In this thesis project, the aim is to explore displacements beyond the familiar usage in migration studies associated with ’human’ by using a new materialist/s understanding ofontology and agency. This approach opens the possibility to move beyond the understanding of displacements as referring only to human agency. The fictionalised story, Parable of theSower, is used in the thesis as the real-world ontological world-building storytelling and the questions that flow from the aim of this thesis is used as a guiding navigator within the mainstory to see what other stories emerges; The Earthseed Story, The More-Than-Human Storiesand The Human Stories. Displacement(s) beyond human agency from a new materialist outlook show the complexity and challenges of being interconnected and codependent in a world containing multiple stories that move in and out of spacetime refuturing. This occursboth as dystopia and utopia, as agency is in-the-making and ongoing reshaping of territorialization and deterritorialization making all-the-flesh moving boundaries of being displaced and in-place in a belongings-non-belongings continuum. For future research,multispecies displacement(s) is discussed as ongoing processes of both; dystopian and utopian storytelling, and the possibilities for refuturing shared worlds.

This ethnographic study on Cuban immigrants conducted in Germany explored the dynamics of integration through an understudied immigrant population. Most of the research conducted on integration in Germany has overwhelmingly been on Turkish immigrants, which is Germany’s majority immigrant group. To contribute to Integration Studies, this research focused on a minority and lesser studied immigrant group, Cuban immigrants. Cuban immigrants in Germany not only have a different historical and geopolitical relationship with Germany than its majority group but they also subscribe to different cultural and ethnoreligious categories. Because of these varying circumstances, Cubans act as a counter example to the majority immigrant group, creating an alternative narrative to integration in Germany. This dissertation addressed the methodology used in this study, explored the complexity of identity, examined German immigration and integration policies, reviewed the Cuban diaspora in the United States and globally, and presented an ethnography of Cuban integration in Germany. Effectively contributing to not only Integration Studies but also to Cuban Diaspora Studies, and Identity Studies.

Ethnic and religious conflict, and the deepening of capitalism have led to global diaspora at unprecedented levels. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that as of 2015, 1 in every 122 persons worldwide were either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum. The U.S. currently admits the largest number of refugees worldwide. However, policies fail to reflect the multitude of elements that constitute successful resettlement. Moreover, many refugees come from farming backgrounds and are forced to migrate to a landless urban environment, where their skill sets may not be utilized and farm land is not available. I argue that existing resettlement processes are embedded in logics and practices that alienate humans from nature and from each other through competition, isolation, and placeless environments. Through an exploration in concepts of urban agriculture, place-making, identity, and otherness, and illuminating the experiences of resettled refugees involved in a community gardening project in Fort Worth, Texas, show how the urban refugee garden provides the individual a space to narrate an identity, and to resist industrial agriculture and labor outside their industry. Exploring best practices in resettlement should be a priority to governments, politicians, and communities involved in the process and highlight the reasons to advocate these types of resettlement alternatives.

Thesis advisor: Jane Flanagan / Background: Over the past decade, increasing numbers of emerging adults, defined as ages 18 to 22, have journeyed to the United States (US) from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Upon arrival to the US, many experience inequities in health and healthcare access. The inequities are shaped by US political practices and choices attributed to broad structural and systemic-level barriers within planetary, social, economic and necropolitical forces. Applying a critical framework of antiracism, anti-oppression and anticolonialism, nurses and other healthcare providers must seek to understand the health patterning and life experiences of emerging adult im/migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador so that their health and healthcare needs may be supported. Approach: This qualitative research project aimed to explore health patterning of emerging adult immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador using the nursing specific research praxis of Health as Expanding Consciousness (HEC). The second aim explored themes across the group. Critical posthuman, feminist, and new materialist assumptions also informed the approach to the study. Between June 2021 to November 2022 thirteen emerging adult participants from Guatemala and Honduras were interviewed twice. Enrollment occurred through community-based recruitment and snowball sampling methods. Each person’s individual story was explored using the HEC praxis method. Results: Participants’ stories uncovered unique profiles with situated, context-specific individual health patterning. Four themes were identified across stories using the qualitative analytic method of Sort and Sift, Think and Shift: Family is Fundamental, The Journey Holds Meaning, Opportunities Exist Amidst Constraints, and Movement and Art are Healing. Conclusions: The discussion section reviews main implications for building critical nursing praxis; understanding intersections of health, nursing care and human mobility; advancing nursing policy for people excluded from care; advancing research using HEC praxis as a caring act of accompaniment; and transforming nursing education for social justice and radical possibility. Im/migration and asylum-seeking were viewed as fundamental human rights including critically advancing the right to health and safety for people in mobility contexts. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Connell School of Nursing. / Discipline: Nursing.

