Bill C-31 represents an important piece of policy in the history of Canadian citizenship. It takes its place in a dialog of policy and resistance about who ‘gets in’ and who is excluded from Canadian citizenship. By critically reading the text of Bill C-31 through other policy texts, academic arguments and research, and activist texts, this analysis elucidates historical connections between relations of capital, immigration, labour, and the criminal justice system. It works from a materialist feminist framework, critical of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation as systems that work through one another in dialectical and historically specific ways. The analysis argues that Bill C-31 is a continuation of relations of capital and that a dialectical conceptualization can yield strategies for a revolutionary praxis that offers hope for the transformation of existing social relations towards new and more humane ways of relating to one another.

Within the European Union, policies promoting integration and transnationalization have raised questions about the nature of borders and boundaries. With these shifts in conception emerge an opportunity to re-imagine how borders might be urbanized and developed. The Dreiländerecke (the Three Countries Corner between Switzerland, France, and Germany in Metrobasel) is one instance of this phenomenon, standing at the threshold of change towards increased transborder cooperation and a loosening of political boundaries. However, this process is hindered by residual urban barriers. This thesis investigates the liminal space of borders which provides a rich basis for forming a multi-scalar approach towards infrastructural, architectural, and programmatic strategies for cross-border development. Although connectivity is sought, it is not the ultimate aim, for unfettered integration risks a globalizing homogenization. Instead, this thesis investigates an architecture that facilitates the liminal process as core identities become translated at the meeting point of national cultures.

Bill C-31 represents an important piece of policy in the history of Canadian citizenship. It takes its place in a dialog of policy and resistance about who ‘gets in’ and who is excluded from Canadian citizenship. By critically reading the text of Bill C-31 through other policy texts, academic arguments and research, and activist texts, this analysis elucidates historical connections between relations of capital, immigration, labour, and the criminal justice system. It works from a materialist feminist framework, critical of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation as systems that work through one another in dialectical and historically specific ways. The analysis argues that Bill C-31 is a continuation of relations of capital and that a dialectical conceptualization can yield strategies for a revolutionary praxis that offers hope for the transformation of existing social relations towards new and more humane ways of relating to one another.

In her article “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema” (1975) Laura Mulvey explains how film portrays the female characters as passive sexualised objects, on display for the male (erotic) gaze. Although, Mulvey did make amendments to the original article after it was criticised, her original article is still influential and referenced in academic writing on film. This dissertation investigates how the three selected mainstream American films, namely, Alice in Wonderland, Monster and Transamerica, have female protagonists who deviate from Mulvey’s initial standpoint and enact a new dynamic, whereby the female characters possess active bodies. In order to explain this new dynamic, the dissertation provides an overview of relevant theory in order to establish the necessary analytical tools to investigate the representation of the female body. These tools are taken from feminist notions of the body, most importantly Mulvey’s notions, in order to establish what constitutes an active female body that subverts the male gaze. This subversion is most notable when examining the iconography of the active female body. The dissertation also draws from the overview the importance of place and space, the embodiment of the characters’ inner workings in specific locations, and their relationship with the locations in which they are depicted. Since all three films include a physical journey on which the respective protagonists embark the examination of borders and border crossings is included. The dissertation shows that journeys bring with them the opportunity for the body to be active, as each female protagonist is on a journey to self-discovery. The changing settings in which the protagonists find themselves are an embodiment of their inner workings. Topographical borders mark the entering of new locations. However, concomitant symbolic and epistemological borders are also crossed. The female protagonists need to make choices concerning their lives and as a consequence alter the representations to reflect bodies that subvert the male gaze. These female bodies are active. However, they are active in different ways. Alice, from Alice in Wonderland, delves into her psyche to emerge a changed and independent Victorian woman. Bree, from Transamerica, heals the relationships with her family and is able to have her gender reconstructive surgery to become a physical woman. These two female protagonists have positive representations of the active female body. The protagonist from Monster, Aileen, is represented in a constant state of abjection and her active body is portrayed in a negative light. Whether represented in a positive or egative light, these chosen films all portray an active female body that does subvert the male gaze, and hence represent a new dynamic different from the one Mulvey described. / MA (Language Practice), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

This thesis is on the transformation of Turco-Georgian relations since the early 1990s. In recent years, these relations have been taken to a next level in light of the trans-national cooperation that resulted in the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. With a narrow focus on the Turco-Georgian border, this study attempts to understand the trajectory of the improving relations between the two countries through a reconceptualised understanding of the border. By emphasising both the horizontal and vertical dimensions of borders, this thesis tries to steer away from the zero-sum approaches and understand the nature of Turco-Georgian as a complex multiplicity.

Thesis (docotral)--Universität Leipzig, 1909. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

For the past three centuries, historians have speculated and argued over the dating, patronage and provenance of the Bayeux Tapestry. Researchers have pondered the Latin inscriptions; reflected on the techniques of production and the use of narrative devices; mined the Tapestry for information on a number of subjects, including architectural styles, costumes, modes of navigation, nascent heraldry, and weaponry; and focused on areas of special interest, especially on scenes such as the so-called "Aelfgyva episode." Additionally, the Tapestry has been described as an epic and/or a panegyric; it has even been compared to a chanson de geste, a Shakespearian play, a film, and a cartoon; it has been "deconstructed," and finally turned into a "hypertext" accessible via the internet. Yet, in spite of many promises, the borders of the Bayeux Tapestry remain largely unexplored to date. This apparent neglect may be due to the difficulty one encounters when attempting to retrieve the symbolism and the meanings of the pictographs, which, even at the time of production, may have been multiple and may have depended on the cultural level, social awareness and political leanings of the beholders. The purpose of this dissertation is to acquaint the reader with a novel approach to the reading of the Bayeux Tapestry, based on the premise that the border pictographs are charged with symbolic meaning; that their meaning(s) inflect(s), reflect(s) and even alter(s) the images in the center field; and that this synergic interplay helps in the discovery, and stimulates the generation of a new understanding and integrated interpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry. For my research to be comprehensive and in order to uncover and decode some of the latent symbolic meanings, it was fundamental to take into account the social, cultural and political history of eleventh-century Northwestern Europe, and to acquire an appreciable knowledge of the lives of the important individuals illustrated in the Bayeux Tapestry. It was also necessary to be aware that, since the shaping of minds and the rewriting of history was already practiced in the eleventh century, the possibility existed that the Bayeux Tapestry was more than objective history recorded on cloth, but was someone's -- perhaps the patron's -- interpretation of historical events. Thus, this dissertation takes the reader on a journey inside and outside the frame to achieve an integrated reading of the Bayeux Tapestry and its borders.

