The relations among acculturation, parenting and depressive symptoms were examined among 98 immigrant Chinese mothers and fathers with early adolescents in Canada. Parents completed measures assessing their involvement in Canadian and Chinese culture, their symptoms of depression, and their parenting practices (i.e., expressive warmth, firm control, Chinese parenting beliefs and restrictive control). Greater Canadian orientation was associated with more expressive warmth and firm control for parents, whereas greater Chinese orientation was associated with stronger Chinese parenting beliefs. Greater Canadian orientation was associated with fewer depressive symptoms for all mothers, and for fathers who were low in Chinese orientation. Symptoms of depression were negatively related to firm control and expressive warmth for parents, and positively related to restrictive control for fathers. Finally, symptoms of depression partially mediated the relation between Canadian orientation and firm control for mothers, as well as the relation between Canadian orientation and expressive warmth for fathers.

This thesis examines the construction of ?Chineseness? by Australian-born Chinese through their interactions with mainstream ?white? society and Chinese diasporic communities in Australia. It represents an interdisciplinary study based on qualitative research and critical analysis of forty-three in-depth interviews with Australian-born Chinese whose families have resided in Australia for three generations or more. Diasporic narratives, fraught with contentions over belonging and difference, often lead to ambiguous ramifications of identity formation. While the notion of hybridity problematises the unsettling boundaries of identities, there is still a continuing perception that ethnic identification decreases over successive generations, resulting in assimilation. However, contrary to this assumption, this study shows that subsequent generations also encounter complicated experiences involving both feelings of cultural ambivalence and enrichment. While the rewriting of identity takes place against the varying circumstances of resettlement, the experiences and transitions across the respondents? life course concurrently inscribes Chineseness onto their lives in diverse ways. Furthermore, Chineseness is continually (re)constructed through decentered connections with an imaginary homeland. Consequently, despite generational longevity, strong affinities with Australian society and longstanding national identities grounded in Australian culture, Chineseness is still a significant part of their identity, whether they willingly choose to associate with it or not. The focus on revaluating the concept of Chineseness and elucidating the sense of identity of sequential generations has important ramifications for the development of a more informed theoretical model for understanding the long-term effects of migration, especially on the process of identity formation and feelings of home and belonging.

The radical transformations attendant upon the imposition of colonial rule on the Siksikaitsitapi or Blackfoot of northern Alberta and southern Montana are examined in this dissertation in order to emphasise the threads of continuity within a tapestry of cultural change c.1870-1920. The dissertation traces cultural persistence through the analysis of texts of history and literature that constructed Blackfoot subjectivity in the half-century following the end of traditional lifeways and settlement on three reserves in Canada and one reservation in the United States of America. This interdisciplinary thesis has been undertaken jointly in the School of History and Philosophy, and the School of English, Media and Performance Studies. It combines the tools of historical research and literary criticism to analyse the discourses and counter-discourses that served to construct Blackfoot subjectivity in colonial texts. It engages with the ways in which the Blackfoot navigated colonisation and resisted forced acculturation while adopting strategies of accommodation to ensure social reproduction and even physical survival in this period. To this end, it presents four case studies, each focusing on a discrete process of Blackfoot cultural transformation: a) the resistance to acculturation and cultural revitalisation as it relates to the practice of Ookaan (Sun Dance); b) the power shifts ushered in by European contact and the intersection between power and Blackfoot dress practices; c) the participation of Blackfoot "organic intellectuals" in the construction of Blackfoot history through the transformation of oral stories into text via the ethnographic encounter; and d) the continuing links between Blackfoot history and literature, and contemporary fictional representations of Blackfoot subjectivity by First Nations authors. This thesis acknowledges that Blackfoot history and literature have been constructed through a complex matrix of textual representations from their earliest contacts with Europeans. This dissertation is a study of the intersection between textual representations of the Blackfoot, and resistance, persistence and cultural revitalisation 1870-1920. It seeks to contribute to debates on the capacity of the colonised Other to exercise agency. It engages with views articulated by organic intellectuals, and Blackfoot and other First Nations scholars, in order to foster a dialogue between Blackfoot and non-Blackfoot scholarship.

