Although activists’ conservative estimate of the number of non-status people living in Canada is well over 500,000, the Canadian government, through its exclusionary immigration, civic, and public policies, has criminalized their existence and forsaken its responsibility for their human rights. It has been abetted by international law, which largely leaves it to individual states to resolve their own issues with unregulated migration by means of deportation or regularization. This anti-racist feminist research relied on multiple methods to collect 155 survey questionnaires distributed by service providers to non-status women within the Greater Toronto Area; it also relied on thirteen individual and two focus-group interviews with service providers and activists in order to: (1) explore the lived conditions of non-status women, and (2) examine how the activities of service providers and activists address these women’s needs. The results show that living without legal immigration status has dire consequences for non-status women, placing them at high risk of physical and sexual abuse, labour exploitation, sexual and mental health challenges, excessive caring responsibilities, and unstable housing conditions. Since most publicly funded human-service agencies come under governmental control through the process of funding allocation, practitioners must meet their non-status clients’ needs in an underground manner or on compassionate grounds, while facing dual workloads, limited referral sources, and work-related burnout. This adversely affects the quality of the care these women receive. As a result, in recent years, many frontline practitioners and human-rights activists have formed campaigns and networks to confront neoliberal state policies and act as the voice of non-status women. At the same time, non-status women’s resilient power, informal learning mechanisms, and social networks have enabled them to learn new skills, navigate the system, and make Canada their new home.

To reverse the emergency environmental degradation of Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China, the localgovernment enforced a new developing project – Eco-migration, which aims at bothenvironmental restoration and poverty alleviation. Within ten years’ time, more than 400,000 ruralresidents were relocated. Through professional training and labor transportation, the financialcondition was largely improved. The annual income of these eco-migrants was highly raised from0.2 USD a day in 2000 to 3.51 USD a day in 2010. From the environmental perspective, morethan 70 percent of the sandy wasteland was restored. The vegetable coverage jumped up to 75percent, comparing to 30 percent in 2000. Through field study, the feedbacks from theseeco-migrants were collected. Eco-migrants were highly satisfied with the economic andenvironmental improvement. However, there are lots of improvements can be done. In one word,that’s the way the government trying to achieve the goal of sustainable development, whichproviding valuable experience for future.

This thesis aims at defining the connection between the increasingly popular ecosystem services theory and its practical implications for sustainable development in Swedish physical spatial planning. A literature study was made to summarize the ecosystem services and resilience thinking concepts (with an emphasis on ecosystem services), their definitions and potential uses in physical spatial planning. This overview was then applied in choosing a concept framework to be tested in a case-study: the possible changes in ecosystem services and their values in a land-use trade off situation. To gather insight into the benefits of the ecosystem services concept, compared to environmental integration into physical spatial planning on a municipal level today, the literature study was extended to encompass a short overview of environmental management in the Swedish planning system. Finally, the case study was introduced to municipal employees with strong ties to the planning process, in order to gage their opinions on the ecosystem services concept and its usefulness in planning for sustainability and increased human wellbeing. The results of these interviews showed a generally positive attitude towards the concept as a way to gather and communicate ecological and socio-cultural information to decision makers. The economic valuation was deemed less important as the method is fraught with such difficulties. Overall, the ecosystem services and resilience thinking concepts have great potential to gather the discontinuous environmental management methods toward sustainable (ecologic) development, but in order for this to happen, the municipalities need to be given the right resources, and incentives, for implementation.

In a context of rapid urbanization and increasingly standardized built environments, urbanism must find new methods of creating appropriate conditions for the variability of contemporary urban life. The city, understood as a system of interconnected processes in constant change, offers a relational way of thinking about urban design. This thesis explores the concept of Relational Urbanism through a strategic design approach that engages the complexity of the site to create variability in the built environment by relating built form to landscape elements. This relational approach has particular potential in post-industrial sites, where challenging existing conditions and processes of remediation resist conventional methods of redevelopment. The thesis focuses on the Toronto Port Lands as a testing ground for this design approach, drawing on the site's industrial heritage to develop a landscape framework and a set of relational rules that will guide the emergence of a diverse urban environment able to change over time. A series of design strategies—remediation parks, urban delta, adapted industry, and differentiated fabric—rethink the challenges of the site as opportunities for public benefit, creating a variegated landscape for built form to respond to. In contrast to a singular static master plan, this method favours multiple flexible strategies that can be deployed incrementally, breaking down the scale of development and allowing it to be realized by a wide variety of stakeholders. Through this approach the thesis seeks to enable the city to intentionally but subtly guide its urban landscape toward diversity and allow its citizens to participate in its continued adaptation.

