The process of identification for émigrés in host countries requires an investigation into the “politics of identity”, and epistemological tensions of how identity is conceptualized and practiced in the context of multicultural environments. Indeed, multiculturalism frameworks in Canada have emerged from attempts to manage coexisting cultures living in the nation-state. This research is a comparative theoretical discussion that mobilizes postmodern perspectives to open limited notions of Canadian identity, and describes the potential challenges that English Canadian and Francophone Quebec multicultural frameworks raise in cultural identification for Canada as a whole, and specifically for émigrés. Secondary literature for the analysis of multicultural frameworks is examined with citizenship markers from Census of Canada questionnaires, to conceptualize Canadian identity through discourse. The findings: (1) postulate how the multiculturalist framework in English Canada and the politics of intercultural identity in Quebec intervene in the meaning-making process of national identity and thus impede on the preservation and development of different cultural identities; and (2) discover that both frameworks of multiculturalism and interculturalism, as an institutionalization of social justice and equality, should be reframed or refined due to the limiting conceptualization of cultural identity as fluid. The findings conclude that multiculturalism, interculturalism, and citizenship frameworks may not provide effective strategies to balance the relationship between different groups with regards to ethnic and cultural rights and equality, and that these frameworks should be revisited to account for, and represent, the complexities of identity in Canada.

No description available.

This study examined individual differences as precursors to engagement, then assessed whether engagement was a mechanism through which the personality variables led to organizational outcomes. Specifically, this study assessed how the relationships between select personality dimensions and citizenship behavior (OCB), both individual (OCB-I) and organizational (OCB-O), were mediated by work engagement using two distinct measures. Undergraduate working students at Florida International University completed surveys that measured their personalities, levels of work engagement, and citizenship behaviors in the work setting. Correlations and multiple regressions were used to assess the relationships between variables. Results confirmed several of the hypotheses, including the effects of personality on engagement and engagement on OCB. Select hypotheses involving mediation were supported, of which further support was found for the UWES measure over the MBI-GS. Results from a coworker sample contribute to the literature by complementing these results linking personality, work engagement, and OCB.

The decade of the 2000s witnessed a series of events that challenged traditional notions of America as an "exceptional" nation, one that had withstood or escaped the crises that toppled other global forces until the United States remained the final superpower. These ten years opened with a presidential election decided not by the Electoral College but by the Supreme Court, advanced through terrorist attacks on home soil and the devastating ramifications of military, policy, and moral reevaluation in their wake, to reach a close in the worst failure of capitalism since the Great Depression. Newly identified terror networks "hated" the American way. While the world had momentarily agreed with the headline on the front page of Le Monde, "Nous sommes tous Américains," within a year most of them refused to join the "Coalition of the Willing." Uncertainty about who "we the people" were when under duress provoked the collective to search for reinforcement of the value of their union in this Union. At this conjuncture, as it had during such cycles in the past, the nation sought both to find reassurance and to reassert a sense of control through exercises of both government and governmentality with that element of the other and the outside that was the closest to within: immigrants and the processes of immigration. This project considers not the figural "person" of the citizen or immigrant, but rather a number of exemplary "thresholds" across which immigrants (real and imagined) cross on their way to becoming citizens (real or imagined). It is my contention that the transition between immigrancy and citizenship powers this dialectic, and thus that the form of these transitions is where rhetoric accomplishes its work. That work fashions a "national fantasy," or an imaginary reserve in which the body politic stores up the affective energy necessary to gather political force toward materializing boundaries of belonging through the (at least tacit) approval of public policy. Rhetoric names the modus operendi at work cathecting the citizen to the nation, attaching individuated emotional investment to the assumed relation that fabricates "America." Ultimately, I make an intervention in that relation by suggesting that national fantasy is frail in the best possible way, such that it may be rhetorically realigned to new purpose. I have chosen to consider a diversity of thresholds across which this transition is symbolically enacted: in the institutional context of law and bureaucracy of the Naturalization Exam, in the historical matrix of materiality and memory of documentary films about Ellis Island, and in the cinematic spectacle of popular culture through the movie Gangs of New York. By reading across and within these case studies in rhetorical form, I engage questions about how American identity is coalesced through enduring expectations of national selves and foreign others. Most broadly, I focus on these mythic transitions as a way to recuperate two terms long-embattled and considered discredited by many in the critical humanities: "nation" and "patriotism." How is a love of nation constituted, perpetuated, and deployed in and by these processes? How do narratives enable both predictable outcomes and creative resistance? How do political actors make use of these rhetorical possibilities in accomplishing their material goals? And most importantly, in what way does a reconsideration of the rhetorical transitions from immigrancy to citizenship as well as from citizenship to immigrancy allow us to re-theorize, re-imagine, re-present, and most important re-practice how nation and patriotism might be-other-wise?

