The 21st century has witnessed a radical change in the status of sexual minorities, the world over, with this change having a profound impact in the global North, in particular. A series of landmark United Nations, regional and national court decisions, inspired by the increasing effective lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual (LGBT) lobby, are progressively announcing the end of institutionalised discrimination which had been the lot of homosexual persons for centuries in many part of the world. However, while there has been a statutory shift towards the welcoming of homosexual persons in the West and in parts of Latin America, thus gradually recognising the injustice synonymous with discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, African states remain less likely to respect homosexual persons' rights. The Nigerian LGBT experience exemplifies the regressive position in many African states. Not only have laws been enacted that criminalise homosexuality in Nigeria; existing laws have in 2014 been strengthened by newer, ever more stringent anti-homosexuality legislation. The most notable anti-homosexuality law is the Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act, (SSMPA) 2013, signed into law in January 2014 by then President Goodluck Jonathan. Unlike the anti-sodomy provisions in the criminal and penal codes inherited from the British colonial rulers and the provisions of the Sharia legal codes in operation in some of the states of northern Nigeria, the controversial SSMPA explicitly criminalises same-sex marriage and goes further by also criminalising broader categories of homosexual related conduct throughout the territory of Nigeria. This thesis argues that Nigerian laws criminalising consensual adult homosexual conduct prima facie violate the human rights provision of the Nigerian Constitution and Nigeria’s international law obligations. The thesis takes a holistic view of the major cultural, religious and moral arguments proposed by opponents of sexual minority rights in their efforts to justify the continued discrimination of homosexual persons and same-sex consensual sexual conduct in Nigeria. The study aims to contest the validity of these arguments by presenting a case for the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in Nigeria through such instruments as judicial intervention, legislative enactment, executive action and sexual minorities’ rights activism. This study highlights the fact that people do not choose their sexual orientation and that consensual adult homosexual conduct is no more inherently harmful to others than heterosexual acts. Contrary to the widespread belief in Nigeria that consensual adult homosexual conduct is based on imported Western values, this study underlines that homosexuality has been an undeniable fact of human existence predating colonialism – also in what today is Nigeria. In this regard, by demonstrating the surprising tolerance toward homosexuals in pre-colonial Idomaland, this study further confirms the notion that consensual adult homosexual conduct is not a Western import. In the process, this study sheds new light on pre-colonial attitudes to homosexuality in Idomaland, North Central Nigeria, where no prior field research has been conducted. The study further discredits the religious objection to consensual adult homosexual conduct by adopting a contextual reading of Islam and Christianity, the two dominant religions in Nigeria, thus allowing for the co-existence of religious beliefs and the protection of sexual minorities. This study affirms that the moral objection to consensual adult homosexual acts fails for the very reason that such practices do not cause harm to either society or other individuals. This study fits Isaiah Berlin’s conception of liberty as individual autonomy into the argument for the liberalisation of Nigerian sexual minorities’ environment. The application of Berlin’s concept of negative liberty to the Nigerian homosexual environment supports the affirmation of sexual minority rights as fundamental human rights. / Thesis (LLD)--University of Pretoria, 2018. / Centre for Human Rights / LLD / Unrestricted

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals, also known as sexual minorities, endure unique and excess stressors due to their stigmatized sexual minority identity. Commonly referred to as minority stress, these stressors may potentially lead to poorer mental health outcomes among sexual minority individuals as compared to their heterosexual counterparts. The manifestation and extent of these stressors depend on the complex relationships between one’s simultaneous intersecting identities (e.g., race, gender, and sexual orientation) and macro-level inequality reinforcement (e.g., structural barriers, societal representation, politics). Inequality at the macro-level creates power and oppression on a larger scale by emphasizing dominant societal norms and belief systems, which, in turn, could have consequences on interpersonal and individual levels. Previous minority stress literature neglects macro-level impact and tends to view sexual minorities as a homogenous group. In an effort to highlight within-group variability of minority stressors and their impact on sexual minorities at the intersection of race and gender, an intersectional lens was applied to assess existing minority stress literature that corresponded with three types of intersectionality (i.e., structural intersectionality, representational intersectionality, political intersectionality). Sexual minority stress research, with emphasis on external stressors aligning with macro-level forces, was selected for review. After organizing the literature by race, gender, and specific sexual minority identity, an intersectional lens was applied to explain the variation of experience based on converging identity intersections of sexual minority individuals. The variation of mental health outcomes was also identified. Findings revealed that literature primarily lined-up with structural intersectionality, followed by representational intersectionality, and, finally, political intersectionality. Ideally, this review would have equally distributed information on all within-group identity combinations, but this review further highlights group underrepresentation in the literature. Consistencies emerged for bisexuals and sexual minorities of color (SMOC) across the structural, representational, and political intersectionality categorizations. Overall, bisexuals and SMOC appear to be at a more significant macro-level disadvantage than gay or lesbian individuals and White sexual minorities. A recognizable pattern occurred based on gender across race/ethnicity in relation to structural and representational intersectionality. The stressors for women and gender minorities occurred in the context of societal power, assumed heterosexuality, and healthcare. By contrast, stressors for men concerned geographic location, employment, workplace, and appearance. While very little minority stress literature corresponded with political intersectionality, this review highlighted a large gap in previous research and what to explore in the future. The findings highlight the similarities and differences encountered by sexual minorities related to experiences, stress, and mental health regarding macro-level impacts. Additionally, gaps in the minority stress literature were also revealed, such as underrepresented identities and political influence. In the future, incorporation of intersectionality that should be applied prior to conducting minority stress research for a more comprehensive understanding.