Στην παρούσα έρευνα μελετήθηκε το είδος των εκπαιδευτικών πρακτικών που προωθούνται σε σχολικά περιβάλλοντα ετερότητας και διερευνήθηκαν οι επιμορφωτικές ανάγκες των εκπαιδευτικών που υπηρετούν σε αυτά. Το ενδιαφέρον επικεντρώθηκε στη μελέτη περίπτωσης μιας σχολικής μονάδας τσιγγανοπαίδων που βρίσκεται εντός τσιγγάνικου καταυλισμού με αμιγώς τσιγγάνικο μαθητικό πληθυσμό. Η έρευνα, βασισμένη στο θεωρητικό πλαίσιο του Basil Bernstein, υλοποιήθηκε μέσα από σε βάθος συνεντεύξεις και παρατήρηση στο πεδίο. Βασικά ευρήματα αποτελούν τα εξής: α) οι εκπαιδευτικές πρακτικές που προωθούνται στη συγκεκριμένη σχολική μονάδα χαρακτηρίζονται από ασθενή σύνορα ανάμεσα στην καθημερινή γνώση και τη σχολική γνώση, ευελιξία και προσαρμοστικότητα ως προς τον βηματισμό, τη χρονική διάταξη της γνώσης και την αξιολογική διαδικασία καθώς και πρακτικό προσανατολισμό της μαθησιακής διαδικασίας και β) οι εκπαιδευτικοί που υπηρετούν σε αυτήν τη σχολική μονάδα εκφράζουν την ανάγκη να επιμορφωθούν σε ζητήματα που επικεντρώνονται σε βραχυπρόθεσμους στόχους που σχετίζονται με την καθημερινή διδακτική πράξη. Τέλος, η επίτευξη της διαχείρισης της ετερότητας αναδεικνύεται ως ζήτημα καίριο για την επιτυχή συγκρότηση της επαγγελματικής ταυτότητας των εκπαιδευτικών. / This study explores the types of educational practice that are dominant in school settings of diversity and the training needs of teachers who teach there. This research examined the case study of a school that only gypsy students attend, which is situated inside their gypsy encampment. The research, based on the theoretical framework of Basil Bernstein, was conducted through in-depth interviews and participant observation on the spot. This study’s basic results show that a) the educational practice developed in this kind of school is characterized by weak boundaries between everyday knowledge and school knowledge, flexibility and adaptability concerning the pace, the temporal order of knowledge and evaluation process and an emphasis given on students’ practical skills acquisition and b) teachers that teach in this school express the need to be educated on issues that focus on short-term goals related to the daily teaching process. Finally, diversity management seems to be a key issue for a successful teacher professional identity.

As a country of origin, transit, and destination for migrants that now borders four European Union (EU) member countries, Ukraine has seen future integration possibilities with the EU become, in part, conditional upon its willingness to cooperate in controlling cross-border migration. The EU is now “externalizing” aspects of migration and border control to Ukraine through making investments in Ukraine’s capacity to selectively “manage” cross-border flows in line with EU security and economy priorities. In the context of this emerging spatial arrangement of EU externalization, this thesis analyzes how, by whom, and to what effect migration is being managed in and through Ukraine. Policies of migration and border management are now materializing in Ukraine in relation to actors and discourses that incorporate imperatives for security and development in their approaches to governance. Therefore, this thesis investigates migration and border management at the geopolitical nexus of development, security, and migrant (im)mobility. It does this with a critical concern for those migrants whose exclusion from the EU is subject to humanitarian management in Ukraine.

Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) play an increasingly important role in the world and receive a growing amount of outsourced development work. Funding enables them to do the work necessary to provide aid. NGO work is influenced by the dependence on their donors and many NGOs increasingly take donations from private donors as a way to try to mitigate donor dependence and maintain neutrality in their work. However there is little research analysing this shift and the potential positive and negative effects. This study looks at dependence and efficiency in an NGO - private donor relationship. The objective is to contribute to the discussion about NGO dependency on donors by evaluating the positive and negative impacts of primarily private donorship on NGOs’ work efficiency. Little research has been done on the private donor relationship and this study is contributing to filling that gap. The study is a qualitative case study, with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) due to their private donor base’s recent increase. The data were obtained through interviews with MSF Sweden staff, other MSF primary source documents and secondary sources written by scholars on the topic of NGO dependency on their donors. The results of this study concluded that MSF works more efficiently with a primarily private donor base, due primarily to their increase in independence and control of their own operations. Since the shift from EU-funding, MSF can spend fewer resources on reporting and more on allocating the money to the field. A primarily private donor base has a positive impact on MSF and it is safe to say that other NGOs will likely follow suit. Further research should look into other NGOs to see whether a primarily private donor base benefits them too or if MSF is a one case exception.