A transnational network of more than 50 million people, the Chinese diaspora stretches its reach across the globe. As part of their immigrant journeys, many Chinese immigrants have achieved political leadership in their adopted home countries despite monumental barriers. This thesis examines the political attainment of Chinese immigrants by uncovering how institutional factors such as political power sharing between ethnic groups, citizenship acquisition law, and discrimination law affect their pursuit of public office. I first establish a database of 265 politicians I define as Chinese immigrants, whose various levels of political attainment I then use as the dependent variable. Through empirical analysis, this thesis finds that politicians of Chinese descent attain lower levels of political office when institutional discrimination has targeted Chinese immigrants. In contrast, this thesis reveals that politicians of Chinese descent attain higher levels of political office when political power is shared amongst ethnic groups and when citizenship acquisition laws are exclusionary. While the last result is seemingly counterintuitive, the negative relationship between the inclusiveness of citizenship and political attainment can be explained by the intrinsic role exclusionary citizenship acquisition laws play in naturalizing citizens who are deemed to be integrated and electable.

As of May 2016, the U.S. State Department officially declared a priority date for all green cards for applicants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras that capped the number of visas granted to individuals from these three countries to just 10,000 per year. This inherently created a two to three-year backlog for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status applicants from these countries as well, meaning that SIJS petitioners will remain undocumented for periods of up to six years until their petition is adjudicated by USCIS and their priority date arrives. I research whether the increasingly difficult path to obtaining permanent residency through a Special Immigrant Juvenile Status petition is a result of a change in federal administrations––– between former President Obama’s covert mechanisms of marginalization and deportation of Central Americans to the overtly anti-immigrant rhetoric stemming from Trump––– or if SIJS backlogs are an inevitable phenomenon resulting from U.S. imperialism in Central America throughout the 20th century. I ground my research on pre-existing literature that explains the legal processes of obtaining permanent residency through a SIJS petition and include scholars’ criticisms of the interpretation of the policy by state and federal courts. To exemplify the complications that youth face while petitioning for SIJ status, I also incorporate the perceptions and experiences of several attorneys who have represented SIJS applicants and my own interpretations of how judges treat SIJS applicants courtrooms throughout Los Angeles County.

Through the mid-twentieth century, a significant pattern of migration occurred between Appalachia and the Pacific Northwest, with Washington’s thriving timber industry offering compelling economic opportunities. Many workers and families from western North Carolina settled in the small mountain town of Darrington, Washington, frequently accompanied by their banjos and guitars. As a group of young bluegrass enthusiasts from Seattle established relationships with Darrington’s “Tar Heel” musicians, a collaborative music community formed, laying the foundation for the region’s contemporary bluegrass scene. Drawn from a series of ethnographic interviews, this project illuminates the development of a bluegrass community in western Washington, while identifying several of its key contributors. The resultant narrative explores the musical legacy of Appalachian migration to the Pacific Northwest, culminating in its convergence with the urban folk music revival of the 1960s. This work contributes to a growing body of scholarship that challenges the traditional geo-cultural assumptions encompassing bluegrass music.

