Negative experiences of stigmatization, discrimination, and rejection are common among people living with HIV in the United States, and particularly when they are also members of a minority group. Some three decades after the first cases of AIDS were identified, people infected with HIV continue to be perceived and characterized negatively. While an HIV/AIDS diagnosis is typically associated with negativity, this study investigates the extent to which collective experiences among HIV-positive people result in healthy responses and positive social adjustment. This study is focused on the ways in which HIV-positive Puerto Rican men in Boston live positive despite being diagnosed with HIV. Rather than wrapping themselves in the social stigma of HIV and the isolation that entails, they participate in processes that affirm themselves and their peers. In so doing, they help generate both healthy and meaningful lives for themselves and others. The study examines the process in which Puerto Rican men living with HIV in Boston participate, promote, and reaffirm an HIV community, la comunidad, as a social entity with a unique culture and identity. This study also investigates how this community influences, supports, and encourages the adoption of positive transformations for living long term with HIV. On the basis of nine months of field research, this qualitative study employed both focus groups and interviews with fifty HIV-positive Puerto Rican men in Boston. These men were recruited, using convenience sampling, from different community-based organizations (CBOs) that provide HIV/AIDS services in Boston. The study finds that HIV-positive Puerto Rican men in Boston build community, not in response to social exclusion, but built on shared positive practices and strategies for living healthy with HIV. These men come together to negotiate and form a unique cultural community expressed in norms, beliefs, and practices that, although centered on HIV, are designed for living healthy. These expressions reaffirm a sense of community in everyday settings and transform the lives of these men with positive behaviors and healthy lifestyles. The findings reveal that this transformation takes place in the context of a community, with the support, encouragement, and at times, policing of others. La comunidad is where the lives of these men are transformed as they learn, adopt, and experience living positive with HIV.

The Orlando Metropolitan Statistical Area became the fastest growing Puerto Rican population since 1980.1 While the literature has grown regarding Orlando‘s Puerto Rican community, no works deeply analyze the push and pull factors that led to the mass migration of Puerto Ricans to Central Florida. In fact, it was the combination of deteriorating economies in both Puerto Rico and New York City (the two largest concentrations of Puerto Ricans in the United States) and the rise of employment opportunities and cheap cost of living in Central Florida that attract Puerto Ricans from the island the diaspora to the region. Furthermore, Puerto Ricans who migrated to the region established a support network that further facilitated future migration and created a Puerto Rican community in the region. This study uses the combination of primary sources including government document (e.g. U.S. Censuses, Orange County land deeds, etc.), local and nation newspapers, and oral histories from Puerto Ricans living in Central Florida since the early 1980s to explain the process in which Puerto Ricans formed their identity in Orlando since 1980. The result is a history of the Puerto Rican migration to Central Florida and the roots of Orlando‘s Puerto Rican community

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This thesis examines how the organizations ASPIRA and the Young Lords Party fostered a cultural identity within Puerto Ricans in New York or “Nuyoricans.” ASPIRA, founded in 1961 by Antonia Pantoja, aimed to create leaders who would later give back to their communities. They established clubs for Puerto Rican high school students in schools and at ASPIRA centers in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Bronx. The Young Lords Party, founded in 1969, was a grassroots organization that fought against social injustices through their initiatives called “offensives.” ASPIRA and the Young Lords Party contributed greatly towards the development of a Nuyorican identity and instilled a sense of pride within their members and their surrounding community through utilizing various methods and strategies to teach Puerto Rican history and culture. Although the two organizations are connected, they differed significantly. ASPIRA operated with an institutional approach while the Young Lords used revolutionary and aggressive grassroots methods. This thesis studies the influence on the origins and structures of ASPIRA and the Young Lords Party, the institutional and grassroots strategies and tactics used to teach Puerto Rican history and culture and foster a Nuyorican cultural identity, and the major outcomes and impact of ASPIRA and the Young Lords on Puerto Ricans in New York.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 349-361). / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / xi, 361 leaves, bound 29 cm

