Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / This thesis examines the role of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) among organizations dealing with security issues, such as the United Nations, the European Union, and NATO. This study further analyzes the OSCE commitments in the fields of human rights, democracy, rule of law, and national minorities. This analysis is performed in order to promote the OSCE to a broader public. The thesis further analyzes and describes the origins of the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and its development since 1975, when the Helsinki Final Act was signed by the Heads of State or Government of all participating States. The development of the international situation in Europe, the end of Cold War, and escalation of violence, especially in South Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia, caused fundamental changes in the European, and subsequently, the world security environment. The CSCE identified and responded to this new situation, resulting in a dramatic growth of its own role in shaping a common security area. Consequently, the CSCE changed its name to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. However, some critics think that OSCE is a "dead" organization, lacking tangible results and the necessary "teeth." It is necessary to review the main ideas why the CSCE was established and to properly identify the role of the OSCE in the European Security Architecture. Therefore, the main part of the thesis focuses on the European Security Architecture, the OSCE itself, and the OSCE missions, three of which are detailed and evaluated as case studies. / Lieutenant Colonel, Czech Republic Army

Background: Arab Americans, a growing population in the U.S., tend to have high rates of smoking and low rates of smoking cessation. Arab Americans and their families are at a high risk for poor health outcomes related to smoking. Objective: The purpose of this study is to better understand the smoking behaviors of Arabs in the U.S., using the two publishable manuscripts format. The first manuscript is a systematic review of the literature exploring the smoking behavior, prevalence and use among Arab Americans and examining studies addressing the effect of acculturation on this behavior. The second manuscript is a cross-sectional quantitative study investigating factors influencing desire to quit smoking among Arab Americans, and their association with acculturation and health beliefs. Results: The majority of the studies included in the first manuscript focused on smoking prevalence and cessation. Some discussed the impact of acculturation and health beliefs only two smoking cessation programs have been developed. Thus a cross-sectional descriptive study among adult Arab American smokers was conducted to measure tobacco use, nicotine dependence, desire to quit smoking, acculturation, and health beliefs. The desire to quit smoking was positively associated with perceived severity and susceptibility to cancer, perceived benefits of quitting smoking; and negatively associated with smoking barriers and nicotine dependence. Being female, having lower level of nicotine dependence, and higher perception of cancer severity predicted higher desire to quit smoking. Conclusion: Smoking cessation intervention studies need to target appropriate health beliefs, especially cancer severity of smoking among male Arab Americans.

The underrepresentation of minority students in gifted programs is well documented, and is due, in large part, to limited definitions of giftedness and inadequate identification techniques. New methods of locating and identifying gifted minority students must be developed. The peer referral procedure has been cited as one method for locating students who may be gifted but are overlooked by the most common referral source--classroom teachers, but researchers have not investigated directly the use of peer referral for locating minority students in any ethnic group. The subjects were the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students (N = 1564) and their teachers in nine selected schools, divided into three groups: (a) schools with a Hispanic population of over 75%, (b) schools with an equal proportion of Hispanics and Anglos, and (c) schools with less than 25% Hispanic students. Students completed a peer referral form designed to reflect traits of gifted Hispanic students. Also, the number of teacher referrals using the traditional school district procedures was collected. Primary areas of investigation included the (a) relationship between the ethnicity of the nominator and nominee, (b) relationship between the gender of the nominator and nominee, (c) usefulness of peer referral to locate Hispanic students who may be gifted and (d) sensitivity of the peer referral instrument to Hispanic students. Qualitative and quantitative statistical techniques were used, including stepwise logistic regression, cluster analyses, odds ratios, and content analysis. Findings indicated that peer referral was a useful technique for locating Hispanic and Anglo students that teachers did not refer. Few differences were discovered between the Hispanics and Anglos on the instrument. Students referred peers who matched a stereotypical profile of the academically gifted student. In the balanced schools, Anglos tended to nominate other Anglos and Hispanics tended to nominate other Hispanics. Gender nomination patterns varied, depending on the question focus. Peer referral is a promising practice for locating some Hispanic students who may be gifted; however, if minority students who are different from the majority gifted student are going to be found, other methods of referral, besides teachers and peers, are needed. Researchers must continue to explore the differences and similarities between majority and minority children who are gifted.