To date, research delving into the narratives of living with dementia during mealtimes is limited. The methodology used is thematic narrative analysis, following the elements of a 3D narrative inquiry space proposed by Clandinin and Connelly (2000). The purpose was to develop stories by reconstructing participants’ experiences to capture insight into how mealtimes change overtime and how adaptations reflect resilience. Two themes and several subthemes were revealed. The first major theme is ‘Developing strategies for positive adaptation’, with four subthemes including reminiscing, incorporating humour, establishing social support, and having hope and optimism. The second major theme is ‘Continuing to learn and adapt’, with three subthemes including focusing on the positive gains and personal growth, balancing past pleasures while adapting to the new normal, and accumulating life experiences. This work serves as a basis for future studies examining into the concept of resilience among families living with dementia in greater depth. / SSHRC

Given that depression risk intensifies in adolescence, examining the course of depressive symptoms during the shift from childhood to adolescence is important for expanding knowledge about the etiology of depression. From a cognitive-developmental perspective, this study examined the stability of both positive and negative schemas in adolescence and whether these schemas could prospectively predict depressive symptoms and resilience in youth. One hundred ninety-eight participants (48 percent boys, 52 percent girls) between the ages of 9 and 14 were recruited from 4 elementary schools to complete measures of youth depressive symptoms, resilience, and schema content and organization. Those who consented to be re-contacted for a follow-up study were contacted one to three years later to complete the same measures online. The Time 2 sample consisted of 50 participants (54 percent boys, 46 percent girls). Negative and positive schema content and structure were stable over time. Depressive symptoms at Time 2 were hypothesized to be predicted by strong negative and weak positive schema content, tightly interconnected negative schema organization, and loosely interconnected positive schema organization at Time 1. The opposite patterns of association were hypothesized between schema content and structure and resilience. After controlling for age, sex and depressive symptoms /resilience at Time 1, negative schema content was the only significant predictor of depressive symptoms and resilience at Time 2. Implications for cognitive theories and clinical practice are discussed. / Ontario Mental Health Foundation

Tyrimo tikslas - nustatyti teigiamų emocijų ir kūrybiškumo ryšį su vyresnio amžiaus žmonių psichologiniu atsparumu. Tyrime dalyvavo 200 vyresnio amžiaus žmonių (118 moterų ir 82 vyrai). Tiriamųjų amžius nuo 40 metų iki 61 ir daugiau. Siekiant atskleisti vyresnio amžiaus žmonių patiriamas emocijas buvo taikytas Fredrikson, Losada (2005) klausimynas apie patiriamas teigiamas ir neigiamas emocijas - (angl. Positive Affect and the Complex Dynamics of Human Flourishing). Kūrybiškumui matuoti buvo naudojamas Hocevar (1980) Kūrybinės veiklos klausimynas (angl. Creative Behavior Inventory), tyrime naudojamos keturios skalės: literatūros, muzikos, rankdarbių bei bendras šių trijų skalių kūrybiškumas. Psichologiniam atsparumui matuoti buvo pasirinkta Wagnild ir Young Atsparumo skalė, kurią į lietuvių klabą išvertė A. Pranckevičienė, R. Pakrosnis, V. Čepukienė (2006 ), tyrime naudojamos trys skalės: pasitikėjimas savimi, prasmės suvokimas/drąsa priimti iššūkius bei bendras šių dviejų skalių psichologinis atsparumas. Tyrimo rezultatų analizė rodo, kad vyrai ir moterys pasižymi panašiu bendru psichologiniu atsparumu, pasitikėjimu savimi bei prasmės suvokimas/drąsa priimti iššūkius. Taip pat atskleista, kad vyrai ir moterys patiria panašiai teigiamų emocijų. Kalbant apie kūrybiškumą, nustatyta, kad moterys pasižymi didesniu literatūriniu, rankdarbių darymo bei bendru kūrybiškumu, palyginus su vyrais. Rezultatai rodo, kad kuo vyresnio amžiaus žmonės intensyviau patiria teigiamas emocijas... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The aim - to identify the relationship of positive emotions and creative with the psychological resilience of elderly. The study included 200 (118 females and 82 males) older people. The age of from study participants are 40 years to 61 or more. In order to reveal the elderly experienced emotions were applied Fredrikson, Losada (2005) questionnaire on experienced positive and negative emotions (Positive Affect and the Complex Dynamics of Human Flourishing). To measure the creativity, was used Hocevar (1980) Creative Behavior Inventory, four scales used in the study: literature, music, handicrafts, overall creativity. To measure the psychological resilience was chosen Wagnild and Young psychological resilience scale, which is translated into the Lithuanian language by A. Pranckevičienė, R. Pakrosnis, V. Čepukienė (2006), the study used three scales: the overall resilience, self-confidence, the meaning perception / courage to accept the challenge. Analysis of the results shows that men and women have similar total psychological resilience, self-confidence and the meaning perception/courage to accept the challenge. It is also revealed that men and women experiencing positive emotions in a similar. As for creativity, found that women have a higher creativity in literature, handicrafts and overall creativity, compared with men, and musical creativity does not have differ between men and women. The results show that when elderly experience more positive emotions, that their overall... [to full text]