This dissertation explores the potential of the queer Muslim asylum seeker to confront the Dutch national imaginary. An archetype of homonationalism, the Netherlands faces rising tides of Islamophobia, waters which queer Muslims must learn to navigate. An asylum seeker’s success in the system depends on their “credibility”, hinging on the consistency of their self-representation which is constantly being reconstructed. These constant reconstructions, what Ewing (1990) refers to as “shifting selves”, are not conscious or noticed by the individual; yet, in the context of asylum claim-making, reconstitutions of the self may rise to the surface, asylum seekers then engaging in conscious strategizing. I analyze these contexts ethnographically through informal interviews and participant observation, at the height of the so-called “Refugee Crisis” of the mid-2010s in Europe. I find that as the figure of the queer Muslim asylum seeker confronts the Dutch national imaginary, it both confirms it—representing national commitments to human rights, to tolerance, and to protection of sexual minorities—and challenges it—embodying impossible identities, and evincing a failure of the nation to live up to its ideals: What is “tolerance” when it is weaponized against minority groups? What kind of queerness is being protected if deviation from a cultural norm is disqualifying? Whose human rights are being protected by a system that demands the subject of those rights conform to formulations inconsistent with lived experience?

Ethnic minority research in the U.S. is important given the increase in ethnic minority populations, particularly within the adolescent population. Content analyses are useful in guiding researchers as they document representation and progress of research on ethnic minorities within many fields, including healthcare. The Journal of Adolescent Health was coded for the following variables: ethnic minority focus, article topic, article funding by topic, geographic location of sample, and inclusion of measures (ethnic identity and acculturation). The results indicated that the percentage of published articles focused on each specific ethnic minority group were lower than the current U. S. percentages, including Latinos (3.7% of the published articles versus 17.8% of the U. S. population), African Americans (5.8% versus 13.3%), Asian Americans (0.6% versus 5.9%) and Native Americans (0.5% versus 1.3%). Over the 28-year period, the Journal of Adolescent Health increased in the number of ethnic minority focused articles published per year, but in relation to the yearly article output decreased in actual percentage of ethnic minority focused articles per year (5.7% decrease in percentage of ethnic minority focused articles published).

Research on ethnic/racial/cultural (REC) groups can contribute to reducing mental health risks and treatment disparities among REC minorities. Content analysis is a way to measure the quantity and quality of REC-focused research within a given field. For this study, counseling psychology was chosen for its leadership in multicultural and social justice issues. Three journals (Journal of Counseling Psychology, The Counseling Psychologist, and Journal of Counseling & Development) were coded for several variables, including REC-minority focus, article topic, geographic location of sample, urban/rural setting of sample, and inclusion of ethnic identity and acculturation measures. The results showed that 490 (21.3%) of the articles were coded as REC-focused. Of the REC-focused articles, 107 (21.8%) articles were focused on African Americans, 99 (20.2%) were focused on Asian Americans, 74 (16.9%) were focused on Latinos, and 17 (3.5%) were focused on Native Americans. Additionally, 194 (39.5%) were coded as "Other." REC minorities, especially Latinos and African Americans, were found to be under-represented relative to their populations in the U.S. The results indicate a need for improved reporting practices and increased focus on REC minorities in counseling psychology research.