Geoscience attracts few African American and Hispanic/Latino students to the major and has historically not retained women at the same rate as men. Many factors have been proposed to explain these disparities but no quantitative study addressed geoscience diversity at the undergraduate level. To examine potential barriers to recruitment and retention, we interviewed geoscience majors from two large public universities in the U.S. and gathered 'critical incidents,' or life experiences that affected choice of a geoscience major. Critical incidents were classified by time period (when they occurred), grouped by outcome, sorted into categories, and compared by race/ethnicity and gender. Three manuscripts -- each involving different analyses of the critical incident dataset -- comprise this dissertation. Among many findings, our study showed that that white, Hispanic/Latino, and African American students reported different types of experiences affecting major choice while growing up. For instance, 81% of white students reported outdoor experiences (e.g., camping, hiking) as children, whereas Hispanics (33%) and African Americans (22%) reported significantly fewer outdoor experiences from the same time period. Men and women geoscience majors also reported differences. In one example, men (92%) reported at least one positive experience involving career and economics factors; far fewer women (50%) reported the same. Our results can inform recruiting and retention practices. Geoscience programs can provide field trips for all prospective majors, target on-campus advertising towards diverse student groups, meet with academic advisors of incoming freshmen to encourage African American and Hispanic students to enroll in introductory geology courses, and provide major and career information to parents of prospective majors. To better recruit and retain women, geoscience programs can emphasize other, non-economic factors when advertising the degree, promoting internships, and developing field and academic experiences.

This thesis examines the role of internet use in migrants’ participation in, and articulation of, rising Chinese modernity. It explores the ways in which transnational subjectivity is produced through this process. It investigates how migrants’ various uses of the internet construct and make sense of their connections with China. It demonstrates a new generation of subjectivity among Chinese transnationals that is tech-savvy, modern and triumphal – a subjectivity embedded in the exchange between the (macro) political economy of China’s rise and the (micro) everyday practices surrounding the internet. This is an ethnographic study focusing on an emerging population within the broader Chinese diaspora; that is, mainland Chinese professionals who migrated for higher education and professional training in recent years as a result of China’s reform and economic power. This study locates its enquiries in three offline-grounded institutions – ethnic organisations, states and families. These institutions pre-date the internet but increasingly turn to the technology for transnational and local connections. Regarding Chinese organisations, utilising the internet to build co-ethnic sociality is read as a symbolic practice that signals the users’ belonging to a technologically-advanced, mobile and wealthy sector within the broader idea of the Chinese community. On the role of the state, internet use provides new modes of migrants’ access to China’s state-led development projects, thus opening up new spaces for the state’s disciplinary power to be exercised. This digital governance is enabled by a discourse of Chinese triumphalism constructed by both the state and the migrants. Regarding families, the digitalisation of the gendered division of labour in transnational families provides evidence of the segmented nature of China’s digital modernity and disrupts the triumphal portrait of transnational modernity constructed among the elite-stratum migrants. Overall, this study develops a dialogue between two literatures. On the one hand, it adds to diasporic internet studies by introducing an offline-grounded, geographically-informed approach and by bringing transnational modernity into its research agenda. On the other hand, it draws on Nonini and Ong’s (1997) theorisation of Chinese transnationalism as alternative modernity and further adds to this theorisation with a focus on internet technology and a discussion of the impacts of China’s rise. It contributes to human geography by revisiting a key concept in this discipline – transnationalism – with a discussion of the interweaving impacts of information technology and the geopolitical shift of China’s rising modernity.

(i): The first part of this thesis questions the concept of ‘minority’, and the way it has been used to analyze French imperial policy in Syria (‘divide and rule’). Chapter 1 traces the concept’s emergence, showing that it is not self-evidently valid but rather depends on a set of wider social and political circumstances related to the existence of modern nation-states: the minorities of modern Syria cannot be mapped directly back onto the Ottoman millets or religious communities. Chapter 2 examines the term’s application in Syria between the wars: French imperial policy emphasised divisions in Syrian society, but the term ‘minority’ was only systematically attached to these divisions from the 1930s. The concept’s spread in Syria reflects its growing importance in international public discourse worldwide, as the nation-state became the standard state form after World War One. The second part of the thesis uses case studies of particular themes to show how the emergence of minorities illuminates processes of state-formation that have shaped the modern world. Chapters 3 and 4, on the question of ‘separatism’ and the definition of modern Syria’s northern border, examine the spread of effective state authority across a ‘national’ territory. This process bound culturally-divergent populations more tightly into the fabric of a centrally-controlled state, thereby constituting them as ‘minorities’. Chapter 5 examines the debate about a Franco-Syrian treaty leading to Syrian independence, showing that this made the recently-established body of international law on ‘minorities’ in newly-independent states applicable to Syria: the term only became widespread in Syria at this time. Chapter 6 looks at French efforts to reform personal status law in the later 1930s, when the restructuring, on religious lines, of the institutional relationship between the Syrian state and its population created a new uniformity within communities at the national level (one condition for their developing the sense of being ‘minorities’). It also sparked opposition from groups now claiming to represent the ‘majority’. Other Syrians, though, understood their society in different terms.

