This study was the first to examine the impact of immigrant-focused public policy on the educational outcomes of Latinx students in professional nursing. Between 2001-2020, 34 states adopted policies that either provided or prohibited in-state resident tuition (ISRT) and/or state financial aid (SFA) to undocumented students. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Act (DACA) passed in 2012 gave a new group of largely Latinx, college-age immigrants unprecedented access to public higher education and employment. A rapid increase in the proportion of nursing degrees earned by all Latinx students, not just those who were undocumented, occurred concurrently with these federal and state-level policy changes. This study utilized fixed-effects panel analysis to estimate the relationship between DACA, ISRT, and SFA policies for undocumented students on the percent of nursing degrees earned by Latinx students between 2005-2020. None of the policies analyzed in this study were significant predictors of Latinx nursing degree completions. Broad cohesion among all models instead pointed toward the importance of gains in overall degree production among all Latinx college students, underscoring the important role of higher education in the creation of environments that support the success of students from this target population.

The aim of this study has been to explore the different descriptions of children with school-absenteeism that has been presented in four well distributed newspapers in Sweden between 2010 and 2020. A social constructionist perspective and theories about medicalization and labeling has been used to show how written language in media has effects on how we view and work with this type of problem. For this study, 41 debate articles have been analyzed through a qualitative text analysis with focus on the linguistic, literary and substantive meaning. The result showed that the perception regarding which children that can be considered as having school absenteeism problems is changeable, since the idea of school absenteeism largely depends on whose opinion is being expressed and which perspective that dominates at the moment. A clear consequence of the psychiatric perspective dominating the (public) debate is that the holistic perspective needed to address this complex of problems is at risk of being lost. / Syftet men den här studien har varit att redogöra för de orsaker till problematisk skolfrånvaro som framkommit i Sveriges fyra största dagstidningar mellan åren 2010 och 2020. Utifrån ett socialkonstruktionistiskt perspektiv och teorier om medikalisering och stämpling har jag belyst hur sätten det talas om ett problem påverkar hur vi ser på och arbetar med det. Empirin har bestått av 41 debattartiklar och har bearbetats utifrån en kvalitativ textanalys med fokus på den språkliga, litterära och innehållsmässiga innebörden. Resultatet har visat att uppfattningarna kring vem/vilka som har skolfrånvaroproblematik förändras och beror mycket på vem det är som uttalar sig och vilka perspektiv som dominerar. En konsekvens av att det psykiatriska perspektivet dominerar i debatten innebär att vi riskerar att det helhetsperspektiv som behövs för att förstå denna komplexa problematik hamnar i skymundan.

The goal of this diploma thesis is to conduct a thorough research of the Czech public debate on anarcho-capitalism and anarcho-capitalists through media communication, to analyze the media representation of anarcho-capitalism using quantitative content analysis and to provide a momentary capture of speakers, actors, topics and contexts. The study first focuses on the theoretical basis of anarcho-capitalism, its practice in the Czech Republic and the theory of portraying reality in the media from a social constructivist point of view. Then it focuses on research of media reports on anarcho-capitalism or anarcho-capitalists published in the Czech print and online media from the beginning of 2010 to the end of 2020. The results show how the representation of anarcho-capitalism in the media has changed over time and present the main topics and contexts with which anarcho-capitalism was mentioned in the Czech media.

The thesis examines the governmental construction of national identity through its citizenship education policy in England, the country with heightened tensions in diversity and identity re-construction aligning with its mandatory citizenship classes since 2002. Theoretically framing the study on the Foucauldian post-structuralism, the thesis utilises Foucauldian-influenced ‘What is the problem represented to be?’ (WPR) method by Bacchi that presents the government as a problem-producer. Conducting qualitative research methods, the study analyses the current National Curriculum in England with the explanatory and foundational state documents of Crick and Ajegbo Reports. The thesis identifies that the government primarily aims to re-construct the inclusive and integrative national identity based on the acknowledgement of multiple identities and a plurality of nations in the citizenship education curriculum in England. The study, however, also reveals that the English citizenship education policy implicitly presents a few assimilationist elements in the national identity discourse through exclusion andunrepresentativeness of the ethnic and racial identities, hierarchical establishment between native English and minorities, and the division of ‘whites’ and ‘non-whites’. Comparatively examining the documents, the thesis, therefore, concludes that the government has a powerful position in socially and politically re- constructing the discourses, concepts, and meanings over time.

