This thesis deploys both qualitative and quantitative methods to explore the role and meanings of violence within the context of Sussex and Kent in the early part of the eighteenth century. Historians have often approached the topic of violence from the perspective of a history of crime and therefore deviance. The focus has frequently been on measurements of levels and has ignored cultural contexts. In contrast, this research is grounded in experiences of violence demonstrating that it is not a uniform concept and includes a wide variety of behaviours from brawls to murder. By drawing on a range of sources it has been possible to allow the ritual and meaning of violent actions to be explored in detailed context. Quantitative data is taken from the quarter sessions records of both counties and analysed alongside the interpretations of previous historians. This is supplemented with depositions, literature, letters and notebooks to provide a ‘thick description’ of the contexts and circumstances of violence. The experience of violence is explored from a range of angles and at several levels, from anonymous brawls in the street to gang violence to household chastisement, the ritual and meaning of violent actions is investigated in detail. This analysis demonstrates that violence was a subjective concept, dependent on context. No clear definition of violence can be found, instead there are a range of descriptions, portrayals and accounts which all combine to illustrate the plurality of this concept. This thesis concludes that violence was often meaningful and connected with cultural concepts of order, authority and community. It was not random and its purpose can often be found if the signs are read. Evidence for struggles over authority and power can frequently be found as the basis of violent disputes and this can be found at the household, community and county level. This thesis demonstrates how violence was regulated through both formal and informal methods involving concepts of legitimacy and acceptability, as although violence was defined legally the border between legitimate or acceptable and illegitimate and unacceptable was blurred and contested.

From the exterior, the United States has extracted natural resources and transformed the social dynamics of those living on the periphery, contributing to the emigration from Mexico and immigration to the United States. This,in turn,creates the racialization of the Mexican immigrant, specifically the undocumented immigrant—the "illegal alien." I argue that this unilateral interaction operates with a racial formation of the Mexican immigrant created by elite white (non-Hispanic) males. The anti-Mexican immigrant subframe and "prowhite" subframe derive from the white racial frame,which racializes the undocumented immigrant in the United States. In addition, the subframes are evident in the three stages of migration. The three stages consist of threefold factors: First, the exploitation of Mexican resources (natural and human) and racialized immigration policies; second, the social networks and smugglers, called coyotes, who assist the undocumented immigrant to bypass barriers; and third, the discrimination undocumented immigrants encounter in the United States by other people of color. This dissertation relied on the migration experience of thirty Mexican male day-laborers,living in Texas, to examine the white racial framing of undocumented immigrants. The findings demonstrate how the U.S. immigration policies and members of the host society persistently exhibit the white racial frame and its subframes. This study is essential, because, aside from noting the issues of unauthorized migration, it demonstrates how elite white males shape the dialogue on the discourse and all that surrounds the migration process.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, June, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

This study aims to draw attention to the stories of Afghan unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in Sweden; their reasons to leave Afghanistan and to migrate to Sweden, the way that they migrate, and the problems they face during their journey to Sweden are investigated. In order to achieve the aims of this study, a qualitative method is used based on semi-structured interviews. Altogether, eight people are interviewed of which six are Afghan male unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, one is a legal guardian and one is an assistant (behandlingsassistent). Theories such as push and pull factors, migration industry theory, transit migration theory, and social network theory help to understand better the stories of Afghan unaccompanied children while analyzing the data.The data obtained from interviews shows that the children who were leaving Afghanistan had mixed motivations. Factors such as lack of security, violence, threats, individual risks associated with their ethnicity, forced recruitment, economic hardship and political reasons push them to leave Afghanistan. My findings show that the main reason for the children to leave Afghanistan is the harassment and violence against the ethnic group Hazara.Moreover, the data demonstrates that traveling with smugglers and crossing borders, by land or by sea, is a multiple-step procedure for Afghan unaccompanied children. They have many stops along the way and spend lots of time in different transit countries. The journey is full of risks for them. My interviews reveal that transit migration creates a number of problems for these children.In addition, this study indicates that the role of social networks is of great importance for these children. The smugglers create strong incentives for their decision to claim asylum in Sweden. Moreover, co-migrants and friends of friend who live in Europe play a significant role in their decision-making. Furthermore, restrictive legislations as well as lack of protection in transit countries make onward migration inevitable. Other factors, such as the probability of getting a residence permit and family reunification, are important for Afghan unaccompanied children to choose Sweden as a destination country.

