In this study, through a group of children’s critical inquiries about migrant belonging, I aimed to understand migrant children’s epistemic privilege and generate a counter-narrative against the predominant problem-based framing of migrant children. To achieve the research purpose, the guiding questions I set forth are the following: 1. What issues, problems, and questions regarding migrant belonging do a group of migrant children bring to the surface? 2. How do the children investigate those issues, problems, and questions? 3. What role does the researcher play in the child-led critical inquiry process? To address the questions, 33 critical inquiry sessions were held from 2019 to 2020 in an afterschool class in a Korean elementary school. At the intersection of practitioner research tradition and a participatory approach, this study oriented itself toward reflexive, action-oriented research. The findings suggest that the children’s engagement in critical inquiries brought methodological dilemmas, posing questions to my assumptions about the research topics as well as to my plans, and shifted research design. These complexities caused by children demonstrated that critical inquiries involve generative possibilities wherein not only children can generate knowledges but researchers also reconstruct one’s preconceptions and better understand the research topics, ultimately developing better research design. In addition, children demonstrated their insights about migrant belonging by reconceptualizing belonging from a migrant Joseonjok child’s perspective. The children also taught people how othering practices were at work in Korean society and impacted their belonging. Based on the generated knowledges, the children, on the one hand, created counter-narratives and informed us about how to rethink migrant belonging in South Korea and, on the other hand, attempted to counteract othering practices, which let me reconsider what “action” would mean in the critical inquiries. With these findings, I discuss migrant children’s epistemic privilege, particularly regarding their insights about the nation-building project in South Korea, how children navigate the critical inquiries, and researcher’s role in the critical inquiries. The discussion generates implications for researchers in the field of curriculum studies and qualitative methodology and for practitioners and curriculum designers who conduct critical inquiries with children.

This study explores the role of rehabilitation in shaping the subjectivity of blind persons. It considers what engaging with rehabilitation services might communicate to people with visual impairments about their status, their value and their place in the world. Rather than being concerned with the practical aspects of rehabilitation, it explores how rehabilitative practices operate at the symbolic level, and interrogates the meanings about blindness which are produced within relationships where help is given and received. Drawing on Foucauldian concepts, this research traces the interplay between discourse, power and knowledge in rehabilitation services. The research design includes two phases. Through analysing the website copy of eight organisations located across South Africa, Phase One identified discourses employed by organisations as they represent themselves in the public realm. In Phase Two, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight service providers and eighteen service users across four organisations operating in the Western Cape province of South Africa. This phase identified the discourses framing rehabilitative activities and relationships. Visually impaired participants described sight loss as a significant trauma – as dislocation from society and self – revealing that service users might be particularly vulnerable to the shaping influence of rehabilitation. Data analysis found, firstly, that the discourses which frame rehabilitation services position visually impaired service users as passive recipients in relation to the work of service providers and the gifts of the public. This positioning objectifies service users and may signal to them that they are neither valued as stakeholders nor recognised as autonomous adults, while also requiring that they demonstrate gratitude towards service providers and the public. Secondly, rehabilitation is constructed as a linear journey with strictly defined outcomes. This ‘journey discourse' relies on polarised fantasies about blindness involving, on the one hand, dependency, dislocation and struggle and, on the other, independence, integration and coping. Visually impaired service users are required to demonstrate evidence of the latter while the former shadowy figure of pre-intervention blindness must be defended against. This discourse prohibits nuance and expressions of ongoing struggle, underpinning an imperative to cope found within organisations. Amid limiting discursive practices in rehabilitation, a key finding is that visually impaired service users are involved in complex negotiations of self and place. Investigating the discourses which frame and support rehabilitative practices sheds light on investments in promoting particular ways of being for visually impaired people, prompting us to consider what service providers, service users and, indeed, society as a whole might be colluding with. This work offers a novel perspective on blindness rehabilitation in South Africa as it explores an interplay between essential practical interventions found in rehabilitation and the influences on identity which those who experience sight loss undergo as they move into a new life with visual impairment.

This dissertation explores both the production of underclass literature and the vibrancy of material between 1868-1935. During an era of rampant materialism, consumer capitalism, unchecked industrialism, and economic inequality in the United States, poor, working class Americans confronted their socioeconomic status by abandoning the linear framework of capitalism that draws only a straight line between market and consumer, and engaging in a more intimate relationship with local, material things – found, won, or inherited – that offered a sense of autonomy, belonging, and success. The physical seizure of property/power facilitated both men and women with the ability to recognize their own empowerment (both as individuals and as a community) and ultimately resist their marginalization by leveling access to opportunity and acquiring or creating personal assets that could be generationally transferred as affirmation of their family's power and control over circumstance. Reading into these personal possessions helps us understand the physical and psychological conflicts present amongst the underclasses as represented in American literature, and these conflicts give rise to new dynamics of belonging as invested in the transformative experience of ownership and exchange. If we can understand these discarded, poor, and foreign things and people as possessing dynamic and vibrant agency, then we will change the ethics of objectifying and ostracizing discarded, poor, and foreign humans, then and now.