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Sociology, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Partnerships between government and community-based actors and organizations are considered the hallmark of contemporary governance arrangements for the revitalization and gentrification of economically distressed, inner city areas. This dissertation uses historical, narrative analysis and ethnographic methods to examine the formation, evolution and operation of community-based governance partnerships in the production of gentrifable urban space in the Wynwood neighborhood of Miami, FL between 1970 and 2010. This research is based on more than four years of participant observation, 60 in-depth interviews with respondents recruited through a purposive snowball sample, review of secondary and archival sources, and descriptive, statistical and GIS analysis. This study examines how different organizations formed in the neighborhood since the 1970s have facilitated the recent gentrification of Wynwood. It reveals specifically how partnerships between neighborhood-based government agencies, nonprofit organizations and real estate developers were constructed to be exclusionary and lead to inequitable economic development outcomes for Wynwood residents. The key factors conditioning these inequalities include both the rationalities of action of the organizations involved and the historical contexts in which their leaders’ thinking and actions were shaped. The historical contexts included the ethnic politics of organizational funding in the 1970s and the “entrepreneurial” turn of community-based economic development and Miami urban politics since the 1980s. Over time neighborhood organizations adopted highly pragmatic rationalities and repertoires of action. By the 2000s when Wynwood experienced unprecedented investment and redevelopment, the pragmatism of community-based organizations led them to become junior partners in governance arrangements and neighborhood activists were unable to directly challenge the inequitable processes and outcomes of gentrification.

Puerto Rican adolescent ego identity development was studied within the frameworks of Erikson's psychosocial theory and Heller's conceptualization of familism. Ego identity was measured by the Revised Version of the Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status-2, an instrument based on Erikson's theoretical formulations. The Heller's Familism Scale was utilized to measure familism. It was hypothesized that there is a relationship between familism and the four identity statuses: achievement, moratorium, foreclosure, and diffusion. It was also hypothesized that familism, gender, age, parent's education and occupation, and number of years living in the United States mainland affect an individual's identity status. There were two sample groups; one living in Puerto Rico (n= 180), and one living in Florida (n= 107). Correlations and multiple regression analyses were utilized to test the hypotheses of this study. The regression analysis showed that the independent variables, age, parental level of education, familism, and, for the immigrant group, number of years living in the United States mainland help explain the variance in some of the statuses scores. Some of the variance in the achievement scores can be explained by the independent variables for immigrant male and female adolescents. The independent variables helped explain the variance in the moratorium scores of the male adolescents living in Puerto Rico, and both male and female immigrant adolescents. The variance in foreclosure scores could only be explained by the independent variables when the subjects were female immigrant adolescents. Finally, the independent variables helped explain the variance in the diffusion scores for the female subjects, regardless of sample group. An analysis of variance revealed a main effect for gender in achievement scores, and diffusion scores. ANOVA also revealed a Significant difference among the subject groups diffusion scores. ANOVA identified a significant interaction between gender and sample group for the foreclosure status. Furthermore, ANOVA revealed a significant difference between male and female foreclosure scores. Also, ANOVA revealed a significant difference between sample groups. Because the independent variables explain only a small percentage of the variance in the four ego identity status scores, caution should be exercised in arriving at conclusions about the relative importance of the independent variables on ego identity. / Ph. D.

La première partie de cette étude est consacrée au cadre institutionnel dans lequel s’élaborent les politiques linguistiques américaines ; la Constitution des États-Unis, ainsi que ses amendements, s’avèrent déterminants dans leur formulation. Depuis l’adoption de politiques linguistiques nationales dans les années 1960, l’influence de l’État fédéral se trouve encore accrue. Néanmoins, la politique linguistique des États-Unis demeure lacunaire. La politique linguistique de l’État de New York, étudiée dans le deuxième chapitre, complète en partie cette politique en intervenant principalement dans les domaines de l’éducation et du droit de vote. La politique linguistique de l’État du New York est déterminée, d’une part, par un antagonisme structurel Ville-État et, d’autre part, par la lutte des Portoricains pour le respect de leurs droits linguistiques. La dernière partie de cette étude consiste en une étude de cas ; quarante entretiens semi-dirigés menés auprès d’immigrants russophones révèlent l’importance de la reconversion professionnelle dans le processus d’intégration linguistique. / In a first part, this study analyzes the institutional framework in which American language policies are elaborated; the Constitution of the United States and its amendments appear to play a major role in their elaboration. Since the adoption of national language policies in the 1960’s, federal influence has grown further. However, the language policy of the United States remains incomplete. The language policy of the State of New York, which is studied in the second chapter, supplements it by intervening in the fields of education and voting rights mainly. The language policy of New York is determined by, on the one hand, a structural City-State antagonism, and on the other hand, by the activism of Puerto Ricans who mobilized to assert their language rights. The last chapter of this study consists of a case-study; forty semi- conducted interviews were carried out with Russian-speaking immigrants. As a whole, they stress the importance of retraining in the language acquisition process.

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