Notre thèse analyse le rapport entre pratiques sociales d’intégration d’immigrés, modèles d’installation et processus de transformation de la morphologie urbaine dans deux études de cas qui se prêtent à une comparaison stimulante. D’un côté, nous avons le cas de l’émigration italienne interne vers un pole industriel de la banlieue métropolitaine milanaise (Sesto San Giovanni); de l’autre côté, celui de l’émigration italienne internationale dans une agglomération des bassins miniers wallons (La Louvière). Il s’agit de deux contextes d’insertion fort différents du point de vue de la morphologie sociale et de l’organisation territoriale, qui profilent des espaces hybrides entre rural et urbain en profonde et rapide transformation, à cause des flux massifs de la main d’œuvre immigrée. Ces différences nous permettent de mettre à l’épreuve de l’analyse comparée les conceptions sociologiques et les parcours historiques de l’intégration, du tissu sociale qui en est à la base, de la citoyenneté, de la construction d’identités collectives, afin de dépasser les dichotomies stéréotypées entre rural/urbain, tradition/modernité, intégration/conflit, migration interne/internationale. La thèse développe une analyse parallèle des deux études de cas en suivant un fil argumentatif unitaire, qui s’ouvre avec une enquête sur les flux migratoires et les contextes d’accueil des migrations. Dans les deux premiers chapitres nous avons analysé le contexte économique, social et territorial dans lequel s’inscrivent les processus migratoires. Pour le cas belge, nous avons analysé le cycle de l’industrie charbonnière, le processus de dépopulation de la Wallonie et les mécanismes qui règlent les flux, c'est-à-dire une migration contractée par les deux gouvernements. En ce qui concerne le cas milanais, nous avons tracé les contours de la très rapide urbanisation, qui a conduit toute une série de communes limitrophes à Milan à entrer dans l’orbite métropolitaine et à se qualifier comme des pôles périphériques. Après avoir tracé les contours du cadre général, nous avons fait face, dans la deuxième partie, à la question plus spécifique du logement et des formes d’installations. Pour le cas louviérois, nous avons reconstruit les conditions de logement et la très difficile confrontation des premiers immigrés avec le monde du travail charbonnier, l’absence d’une initiative publique dans le secteur du logement jusqu’en 1954, faiblement compensé par l’initiative patronale, et la phase suivante des années 1950, qui a mené à la stabilisation des immigrés dans la région. De Sesto San Giovanni nous avons reconstruit la transition complexe vers la périphérie métropolitaine, à partir des installations rurales jusqu’aux politiques publiques locales et nationales de construction de grands ensembles, en soulignant comment cette intervention urbanistique était au centre d’un débat très vif sur l’aménagement du territoire, qui a débouché sur la création d’institutions administratives régionales. Dans la dernière partie de la recherche nous avons plutôt approfondi les aspects sociaux et culturels des parcours d’installation et d’intégration dans les deux tissus urbains. C’est en cette partie que nous avons utilisé davantage les sources orales, afin d’analyser les perceptions de soi, les mécanismes de construction de l’identité sociale et donc tous les changements que la migration, le rencontre avec la ville et l’industrie ont entraîné dans les organisations familiales, dans les perspectives de vie, les aspirations et les projets des migrants. À partir de l’analyse de ces parcours, dans le chapitre conclusif nous avons interrogé quelques catégories historiques et sociologiques classiques des études migratoires: d’abord le sens d’appartenance à la communauté d’origine et le développement d’un sens d’identité nationale, ensuite le processus de formation d’une solidarité de classe, qui dans les deux contextes a pris des formes sensiblement distinctes surtout par rapport aux différences dans la mémoire de l’expérience migratoire.

This study explored the ways in which intercultural relationships are affected by cross-cultural transition through the lens of the female experience. Specifically, this research examined (1) in what ways women felt that cross-cultural transition impacted their relationship, especially with regards to cultural values and male-female role taking; and (2) what kinds of benefits women experienced in their relationships as a result of moving across cultures with their partner. A total of 15 non-Chilean women in intercultural relationships with Chilean men were interviewed; all women had lived with their partners in her home country and then moved together to Chile. Results revealed that all 15 participants maintained at least some of their own core cultural values regardless of conflicting societal pressure after moving to Chile. In addition, 11 women reported adopting Chilean values of being more relaxed surrounding time and schedules as well as openly expressing affection, which directly benefited their families. Female participants who reported gender role shifts in their relationship either described it as circumstantial since they simultaneously became stay-at-home mothers, or as a direct result of moving to a culture that adhered to stricter notions of male-female role taking. Although about half of the women reported having to make career sacrifices, most felt their roles as females, wives, and mothers directly benefited from moving to Chile due to more affordable domestic help and living in a more child friendly culture. Finally, although most women discussed some of the challenges of moving across cultures with their partner, 11 women felt their relationship had been strengthened as a result. They also described a number of skills for achieving relationship maintenance: practicing patience, good communication, and a willingness to continually negotiate with one another were the most important abilities for sustaining a highly mobile yet stable intercultural marriage.

The question if climate change affects the international migration flow from Bangladesh to Sweden has been investigated. Through the usage of the conceptual framework of Black et al (2011), the theory of migration system theory, and the concept of network migration have been presented in an abductive qualitative case study. Semi-structured interviews have been used upon a sample of ten volunteer participants and an in-depth literature review has been done to build credibility towards the findings of this thesis. The data collected provides evidence that there is an indication of climate change affecting the international migration flow, however, due to the scope of this research, there cannot be a clear answer and further research is needed.