Current studies on international migration often focus on transnational processes and networks conducted across borders. While states increasingly engage with their overseas populations, their strategies are becoming ever more creative. As such, we see the development of state diaspora strategies emerging that aim to connect with diaspora to influence their economic, political, social and cultural activities. One particular state strategy that is receiving increasing attention is the strategy of extending dual citizenship to overseas populations in order to create national solidarity and to promote investment and remittances back home. While the existing literature is comprehensive, there is a significant lack of research that aims to determine if these strategies have a real influence over diaspora activities and performance. As such, this thesis aims to determine whether dual citizenship facilitates home engagement. Using a transnational perspective, this research explores the relationship between citizenship, diaspora and transnational engagements within the context of Philippines by conducting semi-structured interviews to better understand how individuals perceive and engage in the policies that are targeted towards them.

In this thesis, I demonstrate the relationship of transnationalism, transcendence, and exclusion in the life, works, and words of Horatio Parker (1863-1919). Parker was an organist, composer, and the dean of the School of Music at Yale from 1904 until his death. Although his reputation has since waned, during his lifetime he was a sought-after speaker and composer, gaining recognition across the United States and in England. This thesis engages with three categories of Parker’s repertoire including orchestral, choral/liturgical, and song, and employs intertextuality as the main method of analysis. Parker, like many of his contemporaries, rejected Antonin Dvořák’s 1893 suggestion to American composers that a national idiom could be founded on African American and Native American musics. In combination with his lectures on the topic, I argue that Parker’s symphonic poem A Northern Ballad may be read as his response to Dvořák’s claim. Using many techniques reminiscent of Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony, Parker’s work transcends national boundaries rather than defining or being defined by them. Of greater concern to Parker than the perceived national characteristics of a work was that it should acknowledge music’s spiritual significance. Although the belief in music as a transcendent art frequently divorced music from words and from function, as a devout Christian, Parker sought to reunite the inherently “religious” quality of music with religious service, in works such as Hora Novissima and Light’s Glittering Morn. I frame Parker’s efforts in the context of the writings of John Sullivan Dwight (1813-1893), Wilhelm Wackenroder (1773-1798), and E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822), all major proponents of musical transcendence. In general, appeals to transcendence idolized Beethoven and defined beauty by Eurocentric standards, establishing a false hierarchy that resulted in exclusion. The work of Parker, and other American composers, fuelled also by the false hierarchy of racism, continued to propagate exclusion. The final chapter of this thesis thus contributes to efforts to decolonise Parker’s settler colonial attitudes and examine how these influenced his musical choices.

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This dissertation examines identity formation among evangelical Protestants in contemporary Ukraine. The overarching question is this: how do Ukrainian evangelicals view themselves and their churches in the context of Ukrainian regionalism, Ukrainian nationalism, and religious transnationalism? This question demands a closer look at Ukrainian regional variation, the status of Ukrainian national identity among evangelical practitioners, and the process of religious transnationalism, including how evangelicals perceive the West. This project is primarily based on qualitative research methods carried out over a ten month period. Field methods included participant observation, focus group interviews, and individual interviews. A set of maps produced by research subjects is also evaluated. In order to permit a regional comparison, case study churches were selected in four Ukrainian cities. Before beginning the field research it was hypothesized that Baptists, those evangelicals whose religious roots date to the nineteenth century and who survived the Soviet Union, would have different perspectives on many of the research questions than members of churches founded recently by American missionaries. To test this assumption, one Baptist church and one new evangelical church were selected in each of the four cities. Among Ukrainian evangelicals, regionalism is closely related to language preference and to notions of national identity. Members of churches in Lviv are strong supporters of Ukrainian-only language practices; members of churches in other parts of the country identify themselves as Russian speakers who dislike the exclusive language policies in western Ukraine. Study participants generally rejected a Ukrainian nationalism that was connected to religion, although members of new Protestant churches incorporated aspects of civic nationalism into their religious practice. In terms of their participation in a transnational religious network, all churches (both older Baptist and newer evangelical) were highly integrated with people, ideas, and money from the West. However, evangelicals views towards the West and their own identities as transnational actors were correlated to church type. Members of older Baptist churches were much more critical of Western churches and missionaries than were members of new evangelical congregations.