This study investigates the political discourse in the Danish government’s ‘Ghetto Plan’ of 2018 in order to reveal a securitization dimension in relation to Danish ghettos and non-Western immigrants. There has not been conducted much academic research concerning the Danish ghetto initiatives, and studies on the ‘Danish Ghetto Plan’ of 2018 remain pretty absent. Most previous studies are primarily concentrated on investigating the role of the Danish ghetto initiatives in relation to broader political discourses. By conducting a critical discourse analysis on the Danish ‘Ghetto Plan’ while adopting Huysmans’ theoretical framework on the securitization of migration, this study reveals a securitizing dimension in which the Danish government has constructed the ghettos and non-Western immigrants as threats to the liberal norms and values of Danish society. Thus, this study attempts to provide an insight into how the Danish government is able to implement and justify discriminatory policies.

This dissertation is a study of the minzu stream for ethnic Tibetan students in the context of bilingual degree programs in China’s tertiary education system. It draws attention to the significance of bilingual ‘diversity’ education and its presumed role in ensuring cultural and social inclusion of Tibetan students in study programs and equity in educational and occupational attainment. This study finds that Tibetan students’ learning outcomes and career pathways are systemically restricted due to limited availability of specialized study areas in bilingual programs, poor education quality, homogenized academic training, and discrimination regarding the value of Tibetan graduates’ credentials for employment. As a result, Tibetan students’ educational and occupational opportunities are largely shaped by the structural conditions of the binary choice in ethnic streaming policy in tertiary education and the university mission that is primarily occupied with the political socialization of ethnic minority groups. Drawing on Bourdieu’s cultural reproduction theory, I argue that the social exclusion of Tibetans from fully participating in national tertiary education and exercising their language rights in academic study programs has been institutionalized in minzu higher education. The institutionalization of cultural and social exclusion effectively conceals the systemic inequalities embedded in the streaming practices and reproduces structural inequity in educational and occupational attainment.

The ethnic and religious diversity of the population is often associated with worse state building outcomes, including lower levels of taxation. In this dissertation I investigate how diversity hinders state building and how it shapes the patterns of taxation. The dissertation is structured around two main questions. The first question is: What are the mechanisms through which diversity constrains state building? Building on the fact that periods of state building include increases in the amount of taxes levied on the populations follows the second question that concerns the distributional consequences of the increases in the amount of taxes: Which groups bear the increasing fiscal burdens of an expanding state during periods of state building? I argue that diversity impedes state building by increasing the costs of the state’s investment in fiscal capacity. This is because in more diverse places the different ethnic and religious identities of the population make them more illegible to the state’s agents, making it more difficult for the state to acquire knowledge about the population and its economic activities. This illegibility also increases the bargaining power of local intermediaries vis-à-vis the state, which makes investment in fiscal capacity even costlier as these groups often oppose state building. Because it is cheaper to invest in the fiscal capacity of less diverse places, I also argue that the tax burdens of the core/dominant groups in the society, even though they are in power, increase more than the tax burdens of the minorities during periods of state building. I test these arguments in the context of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Ottoman Empire. The main empirical evidence relies on statistical analyses of an original dataset based on my archival work in the Ottoman archives in Istanbul. In addition to this, I use other original and secondary datasets, as well as a close reading and qualitative analysis of correspondences among Ottoman bureaucrats in the Ottoman archives. Using the local-level fiscal revenue data, I demonstrate that the increases in fiscal revenues during wartime were lower in more diverse areas in the empire, indicating diversity hinders state building. Using another dataset on the local-level expenses of the state, I find that the state had to invest more in more diverse provinces to be able to extract a unit revenue. This suggests that the costs of investment in fiscal capacity were higher under diversity. In order to provide evidence for the mechanisms I suggest in the argument, I show that the Ottoman State was less successful in successfully completing censuses in more diverse areas, which is consistent with the argument that diverse populations are more illegible to the state. I also utilize a dataset on governor assignments to provide evidence that diversity constrained possible government assignments, potentially decreasing bureaucratic capacity. I complement these quantitative analyses with qualitative analyses of archival documents and evidence from secondary sources. With these findings, I make three main contributions to the literatures on state building, the politics of taxation, and identity politics. First, I demonstrate that diversity impedes state building, and it does so by rendering populations illegible and making investment in fiscal capacity more costly. Hence, I propose and test a new theory that explains why diversity constrains state building, by bringing together insights from the state building and identity politics literatures. Second, I show that because the members of the core/dominant groups are more legible to the state and investment in fiscal capacity is cheaper where they live, they undergo higher tax burdens of the state building processes compared to the minorities. This indicates a distributive outcome that goes contrary to conventional wisdom where the ruling identity group taxes itself rather than other groups. Finally, finding that war can result in stronger states only under sufficient homogeneity of the population, I underline ethnic and religious diversity as factors that might condition the relationship where war leads to stronger states. This offers one possible explanation why the argument in the wider literature that warfare leads to stronger states is often challenged outside Early Modern Europe, where the populations were less diverse.

