Taiwan is a country colonized by various regimes over the past four hundred years. The research first adopted the narrative inquiry-an autobiography on my journey to find my Taiwanese identity and mother tongue loss. Secondly, a phenomenological study on three Taiwanese families was conducted to secure an in-depth complex understanding on the scope and extent of the language loss phenomenon in Taiwan, of the thoughts and feelings about losing mother tongues, of the role of political power, the colonial history and other sociocultural contexts in the language loss phenomenon in Taiwan. Ten features and eleven themes were identified in this study. The political power and colonial history are important factors of mother tongue loss among my three participant families.

Antibiotics are important to equine medicine, but can cause detrimental side-effects including reduced feed intake, allergic reactions, and diarrhea. Antibiotic-associated diarrhea (AAD) is attributed to disruption of the hindgut microflora, permitting proliferation of pathogenic microbes. The objectives were to evaluate the effects of antibiotics on beneficial fecal bacteria, AAD-associated pathogens, microbial species richness and fermentation. Horses were assigned to treatment groups: control (no antibiotics, n=6), trimethoprim-sulfadiazine (oral, n=6), or sodium ceftiofur (IM, n=6). Fecal samples were taken during adaptation (3 wk), antibiotic challenge (1 wk), and withdrawal (1 wk). Fecal cellulolytics decreased by >99% during challenge and did not recover during withdrawal (P < 0.0001). Lactobacilli decreased by >60% during challenge (P = 0.0453). Salmonella spp. increased 94% with trimethoprim-sulfadiazine challenge (P = 0.0115). There was no detectable Clostridium difficile during adaptation or in any control horse. C. difficile increased (P < 0.0001) when horses were challenged, and remained elevated 7 d after withdrawal. There was no effect of challenge on in vitro digestibility or microbial species richness as evaluated by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (P > 0.05). These results indicate that antibiotics can disrupt the normal flora and allow proliferation of pathogens, even without affecting digestibility and causing AAD.

The thesis examines labourers’ assisted migration to and from North America during 1850-1885, the dates of societies’ emigration schemes. The dissertation focuses on ‘New Model’ unions: the Engineers, Carpenters, Steam Engine Makers and Iron Founders. Three of these unions had overseas branches; one did not. The dissertation explores the significance of the introduction, development, use and eventual termination of these schemes for labour history. Emigration scheme research is limited, with little recent work published since 1955. The dissertation offers solutions to conflicting views on the exact duration of the Founders’ scheme and supplies evidence that the Engineers continued to fund members even after their scheme officially ended. Furthermore, it argues that scheme-termination was led more by external factors (notably via Contract Labor Acts) than internal factors, and that the duration of the Founders’ scheme related more to overseas branch absence than to fund shortage or ethos. Additionally, the view is challenged that schemes purely supported labour supply regulation and/or escape avenues for agitators and black listed unionists. Unions had different motives, different periods defined those motives, and executives operated in members’ best interests. The research provides new and supporting evidence of inter-society and government emigration co-operation. It focuses on the under-studied topic of return migration, specifically union-funded return, with empirical evidence provided of union funded and non-funded emigrants and returnees. It adopts a range of socio-economic variables. Finally, adding to scant knowledge of internal migration or emigration alternatives, empirical evidence is provided of preemigration and post-return movement of unionists. Correspondence, particularly between overseas branches and union executives, is used throughout. Finally, a major component involves a project at Fall River, which explores the extent that emigrants’ descendants have assimilated in probably the most important receiving area for nineteenth-century skilled Lancastrian workmen.