This thesis is an exploratory study of the lives and experiences of international students who apply for and gain permanent residency (PR) after completing tertiary study in Australia. The thesis uses sociological theories and methods to focus on the ways that students-turned-migrants maintain transnational connections, and negotiate their memberships and sense of belonging across Australia and other countries. This research is important because there is negligible extant literature that connects the international study experience and the skilled migration experience as two steps in the same process. Furthermore, research that does address this phenomenon tends to look at students-turned-migrants as a 'policy problem', usually focusing on their labour market integration. In contrast, this thesis foregrounds this distinctive group of contemporary migrants' subjective experience of the migration process and their ongoing transnational connections. The research used cultural probes (packages of mixed media materials such as diaries, maps and disposable cameras, which participants used to document aspects of their lives) and in-depth interviews to provide a rich understanding of the multiplicity and breadth of participants' individual experiences, with various reflective representations of the individuals' narratives at the core of the study. The analysis covers two aspects of the student-turned-migrant experience: the acquisition of memberships, such as PR and citizenship, and the maintenance of mobilities, including virtual mobility through media and communications technology, and corporeal mobility through forms of travel such as return visits. The analysis reveals that students-turned-migrants undergo a distinct migration experience, characterised by three sequential gates of membership: their entrance as transient students, their acquisition of residency and their decisions about citizenship. Transnational consciousness diffuses their decision-making at each stage of this process, as they negotiate the memberships available to them as a means to balance their desires and obligations across home and host countries. The analysis reveals that student-turned-migrant choices and experiences are often affected by macro-political forces. Choices about citizenship are heavily influenced by global regimes of mobility and the media, and their acqu isition of residency is negotiated through the institutions and regulations of the immigration regime. The analysis also reveals that students-turned-migrants engage with a diverse range of transnational practices, many of which are closely grounded in the use of technology to maintain transnational connections. The findings reframe students-turned-migrants as more than just a policy problem, but rather as a unique group of contemporary migrants, with several key features that set them apart from previous waves of Australian migrants. While they are less integrated into established local ethnic communities, they maintain very strong connections overseas. They maintain regular contact through virtual mobilities and display a high propensity for return travel. They value mobility highly and display an acute awareness of both the advantages and challenges of sustaining mobile lives. The study of their experiences not only reveals a great deal about the nature of transnationality and mobility in an increasingly globalised world, but also suggests that if this type of migration continues in the future, it may have implications for Australia's patterns of cultural diversity and international integration.

Cultural identity today has become deterritorialized. As mass migration, mobility and interconnectivity between peoples and regions have increased, connections to geographical roots have loosened. People today are enmeshed in multiple spatial contexts, their past and present associations all contribute to shaping an identity that reaches beyond territorial boundaries. Being simultaneously a part of and apart from a multitude of places allows for identity to be situational and hybrid, between categorization. To examine the fluidity of identity and its relationship to the built environment, this investigation focuses specifically around the Indian diaspora, tracing the relationship between people and place within their homeland, through transition, and after settling in a new hostland. While definitions of nationalism typically involve identifying ethnic commonalities within a state, the Indian nation unites in a celebration of disparity. As India developed as a home to numerous languages, social hierarchies and belief systems, it has struggled to form a coherent national narrative. The overseas Indian community amplifies this dilemma as they are confronted with further multiplicity in a foreign environment. The result is a gap that prevents the Indian diaspora from fully connecting to both homeland and hostland, situating them in a space of the in-between. Rather than attempting to bridge this gap, this investigation chronicles the reasons for its existence and offers an observatory as a space in the built environment where the gulf between cultural identities can be explored.

Project (M.P.P.) - Simon Fraser University, 2006. / Theses (Master of Public Policy Program) / Simon Fraser University. Also issued in digital format and available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--York University, 2001. Graduate Programme in Environmental Studies. / Typescript. Title on certificate page: When host become guests. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 271-291). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ66345.

This dissertation is an exploration of the creative spaces often opened up by exile and forced migration, where Southern Sudanese negotiate and perform new forms of belonging and affiliation, while simultaneously (re)producing, ‘local’ practices in order to reaffirm and solidify existing relationships and identity categories. Through my examination of the creative spaces opened up by migration and exile, I also raise questions related to broader concerns in the field of forced migration and refugee studies regarding the need to problematize the often binary distinction between forced and voluntary migrants, which often places refugees in a category stripped of agency and choice. Based on 20 months of multi-sited field work in Calgary, Canada and Juba, South Sudan and exploring issues related community organization and shifting forms of affiliation, long distance nation building, transnational marriage and return migration, this dissertation demonstrates how settling-in and place-making involve both material and moral aspects of practice, and that refugees, regardless of the “forced” nature of their migration, are active agents in this process.