This dissertation explores what it means to belong in Berlin and Germany following a significant change in the citizenship laws in 2000, which legally reoriented the law away from a “German” legal identity rooted in blood-descent belonging to a more territorially-based conception. The primary goal is to understand attempts at performing inclusive belonging by the state and other actors, with mostly those of “foreign heritage” at the center, and these attempts’ pitfalls, opportunities, challenges, and strange encounters. It presents qualitative case studies to draw attention to interculturality and its related concepts as they manifest in a variety of contexts. This study presents a performance analysis of a ceremony at a major national museum project and utilizes a discursive analysis of the national and international media surrounding a unique controversy about soccer and Islam. The study moves to a peripheral neighborhood in Berlin and a marginal subject, a migration background Gymnasium student, who featured prominently in an expose about failing schools, using interviews and a text analysis to present competing narratives. Finally it examines the intimate, local view of a self-described “intercultural” after-school center aimed at migration-background girls, drawing extensively on ethnographic interviews and media generated by the girls.These qualitative encounters help illuminate how an abstract and often vague set of concepts within the intercultural paradigm becomes tactile when encountering those for whom it was intended.

This study investigates how youth activists in Hong Kong make sense of citizenship and practice citizenship by participating in different kinds of social movements. Informed by the work of Faulk (2000) and Isin (2009), citizenship is conceptualised as a framework as well as a practice where the definitions are developed and constructed accordingly. A qualitative method is adopted in this research in which in-depth interviews are conducted with 16 youth activists between 18-29 years old and a thematic analysis is carried out for analysis purposes. The major findings suggest that youth activists, even though they are at the forefront of the citizenship movement, find citizenship to be both a familiar and an alien concept. Nevertheless, participation in social movements raise their concerns about citizenship and has compelled some of them to explore a local identity and strive to develop a Hong Kong citizenship from the bottom up. By taking part in social movements, the youth activists build and accumulate experience in citizenship movements, and create diverse and multiple meanings of citizenship. Three types of citizenship acts are found in this study: responsive acts which are emotionally-driven, confrontational and adversarial. The related practices reproduce a market-oriented and exclusionary type of citizenship. Then there are resilient acts of citizenship which are driven by ideology, and emphasise the importance of connecting citizens in the community to collectively advocate for the realisation of citizenship. These citizenship practices tend to produce an open and inclusive type of citizenship. Finally, there are reinvented acts of citizenship, which emphasise autonomous everyday life practices in the community. These are driven by the reflexive practices that are applied in daily life, which tend to inspire a communitarian type of citizenship. The findings of this study also suggest that the authoritarian-neoliberal regime in Hong Kong has a dominant influence over the construction of citizenship. This has been a major force that dictates the direction of youth activism towards exclusionary practices, downplays equal citizenship and causes solo actions in social movements. This citizenship practice reduces the capacity of youth activism from advancing towards activist citizenship, and leads to speculative citizenship characterised by uncertainty and precarity. Notwithstanding the structural constraints, it is found that alternative practices still exist, and the reflexive capacity of youth activism should not be underestimated. It is argued that different acts of citizenship practiced by different groups of activists are not mutually destructive but rather, feed each another in their controversies and debates, and through communication, thus inspiring alternative acts that erode the dominant conception of citizenship, answer to justice as well as inspire activist citizenship.

In the current knowledge era, learners, as the future of our world, require both knowledge and skills and a moral sense and values. The world is beset with diverse and evolving challenges fundamentally related to Life Sciences, which require certain skills and virtues that are not emphasised by current educational practice in schools. My quest to discover the ultimate consequences of learners’ Life Science learning within the context of the existing prescribed Life Sciences Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) was prompted by my personal experience as a high school learner and my desire to see learners have rewarding and relevant educational experiences. Although the CAPS of the South African Department of Basic Education aims at providing a link between Life Sciences in the classroom and its everyday application in learners’ lives, in practice it does not seem to achieve its purpose of equipping Life Science learners to be independent problem solvers of life challenges, as stated in its aims. This qualitative case study explored learners’ perceptions of Life Sciences as an essential factor for everyday life and scientific human challenge. The perceptions of 12 purposively selected learners from Grades 8–12 were explored by using semi-structured interviews, open-ended questionnaires, non-participant and quasi-participant observations, elicited materials, and field observation as data collecting instruments. The transcripts of the semi-structured interviews and open-ended questionnaires were analysed using constant comparative analysis while data from the other instruments were used in corroborating or refuting the data from the semi-structured and open-ended questionnaire. The findings indicate that learners perceive their life science learning as only for academic progress with just a few indicating a desire to pursue a science-based university degree. Furthermore, learners did not see Life Sciences as useful for application in their day-today life. However, with the learning of human anatomy, the participants assumed, somehow, that it would be necessary to understand how their body works, but not to the extent of applying the knowledge in their daily lives and decision making. In this regard the Life Sciences curriculum fails to prepare learners to acquire the attributes required to successfully function in the 21st century. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Humanities Education / PhD / Unrestricted