We describe a stochastic network interdiction problem in which an interdictor, subject to limited resources, installs radiation detectors at border checkpoints in a transportation network in order to minimize the probability that a smuggler of nuclear material can traverse the residual network undetected. The problems are stochastic because the smuggler's origin-destination pair, the mass and type of material being smuggled, and the level of shielding are known only through a probability distribution when the detectors are installed. We consider three variants of the problem. The first is a Stackelberg game which assumes that the smuggler chooses a maximum-reliability path through the network with full knowledge of detector locations. The second is a Cournot game in which the interdictor and the smuggler act simultaneously. The third is a "hybrid" game in which only a subset of detector locations is revealed to the smuggler. In the Stackelberg setting, the problem is NP-complete even if the interdictor can only install detectors at border checkpoints of a single country. However, we can compute wait-and-see bounds in polynomial time if the interdictor can only install detectors at border checkpoints of the origin and destination countries. We describe mixed-integer programming formulations and customized branch-and-bound algorithms which exploit this fact, and provide computational results which show that these specialized approaches are substantially faster than more straightforward integer-programming implementations. We also present some special properties of the single-country case and a complexity landscape for this family of problems. The Cournot variant of the problem is potentially challenging as the interdictor must place a probability distribution over an exponentially-sized set of feasible detector deployments. We use the equivalence of optimization and separation to show that the problem is polynomially solvable in the single-country case if the detectors have unit installation costs. We present a row-generation algorithm and a version of the weighted majority algorithm to solve such instances. We use an exact-penalty result to formulate a model in which some detectors are visible to the smuggler and others are not. This may be appropriate to model "decoy" detectors and detector upgrades. / text

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D’abord sur une échelle réduite puis sur une large échelle la contrebande du kpayo, essence et produits pétroliers occupent aujourd’hui un nombre de plus en plus grand de vendeurs, on estime que 100 000 personnes sont impliquées dans ce trafic du Nigeria au Bénin. Il revêt plusieurs aspects selon qu’il emprunte la route maritime, le fleuve ou la route. Ce transport génère un grand nombre de petits métiers que nous évoquons dans la thèse qu’il s’agisse d’apporter les bidons sur la plage, de transformer les scooters ou les camions. Plus que tout, cette activité suppose aussi un réseau souvent d’origine familiale, mais aussi des accointances avec du personnel des emplois régaliens de la République. Les recherches empiriques réalisées sur des territoires aussi variés et circonscrits que peuvent l’être une station-service, un village lacustre, un marché frontalier, un débarcadère, un entrepôt ont permis d’appréhender les conditions d’approvisionnement des contrebandiers, identifier les modalités d’acheminement des produits pétroliers vers le Bénin, saisir les stratégies de contournement des contrebandiers et les risques encourus tout au long de leur trajet, examiner les interactions entre les transporteurs et les forces de l’ordre à l’occasion du passage des barrières de contrôle, apprécier l’animation des marchés et enfin cerner le rôle des différents acteurs en présence. L’analyse des réseaux marchands, des parcours biographiques, des stratégies d’acteurs, des logiques d’accumulation et des rapports de l’économie informelle à la loi situe cette recherche au croisement de l’anthropologie économique, de la géographie du commerce, de la sociologie de la précarité, et de la sociologie politique. / First of all on a small scale, then further along, on a much larger scale, the kpayo trade which means smuggling of gas and other oil products from Nigeria to Bénin, depend on almost 100 000 persons living on this sale activity. This trade might be quite different if gas transported by means of ships on the sea, by the river, or by scooters or trucks on the road. This kind of informal trade gives way to different kinds of odd jobs we mention in the PHD: bringing the jerrycans to the beach, reshaping scooters and trucks in a garage. Most of all this illicit activity needs some kind of a kinship network and political pull among the police and customs officers of the Republic. Empirical research has been done in different fields such as a gas station, a seaside village, a market on the country border, a landing stage, a warehouse, it led to the comprehension of the way smugglers are supplied. I was thus able to understand the process by which gas was transported from Nigeria to the Republic of Bénin, and see all the byways the smugglers are used to take, and the risks taken all along the journey. I examined the interaction process between the racketeers and the police when they passed a checkpoint; see how the markets were busy, and last managed to see how the the different roles of subjects interact. The racketeers networks analysis, life stories, different action strategies, the way they accumulate and the study of informal economy related to law contribute in this PhD to an essay in economic- anthropology with geographic standpoints, and a sociological analysis of precarious lives and Big Shots.