This interdisciplinary dissertation is the result of action research to better understand the academic, social, and emotional needs of youth who arrive in Canada with experiences of interrupted education and forced migration. In the province of Saskatchewan, where there has been a dramatic rise in immigration since 2009, the infrastructure to meet the needs of newcomer youth with high emotional and academic needs remains undeveloped. By taking a youth perspective and employing anti-oppressive methodologies, this study serves to address the gap in research regarding the challenges that create barriers to successful integration into Canadian society as well as the factors that assist youth in living well despite tremendous obstacles. In an effort to employ a methodology that was compatible with an English as an additional language (EAL) classroom setting, narratives were collected in various ways. Eight students in a sheltered (EAL student only) Language Arts class wrote journal entries, reflective essays, illustrated children’s books, and photo essays. Students also engaged in peer interviews, in-class storytelling as well as personal interviews with the researcher. Three additional EAL students from various classes in the same school submitted personal stories and journal entries. Three teachers were interviewed regarding their use of storytelling as part of the academic program and to build rapport with students. The findings of this study highlight the factors of risk and resilience identified by the student and teacher participants. Factors of risk include pre-migration poverty, experiences of trauma, persecution, large gaps in first language education, and forced migration. Post-migration factors such as the need for appropriate educational programs, loneliness and lack of friends, as well as economic struggles were identified as significant barriers to wellbeing and integration. The youth also showed great insight into the factors that increased their wellbeing and identified the people, places, activities, and values that comforted them in times of overwhelming despair. Through their stories, the youth demonstrated the personal qualities that enhanced their resilience and shared words of wisdom for Canadian-born teachers and youth new to Canada. A secondary role of this inquiry was to explore the use of narratives in a classroom setting as way of opening conversations between teachers and students. EAL teachers often take on the role of counsellor and advisor despite having little training for such emotionally demanding tasks. Therefore, there is a great need to introduce teachers to methods of healing in culturally sensitive and familiar spaces. Regular classroom teachers are often unaware of EAL students’ challenging life stories, strength of character, and rich experiential learning. Narrative activities can work to mitigate cultural misunderstandings and build social capital. Storytelling is a viable strategy to encourage language learning, build community, and address emotionally difficult issues while serving as a research methodology to inform education theory and practice.

I began with an interest in what makes a difference for girls who face challenging circumstances: What helps them to develop sturdy, resilient, and resistant selves? What role does narrative play in this process? I set in motion a process of storytelling and reflecting by inviting girls and women to share stories together—their own stories, fictional narratives, and myths. The participants had faced particular challenges in adolescence, including economic hardship; disrupted social or family circumstances; mental health; abuse; or trauma. The girls and women had differing racialized, class, cultural, social, religious, and ethnic backgrounds. Drawing on the work of biblical scholars who understand Jesus’ parables as poetic metaphor, I identified 11 aspects of parables that helped me to hear and interpret girls’ stories: participation, difficulty, metaphor, fractals, truth, emergence, performance, possibility, power, wisdom, and beauty. Listening with a parabolic ear, I came to experience girls’ storytelling selves as participatory, metaphorical, fractal, truthful, and emergent; I observed girls’ selves as artistic practices that are embodied performances of their wisdom, power, and beauty. And I discovered how such performances of the self create enlarged spaces of possibility for girls in the face of life’s difficulty. I discovered that storytelling selves are girls’ power—power realized as storytelling, participation, mutual relation, meaning-making, enlarging spaces of possibility, disidentification, and embodiment. I identified six elements that seemed to be important in nurturing girls’ parabolic imagination. These are community participation, experienced observation, complexity, care, interpretation, and artmaking. These elements provide a framework for considering how educators might support girls’ selves but they do not provide a methodology. Taken together, they are more like a parable—an opening onto a particular worldview that invites participation in the world of a girl. These six elements may be signs that point to places where parables of the self are already being told. They become questions that make sense only to those who already understand: Is this community? Is anyone listening? Is it complex? Is this a place of compassion and care? Is meaning being shaped and questioned and reimagined here? Is there art? Is there play? / Thesis (Ph.D, Education) -- Queen's University, 2009-12-18 17:19:42.63

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