This dissertation explored existing tensions between legal structures aimed at achieving justice—specifically, concept of dignity and the concept of equality—and groups not fully recognized under the law (“Liminally-recognized groups”). It approached this tension from a critical perspective on identity, exploring it both in the U.S. and in Israel/Palestine. While not comparative in the traditional sense, the dissertation nevertheless journeyed between both geographies, drawing inspiration from each, and exploring similar questions and their differing (albeit parallel) answers in each locality. It examines the limitations of the concept of equality within anti-discrimination law, stemming mainly from its dependency upon legal recognition. Simultaneously, it similarly explores the perils of dignity-based universal protections, rooted in dignity’s cultural and racial biases. For this purpose, all three chapters center groups in a liminal state of legal recognition—groups that often challenge dominant binaries of sex/race/disability—as a methodological vantage point from which to examine legal systems and orthodoxies. It analyzes law’s ability to see past recognition, and its effectiveness for groups who have yet to meet—and shoulder—the burden of recognition. Simultaneously, it explores the ability of liminally-recognized groups to see past the law, and to seek alternative routes for political power. The first chapter, Coming Out of the Shadows: The Non-Western Critique of Dignity, focuses on the intersection between Mizrahi Jews (i.e., descendants of Jews from Arab and Muslim countries who immigrated to Israel) and the right to dignity, exploring this right’s racialized undertones within Israeli courts. Following a conceptual and cultural exploration of the development of dignity (a universal, status-neutral right) as the antithesis of honor, this chapter questions the strong divide and moral hierarchy between both terms. Applying critical race methodology, methods of close reading, and doctrinal analysis, it analyzes multiple legal cases to explore Western influences on the societal and judicial imagination of Israeli dignity. The chapter concludes by arguing that dignity’s pretense of universality obscures racial biases in its interpretation and application. The second chapter, Whiteness at Work, focuses on U.S. antidiscrimination law and identity groups at the margins of whiteness. The chapter analyzes workplace discrimination cases where whites have sued other whites for racial discrimination. Examining intra-white racial discrimination cases, this chapter demonstrate that they suffer from an under-theorization of whiteness, and from the judicial assumption that race becomes relevant only in instances involving racial minorities. Instead, I argue, courts should recognize instances in which white people police other whites to behave according to racial expectations regarding whiteness as instances of racial discrimination. This could be implemented through Title VII’s stereotype doctrine. Accordingly, discrimination against whites due to their association with people of color, as well as discrimination against poor whites not seen as ‘refined’ or ‘sophisticated’ enough for the workplace, are both instances in which whites are discriminated against for failing to perform their racial identities according to white supremacist expectations. The third and final chapter of the dissertation, Identity at Work, develops a thematic, overarching argument regarding liminally-recognized groups and their place within anti-discrimination law. Following an analysis of various types of liminal recognition under U.S. anti-discrimination law, and the normative case for and against recognition, I examine non-essentializing strategies to promote justice that do not force marginalized communities to leave their narratives of oppression (rooted in sexism, white supremacy, ableism, etc.) at the door, but that also do not force these communities to bind their oppression to a rigid sense of what it means to be who they are. The first strategy focuses on possible readings of anti-discrimination laws that enable recognition of patterns of racism, sexism, etc. without tying them back to specific (recognized) identities. The second strategy highlights the potential rooted in labor law to promote antidiscrimination ideals.

Abstract Introduction and Background: Minority populations struggle to gain access to equitable healthcare due to cultural variations and language barriers. It is paramount for providers to accommodate to the differing needs of underserved minority groups. Purpose Statement: We analyzed information on the effects of community-based interventions aimed at improving healthcare access for minorities. Literature Review: We used PubMed as our main database. For our search, we looked up the keywords “Healthcare Access AND Minorities.” Next, we filtered articles that had been published since 2017 and sorted to include clinical trials, randomized control trials, and meta-analyses. After that, we came across ninety-eight total articles, and picked five of the most critical. Findings: From the first two articles, patient navigators have been shown to be effective in helping minorities navigating the information and decisions presented to them in healthcare. The researchers in the third study found that minority groups are at a greater risk for a health literacy deficit. Our next article found that African Americans treated with computerized cognitive behavioral therapy saw a significant decrease in anxiety and depression. Our final document found that lack of access to healthcare resources decreased dementia outcomes by missing the early onset of symptoms. Conclusions: It is evident that minorities face healthcare disparities that keep them from receiving access to equitable healthcare. As a nurse, it is important to identify gaps in access to healthcare in minority patients. Interventions aiming to increase health literacy and access in minorities have shown to be effective.