This thesis, situated between literature, history and memory studies participates in the modern recovery of the long-obscured relations between Scotland and the Caribbean. I develop the suggestion that the Caribbean represents a forgotten 'lieu de mémoire' where Scotland might fruitfully ‘displace’ itself. Thus it examines texts from the Enlightenment to Romantic eras in their historical context and draws out their implications for modern national, multicultural, postcolonial concerns. Theoretically it employs a ‘transnational’ Atlantic Studies perspective that intersects with issues around creolisation, memory studies, and British ‘Four Nations’ history. Politically it insists on an interrogation of Scottish national narratives that continue to evade issues of empire, race and slavery. Moving beyond a rhetoric of blame, it explores forms of acting and thinking in the present that might help to overcome the injurious legacies of the past. Chapters include an examination of pastoral and georgic modes in Scottish-Caribbean texts. These include well-known authors such as James Thomson, Tobias Smollet, James Grainger, Robert Burns; and less well-known ones such as John Marjoribanks, Charles Campbell, Philip Barrington Ainslie, and the anonymous author of Marly; or a Planter’s Tale (1828). Chapters two to four highlight the way pastoral and georgic modes mediated the representation of ‘improvement’ and the question of free, bonded and enslaved labour across Scotland, Britain and the Caribbean in the era of slavery debates. The fourth chapter participates in and questions the terms of the recovery of two nineteenth century ‘Mulatto-Scots’, Robert Wedderburn and Mary Seacole. Bringing ‘Black Atlantic’ issues of race, class, gender, empire and rebellion to the fore, I consider the development of a ‘Scottish-Mulatto’ identity by comparing and contrasting the way these very different figures strategically employed their Scottish heritage. The final chapter moves forward to consider current memorialisations of slavery in the Enlightenment- Romantic period. The main focus is James Robertson’s Joseph Knight (2003) that engages with Walter Scott’s seminal historical novel Waverley (1814) to weave issues of racial slavery into the familiar narratives of Culloden. Robertson also explores forms of solidarity that might help to overcome those historical legacies in a manner that is suggestive for this thesis as a whole.

Modern western understandings of citizenship are closely tied to the nation state. This is the political community where members are expected to exercise their freedoms and practice solidarity. When individuals claim rights across borders and move in and out of different polities the state-centric citizenship model is disturbed. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the European Union where borders are transformed by transnational migration and internal mobility. This has led some scholars to welcome the emergence of a ‘postnational citizenship’ of human rights. Others argue for the need to protect a comprehensive state membership based on shared identity and active participation. The dichotomy of ‘thick and thin’ citizenship warrants critical attention, however. It risks romanticizing national or postnational membership, overlooking historical and contemporary power struggles and change. Agonistic democratic theory offers a particularly promising way of moving beyond the binary. It constructs a dynamic relationship between citizenship rights, participation and identification. Political conflicts over liberties and membership are seen as practices that re-constitute civic actors. By claiming and contesting rights migrants and citizens take part in the ongoing re-founding of polities and develop, reinforce or change their democratic subjectivity. But agonism like its intellectual counterpart deliberative democracy focuses exclusively on public ‘voice’. It neglects to explore the civic potential of exit, entry and re-entry so integral to migration and EU citizenship. In the thesis I address this problem and develop an agonistic conception of citizenship and cross-border movement. I do so through a heuristic empirical case study of transnational immigration and EU mobility in the Danish family unification dispute. In response to restrictive national policy many have used the freedom of movement in the EU to sidestep or contest domestic rules. Based on 30 narrative interviews with Danish-international couples I draw out and conceptualize practices of contestatory transnational citizenship.

Previous studies have shown that chemotaxis plays an important role in the colonization of the wheat roots surfaces by Azospirillum brasilense and a chemotaxis operon shown to control motility and chemotaxis in A. brasilense has been isolated. This study looked at the effects of mutations in individual genes coding for chemotaxis proteins from this operon on the ability of the cells to colonize the surface of sterile wheat roots. Using both quantitative and qualitative assays, the study shows differences in the colonization ability of the mutants relative to the wild type: the cheB, cheR, cheBR, and cheOp mutants were significantly impaired in wheat root colonization. Interestingly, the cheA mutant was not affected in its ability to colonize the wheat root surface relative to the wild type. Future studies will look for the factors that compensate for cheA impairment in the rhizosphere.