Over the past twenty years, parental choice has become the favoured Government policy governing school allocation and the dominant legislative approach for improving educational attainment. The existing sociological research on school choice has primarily focused on the ways in which families of different socioeconomic backgrounds have engaged with the process of listing preferences for secondary schools; while class has been emphasised, the choice processes of ethnic minorities have received little attention. Yet the persistent educational challenges faced by Afro-Caribbean students across class boundaries since the early years of migration to England raise questions about whether choice policies’ promise of improved academic performance extends to all ethnic groups. This study focuses on Afro-Caribbean families and their engagement with the process of selecting secondary schools in Birmingham. Twenty individual families in semi-structured interviews and ten additional mothers in two focus groups shared their experiences of listing school preferences. To develop a fuller understanding of how these Afro-Caribbean families made their school choices, this study draws upon Courtney Bell’s (2005) application of ‘choice sets’ to education. Families’ choice sets – the schools which they perceived to be available options – were shaped by various factors, including past school experiences, the schools available in the local authority, and Birmingham’s school allocation criteria. Additionally, geographic considerations, the ethnic mix of a schools’ student population, and families’ access to social networks also influenced which schools families saw as possibilities. Ultimately, while there was no single ‘Afro-Caribbean’ way of selecting schools, this study highlights the circumstances and structures faced by many Afro-Caribbean families which constrained their choice sets, and consequently, the schools to which their children were allocated. Though this thesis is limited in its generalisability, its conclusions lay the foundations for future research into the ways in which ethnic identity is lived in the educational context.

After the enlargement of the European Union in 2004, large numbers of Central and Eastern Europeans moved to work in Western Europe. The aim of this thesis is to use the case of migration after the enlargement to further our understanding of the relationship between immigrant group size and natives’ attitudes. Recent scholarly debates raise questions about how immigration affects European societies and the political durability of European welfare states. This research puts forward two questions: Does an increase in Eastern European immigration after the enlargement explain differences in civic attitudes in Western Europe? And second, does this relationship (if any) depend on national contextual factors? The relationship between immigration and three categories of public attitudes are examined: attitudes towards immigration, attitudes towards welfare and attitudes of trust. This thesis draws on ethnic competition theory, which postulates that group competition over resources provokes the natives to perceive immigration as a threat to their own or their group’s interests. To test this theory, this study uses data from the European Social Survey from 2002 to 2010 to build multi-level pooled time series models. The results find only partial support for ethnic competition theory. When a greater proportion of E-8 migrants live in the country, individuals tend to have more positive views about immigration. The results also show that this positive relationship is weakened when national economic conditions are more precarious. Additionally, the results do not find that E8 migration is negatively related to Western European attitudes regarding trust or welfare. This implies that as more immigrants arrive, Europeans can potentially acknowledge immigration’s economic and cultural benefits. Moreover, these results challenge pessimistic scholarly predictions that immigration erodes trust and support for welfare in Europe. This thesis offers two academic contributions. First, it considers the case of E8 migration, which has been ignored by existing comparative attitudinal studies about immigration. Second, focusing on post-enlargement migration helps this thesis to overcome common empirical obstacles such as cross-country differences in immigrant composition and admission criteria.

Ethnic relations are an important feature of contemporary Russia. This is especially true in the North Caucasus where ongoing insecurity combined with a depressed economy has led to growing Russian nationalism, xenophobia, and fears over immigration. In Stavropol’skii krai, the only ethnic Russian dominated territory in the North Caucasus Federal District, the situation is especially acute. In this thesis I investigate how the geopolitics of ethnic relations in Stavropol’skii krai, as part of the wider North Caucasus situation, impact on the everyday life of citizens in Stavropol’. I do this through employing an eclectic methodology, including both qualitative and quantitative techniques. Through four research papers, I explore how the built urban environment, through the politics of naming place (for example, street names and monuments), has become a space through which ethnic identity can be (re)produced and contested. I show how ethnic relations are (re)presented and performed in Stavropol’ through the Den’ kraya celebration, a performance that is based on a Soviet-era idealised framing of ethnic relations, and one which is open to challenge. I explore how in summer 2007 ethnic relations turned violent as ethnic Russian and non-ethnic Russian citizens rioted, and I attempt to explain the geopolitics surrounding this. Finally, I show how everyday ethnic relations have turned increasingly violent in Stavropol’ since 1991, drawing on reports from non-governmental organisations and independent researchers. I situate this research within the context of the changing ethnic geography of the krai since 1991. Together, this research represents a geopolitics of ethnic relations in Stavropol’skii krai.

The goals of revision for the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition included enhancement of the factor structure, improvement of subtests, and revision of norms. The researchers reported that the very few items that were found to be biased were replaced. The WISC-III performance of a clinical sample of African American, Caucasian, and Hispanic children was analyzed to determine if the test bias was eliminated as claimed in the goals of the revision.