This thesis documents and discusses the production of a film about the Gule Wamkulu Mask Dance, in the village of Mzonde, in the area of traditional authority of Nkanda, Malawi. Through an Ubuntu framework of place-based epistemology, critical race theory and the principles of Indigenous research, I describe my journey of self-reflection about what it means to be Caá-Poré Cafuzo and how I came to understand belonging in the context of diasporic, Black and Indigenous relationships and governance. / Graduate

The thesis is focused on researching the recent phenomena of the emerging virtual Esperanto communities. The aim is to understand how feeling of belonging and connectedness are generated online. The theoretical framework that the study follows is Sense of Community theory by McMillan and Chavis (1986). It presents 4 components that combined together create a strong bond within a community – membership, influence, shared emotional value, and reinforcement of needs, later revised to spirit, trust, art and trade respectively. This particular theory helped significantly structure the way the analysis was carried out. The main results from the qualitative and quantitative data are that the sense of connectedness the respondents demonstrated to the Esperanto communities was strong. The interview participants have been members for more than 10 years, and have indicated they believed they shared similar values and needs with their co-members, but most strong ones with the groups they shared other interests except Esperanto. The Internet, as all interview participants confirmed, has played a huge role for the development of the Esperanto language and culture and currently connects thousands of Esperantists worldwide and provides them with a space to be producers of their media, Esperanto. Furthermore, some statements demonstrated that not speaking the language results in excluding people from the group, excluding also new members who used auxiliary languages (e.g. English or German) along with Esperanto, to help their communication at Esperanto gatherings. Finally, there were also found signs of segregation among an older generation of Esperantists, who made division between Esperanto speakers and non-speakers and between the different Esperanto institutions.

This research investigates how immigrant entrepreneurs in the falafel business in Malmö position themselves in relation to the host society. Interviews with five immigrant entrepreneurs in the falafel trade were conducted to explore their life stories, business endeavours and their relations with the host society. The data was then analysed to establish the degree to which they feel embedded in different arenas of the host society and their society of origin. This study confirms the disadvantageous position of immigrants in Swedish society, though demonstrates the various strategies they utilise to improve their situation through entrepreneurship. The study, the first of its kind in Malmö, is important in the context of rising xenophobia in Sweden and segregation in the city.

Microaggressions are a form of interpersonal discrimination towards marginalized groups that are often ambiguous in nature and delivered unintentionally. The subtleness of these attacks on identity can make them difficult to recognize and address. Emerging research reveals that the targets of microaggressions are experiencing negative effects on their wellbeing; however, the bulk of existing literature on this topic only addresses microaggressions perpetrated towards racial minority or LGBT individuals. Little is known about pervasiveness and potential impact of microaggressions directed towards people with disabilities- particularly in academic contexts. This study pilots a measurement tool, the Microaggressions Towards Students with a Disability Questionnaire (MTSDQ), to assist in assessing the frequency with which university students with disabilities are encountering microaggressions in their classroom settings. The negative impact of these events on students’ sense of belonging and willingness to participate in their classrooms is also addressed.

Co-operative education in which senior high school students are placed in supervised workplace settings and gain credits towards a graduation diploma is the type of work-based education offered in Ontario. The purpose of this retrospective qualitative research was to examine how students learn in co-operative education placements and to explore the environmental conditions that facilitate student learning and motivation. The conceptual framework guiding this research consisted of three theories: Billet’s (2014) theory of mimesis, Munby et al.’s (2003) theory of metacognitive routines, and Snyder’s (2000) hope theory. Three former high school students who had been in automotive co-operative education placements participated in semi-structured interviews that followed a modified version of Seidman’s (2019) three interview technique. While the findings did not support Munby et al.’s (2003) ideas about routines, they corroborated the use of mimesis as a means of workplace learning (Billet, 2014) and Snyder’s (2000) writings about work and motivation. In this study, a successful placement involved three factors: social belonging and active learning and the reciprocal relationship between them, as well as the hope that was ignited, which crystalized the academic and career goals the students set for themselves. Moreover, workplace conditions that fostered a sense of social belonging and co-workers who provided informal instruction on technical and interpersonal skills contributed the most to the participants’ learning in their co-op placements. Implications for schools and co-operative education teachers are discussed.

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This phenomenological study explored both the students' lived experiences of placement processes at an urban community college and their consciousness of those experiences. By applying phenomenological methodology within an engaged inquiry framework, this study integrates multiple perspectives into a narrative thread to make sense of students' experiences with placement and the prospect of remediation. Further, this study sought to understand not only how that prospect is socially constructed but how it affects the students' integration into higher education. By applying socio-cultural theories of ability and ability development as a lens, the study focused on the relationships among the students' understanding of remedial structures, of their own academic ability, and of their sense of belonging in higher education. / Urban Education