In October 1875 the Canadian government reserved a tract of land along the southwest shore of Lake Winnipeg for the exclusive use of Icelandic immigrants. This was part of a larger policy of reserving land for colonization projects involving European immigrants with a common ethno-religious background. The purpose of this policy was to promote the rapid resettlement and agricultural development of Aboriginal territory in the Canadian Northwest. The case of the Icelandic reserve, or Nýja Ísland (New Iceland), provides a revealing window into this policy, and the ways in which it intersected with the larger processes of colonization in the region during the late nineteenth century. The central problem that this study addresses is the uneasy fit between "colonization reserves" such as New Iceland and the political, economic and cultural logic of nineteenth-century liberalism. Earlier studies have interpreted group settlements as either aberrations from the "normal" pattern of pioneer individualism or communitarian alternatives to it. This study, by contrast, argues that colonization reserves were part of a spatial regime that reflected liberal categories of difference that were integral to the extension of a new liberal colonial order in the region. Using official documents, immigrant letters and contemporary newspapers, this study examines the Icelandic colonists’ relationship to the Aboriginal people they displaced, to other settler groups, and to the Canadian state. It draws out the tensions between the designs and perceptions of government officials in Ottawa and Winnipeg, the administrative machinery of the state, and the lives and strategies of people attempting to navigate shifting positions within colonial hierarchies of race and culture.

This dissertation examines the political economy of labour market policy in Canada and its effectiveness in addressing the social and economic exclusion of Aboriginal people. For many Aboriginal people, the colonial experience has left a legacy of destruction that all too often makes the journey through life extremely complicated. Aboriginal people generally have lower education levels than non-Aboriginal people and they earn lower incomes. The Aboriginal population is growing at a faster rate than the non-Aboriginal population and is on average much younger. In provinces like Manitoba where Aboriginal people make up 15 percent of the overall population, they are an important source of labour. Yet the statistics suggest that there is much to be done to bring Aboriginal people to a state of social and economic inclusion. Low high-school completion rates imply that the primary school system is failing Aboriginal children, leaving many unprepared to enter post secondary education and the labour market. Labour market policies can help address poverty and exclusion. While they can broadly include a set of policies affecting both the supply and demand for labour, this research shows that in a neo-liberal political economy, they have come to be much more limited in scope, focusing almost solely on supply-side solutions. For Aboriginal adults, this has meant support for short-term training programs aimed at preparing them for jobs determined by the market. This creates challenges for individuals who have a host of factors standing in their way. An examination of Manitoba based initiatives shows the implications of the policy environment for Aboriginal second-chance learners. It also shows how some programs have adapted to the neo-liberal environment to better serve their students and leads to some concluding thoughts on what might be done to further improve outcomes for Aboriginal second-chance learners.

Taiwan is a country colonized by various regimes over the past four hundred years. The research first adopted the narrative inquiry-an autobiography on my journey to find my Taiwanese identity and mother tongue loss. Secondly, a phenomenological study on three Taiwanese families was conducted to secure an in-depth complex understanding on the scope and extent of the language loss phenomenon in Taiwan, of the thoughts and feelings about losing mother tongues, of the role of political power, the colonial history and other sociocultural contexts in the language loss phenomenon in Taiwan. Ten features and eleven themes were identified in this study. The political power and colonial history are important factors of mother tongue loss among my three participant families.

Taking the stance that, in order to combat colonization at a fundamental level, it is necessary to understand the social and personal motivations behind colonial actions, this thesis is an explicit study of the hidden psycho-social workings of the colonial members of Settler Canada. This thesis, through an examination of literature critically engaged with historic and contemporary imperialism and colonialism, attempts to develop a description of the "colonial mentality" within the Settler society of contemporary Canada. Having developed this description. this thesis explores the existence of these colonial mentalities in the works of several prominent Canadian political theorists - Alan Cairns, Will Kymlicka, and Patrick Macklem - in order to demonstrate that these theories are motivated by and reinforce colonial and imperial thought. Finally, this thesis will synthesize the works of several radical Settler theorists, including Richard Day and Paulette Regan, in order to demonstrate that alternatives to the colonial project can and do exist for Settler peoples.