Food banks have become an institutionalized response to helping individuals and families gain access to food as wages have stagnated, employment becomes more precarious, and social entitlements have dramatically declined over the years. Food banks were supposed to be a temporary stop gap measure in response to the recession of 1980. Thirty-three years later, food banks have proliferated across Canada in assisting a growing population in need of their services. I present an analysis of how food bank suppliers use the concept of hunger in a fundraising campaign called Canstruction® to understand how it relates to people’s perception of this social problem in our society. This qualitative research study uses discourse analysis to unpack the solicitation discourse used at Canstruction® events held in Waterloo and Toronto, Ontario in 2014. I have collected data from three different groups: persons who designed and installed their artwork at the Canstruction® Toronto event; persons who volunteer at a food bank; and people who have food insecurity experience. The findings indicate a differentiated understanding of hunger within the solicitation discourse for each research group: Canstruction® participants, food bank volunteers, and persons with food insecurity experience. The Canstruction® participants’ absorption of the solicitation discourse produced a limited understanding about hunger in our society. The food bank volunteer group agreed with the solicitation discourse but their images of hunger illustrated deeper criticisms of the event and food bank system. The participant group with food insecurity experience expressed the greatest amount of criticism against the food bank’s solicitation discourse and their images of hunger reflected their psycho-social experience of living in poverty. Also, an overwhelming majority of research participants with food insecurity wanted a food bank system that was more responsive to their needs and that honoured human dignity. My study on the social construction of hunger portrayed by food banks highlights how this knowledge is reinforced, reproduced and challenged through a food drive that creates packaged food items into artwork and from images described by research participants. These insights have the potential to shift the discourse away from the branding of hunger as a matter of charity and move towards discussing its fundamental causes: poverty and social inequality. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

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Transgender athletes face scrutiny because they do not fit within the traditional and constructed bounds of male and female. The objective of this study was to discover how to provide advocacy to this marginalized population amidst discriminating policies and transphobic environments. The research included a survey of high school coaches from thirty schools throughout Tennessee along with interviews with five transgender athletes from across the United States. All five athletes reported that leaders were the most impactful allies in their lives and can be the main sources of advocacy for transgender athletes. Survey findings showed that not every coach throughout Tennessee will accept transgender athletes but in each region of Tennessee some coaches claimed to support and would resist discriminatory policies. Leaders have the opportunity to pave the way for transgender athletes by providing advocacy and amplifying the voices of transgender athletes.

Rock-a-Buy Baby: Consumerism by New, First-Time Mothers, is the first known sociological exploration of need-based consumption for babies, despite the baby gear industry being a $6-billion-dollar business (whattoexpect.com). Data stemmed from qualitative, semistructured interviews with new, first-time mothers (3 months – 1 year postpartum) conducted within participants‘ households. The insights gained from the present study tell us a great deal about the ―needs‖ that predominantly white, middle-class mothers socially constructed in anticipation of their first child, and the consumptive behaviors used to accomplish these "needs." Respondents had turned to similar resources (other mothers, online forums, consumer reports, books, magazines, etc.) to help them construct ―need‖ and formulate decisions among commodities. Provided they were relying on comparable, if not overlapping, bodies of knowledge, mothers‘ narratives about consumer ―need‖ were often congruent. Additionally, the ways expectant mothers accumulated items are ritualized and made tradition. The baby shower and gift registration process (which all of my respondents participated in to some variation) are social constructions; these practices, which are so strongly tied to consumption, also constituted reality for mothers, and inevitably, their babies.

This thesis is both descriptive and philosophical, and at its core, it justifies the need for social foundations of education courses and programs in the university setting. It begins by analyzing the meaning of oppression and the part knowledge plays in confining the individual. The analysis then draws upon Patricia Hill Collins' theory of intersecting oppressions to get at the complexities and restrictions of working in the public schooling institution. It works through the ways in which sexist, classist, and racist practices afflict everyone in the institution through the bureaucratic mechanism and collateral oppression. The four components that make up the wires on the cage (gender, class, race, and bureaucracy) not only confine; they cause varying degrees of direct and indirect harms (psychological, emotional, moral, financial) to those on the inside. The concept of the institutional cage is then merged with Rodman Webb's work on schools as total institutions. Through an analysis on the characteristics of total institutions, it becomes apparent that standardization, technological developments, and the influence of venture philanthropy have brought schools more in-line with the total institution. The study then clarifies the ways in which corporatic, bureaucratic, and technocratic mentalities infect the institution, where they intersect, and how they restrict those within. The components coalesce into the conceptualization of moral oppression: the act of being coerced to ignore and suppress one's morality, moral impulses, and moral way of knowing. The remainder of the study explores the meaning of moral action and suggests some ways educators can let go of the ways of thinking and acting that may be keeping them from confidently doing what they know to be good and just.

Becoming a mother is most often described as something natural and the qualities to be a mother is presupposed to exist in every woman. This paper presents the results of a qualitative study with the research question as to whether the image of ‘the good mother’ can be found in women's stories of becoming mothers. The data was collected through one group interview and two individual interviews and analyzed with Charmaz constructivist grounded theory as a method. In the analysis we found four theoretical codes that together answer our research questions. The result shows that there is still an ideal type of ‘the good mother’ after which women build their own identity as a mother. / Att bli mamma beskrivs ofta som något naturligt och egenskaperna att vara en god moder förutsätts existera i varje kvinna. Studiens syfte var att undersöka huruvida bilden av “den goda modern” kunde ses i kvinnors berättelser av att bli mödrar. Data samlades in genom en gruppintervju och två individuella intervjuer och analyserades med Charmaz konstruktivistiska grundade teori som metod. I analysen hittades fyra teoretiska koder som tillsammans svarar på forskningsfrågorna. Resultatet visar att det fortfarande finns en idealtyp av "den goda modern", varefter kvinnor skapar sin egen identitet som mamma.