Orientador: Maximiliano Martin Vicente / Banca: Roseane Andrelo / Banca: Magali do Nascimento Cunha / Banca: Cicilia Maria Krohling Peruzzo / Banca: Inês Silvia Vitorino Sampaio / Resumo: Como garantir a expressividade infantil e seu potencial cidadão na mídia digital? Esta é uma das questões norteadoras desta pesquisa que visa investigar a participação das crianças na mídia digital, considerando as mediações e as interações de modo a assegurar seu direito à liberdade de expressão, conforme postula a ONU (1989). A partir das potencialidades interativas e participativas da Internet e dos usos e das apropriações das tecnologias digitais pelo público infantil, discutidos neste estudo, é importante que as crianças assumam seu protagonismo nos espaços digitais de modo que estes atuem para favorecer a livre expressividade, a criatividade, a criticidade e a coautoria infantis. Tendo em vista o conceito de Comunicação Participativa e o método do Cassete Fórum, do pesquisador Mario Kaplún, a proposta desta pesquisa, embasada metodologicamente na pesquisa-ação, destaca as crianças como sujeitos, e não meros consumidores digitais, a fim de que elas apresentem seus interesses e suas utilizações de mídia e ferramentas digitais, construindo, assim, um panorama sociocultural desta geração da infância. Têm-se como sujeitos participantes crianças de nove a 11 anos de escolas públicas municipais da cidade de Bauru, selecionadas por meio de um diagnóstico do perfil on-line, tendo como base o questionário do Comitê Gestor da Internet no Brasil. A partir da adaptação do método cassete-fórum para o meio digital, as crianças em grupos foram convidadas a debater a temática dos direit... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: How guarantee children's expressivity and their potential as citizens in digital media? This is one of the guiding questions of this research that aims to investigate children's participation in digital media, considering mediations and interactions in order to ensure their right to freedom of expression, as postulated by UN (1989). From Internet interactive and participatory potentialities and the uses and appropriations of digital technologies by children, discussed in this study, it is important that children take their protagonism in digital spaces, so they can function for promoting children's free expression, creativity, criticism and infancy co-authorship. Considering the concept of Participatory Communication and Cassete Forum method, developed by Mario Kaplún, this research proposal, methodologically based on action-research, is to highlight children as subjects, not as mere digital consumers, with ability to present their own interests and their use of digital media and tools, building a sociocultural panorama of this infant generation. The participants were children with age between nine and eleven years old who studies in city public schools in Bauru, selected through a diagnosis of their online profile, based in Brazilian Comitê Gestor da Internet (Internet Steering Committee) questionnaire. From the adaptation of Cassete Forum method to digital environment, children were divided in groups and invited to discuss themes about children's rights on the Internet to c... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Doutor

This thesis brings to the fore two non-focalising characters, Misra of Maps by Nuruddin Farah and Kainene of Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. These transgressive characters are placed at the centre of their respective narratives. The aim is to demonstrate the way they transgress conventional political, social, national and gendered boundaries. This transgression creates the space for an alternative citizenship to emerge. The type of citizenship that is multi-faceted and embraces the complexity and nuances of contested borders. These transgressions are read as legacy especially because neither Misra nor Kainene bring to fruition the potentialities and possibilities of their subversive natures. However, both novels present alternatives that reach beyond the closing of the narratives. Ultimately, this thesis questions the purpose of writing transgressive woman characters out of the official narrative.

In recent years, due to the threat of terrorism, there has been a return of banishment, in contemporary terms better known as citizenship revocation or denationalization. The aim of this thesis is to critically assess the most common arguments used for and against liberal nations’ power to revoke citizenships as punishment and as a means to protect national security. This thesis presents an argumentation analysis of some of the most common philosophical arguments used for and against citizenship revocation in liberal democratic states. The arguments are first described and then evaluated based on their evidentiary strength in order to determine whether citizenship should be unconditional. The thesis concludes that the argumentation analysis indicates that citizenship should be unconditional in a liberal democratic state.