Using the standardized experimental setting of EST, I present social class as a series of interactional cues, which to my knowledge is a first in the EST tradition. The data partially support the theory. In Chapter 5, I discuss the empirical chapters, limitations of the studies, and future directions.

African immigrant women and refugee women face disproportionate reproductive health risks and adverse outcomes compared with the Canadian population. The diversity of African women and complexity of the migration process suggest the need for contextualized knowledge to better understand these challenges. I sought such knowledge through the use of the theoretical frameworks of place and intersectionality. These frameworks draw attention to the multi-level mixture of social relations in given contexts and how they create opportunities and oppression. The specific purpose of this research was to: a) explore how the reproductive health experiences of African immigrant and refugee women were shaped by the unique context of given places; b) consider how these women actively negotiated and constructed place in their search for reproductive health information, services, and support. A multiple case study was used to explore the reproductive health experiences of African immigrant and refugee women in three different areas of Ottawa, Ontario. These areas provided different local contexts (e.g., history, socioeconomic profile, proximity to downtown). In each area, data was collected through interviews with African immigrant and refugee women, interviews and focus groups with reproductive health service providers, and mapping of available services. In total, 19 immigrant and refugee women and 23 service providers participated in this study. The findings showed that African immigrant and refugee women’s reproductive health experiences were much more complicated than simple interaction with neighbourhood services. Their varied social positions in Canadian society were highly relevant. In addition, social networks based in places outside of the system (e.g., private homes, religious institutions) were environments in which they were comfortable and sought support for their reproductive health needs. Recommendations based on these findings include the need to engage communities and explore the delivery of information and services outside of the traditional places employed by the Canadian health care system.

<p>The purpose of this essay is to investigate and analyze the term diversity in five Swedish municipality’s combined gender equality- and diversity plans. The purpose is also to investigate who or whom of the employers that are included in the term diversity and if gender equality is included in the diversity work. The material is analyzed on the basis of theory of intersectionality and discourse analysis. The outcome of the analysis indicates that the municipalities use the term diversity in many different ways in the combined gender equality- and diversity plans. The municipalities usually use the term diversity for all of the employers and all groups of people are included in the work with diversity. Gender is included in the term diversity but gender quality work is often not included in the diversity work. In this essay the term diversity seem to be a difficult term for the municipalities to use and they often uses the term in different contexts.</p>