This dissertation examines how historians, writers, colonial administrators, social scientists and immigration officials represented Anglo-Indians between 1850 and 1998.Traditionally, Anglo-Indians have sought to correct perceived distortions or misinterpretations of their community by disputing the accuracy of deprecatory stereotypes produced by ‘prejudicial’; writers. While the need to contest disparaging representations is not in dispute here, the present study finds its own point of departure by questioning the possibility of (re)presenting an undistorted Anglo-Indian identity. (For complete abstract open document)

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Very little is known about the acculturation of African refugees in Canada. This study examined the experiences and determinants of the psychosocial adjustment of Sudanese men (n=185) who are resettling in the lower mainland of British Columbia. Findings indicate that the men use two main coping resources to ease adjustment: social support and religiosity/spirituality. The former is predictive of improved social adjustment and the latter greatly ameliorates psychological adjustment. Additionally, the role strain experienced from supporting family members in Africa financially while resettling is examined. This study shows that greater role strain does not exacerbate the adjustment difficulties of Sudanese men, but socio demographic variables such as length of residence and language proficiency do affect adjustment. Men who have resided in Canada for longer showed improved social adjustment and those who were more proficient in English had adjusted better psychologically. This study further discusses the economic insecurity of Sudanese refugees, their family composition, the importance of a cohesive ethnic community in adjusting to life in Canada and various other aspects of the experience of this group of newcomers. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate

This project explores the history of Germans in Canada: their experiences prior to, during, and after the Second World War. The primary focus of this project will be on the construction of the German Canadian identity in the years after the Second World War. I contend that German Canadian immigrants from the post-war years experienced discrimination and negativity which forced them to submerge their true identities. This submersion has left us with a weak German Canadian culture today-it is one based on the outdated notion of "oom-pa-pa" bands and Schuhplattler dancers. As this culture-and the people who perpetuate it-die off, we are left with a German Canadian culture and identity that is more and more Canadian. This project is primarily composed of a literature review and will use Erving GofFman's theory on stigma and spoiled identities. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

The film is about three young Korean-American adults who have adapted to American society while retaining certain aspects of Korean culture in their lives. To expose their intermingled behaviors and concepts, the film combines the observational format of a documentary with an information style employing family photos, home movie recordings, and interviews with the three subjects and their families. An accompanying production report describes the research process, pre-production, production, and post-production.

In this dissertation, I study three key aspects related to the causes and consequences of the onset of the Age of the Masses. I do so by drawing evidence from historical natural experiments and historical data from the early Twentieth Century from the United States and Italy. In the first chapter, I leverage the expansion of radio networks in the United States to identify the impact of access to mass media on cultural homogenization. Exploiting exogenous variation in radio signal reception induced by soil characteristics and stations' tower growth over time, I provide evidence that network access homogenized American culture. Homogenization occurred through the assimilation of white immigrant and black households towards mainstream white native culture. Focusing on names from baseball players, I suggest that aspirational naming is a key mechanism to explain certain features of the results. In the second chapter, I study the impact of World War I on Mussolini's electoral success. I collect military fatalities for the universe of Italian municipalities, which is matched to municipal level voting in the 1924 election. I find that a higher share of fatalities increased the vote share for Fascism. I decompose the effect of the fatalities rate by its intensity to show that the number of fatalities interacted positively with the number of veterans back from the frontline. I interpret this as evidence that Fascist support was driven by municipalities where the high number of fatalities was matched by veterans scarred by the war experience. The last chapter looks at the role of child labor legislation (CLL) in lowering child labor rates in the United States. Turning to the newly-digitized complete count census data from 1880 to 1930, we find large effects of CLLs on child labor. While the laws reduced labor of boys and girls equally, the laws did had differential effects, binding in urban areas and especially in the largest cities and more for the children of foreign-born parents. Children with parents working in manufacturing and textiles were especially affected by the labor restrictions. CLLs had limited effects on the odds of African American boys or girls working.

Research on child sexual abuse (CSA), from the perspective of the perpetrator, has been conducted to better inform intervention and prevention programs. Although information from perpetrators can be beneficial for these programs, much of the research is limited by the diversity of sample populations of sex offenders. Moreover, potentially distinct variables relevant to specific populations (e.g., Latinos) have not been thoroughly studied in relation to CSA. To better understand the perpetration of CSA on variables that may be of particular concern to Latinos (i.e., relationship quality in familial supervision and acculturation strategies), the purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationships between supervisor relationship quality, acculturation, and adolescent group membership (i.e., juvenile sex offender - JSO and juvenile comparison - JC). It was hypothesized that Latinos who are assimilated or marginalized are more likely to belong to the JSO group than the JC group. Further, Latino adolescents characterized by an integrated or separated acculturation strategy are more likely to be affiliated with JC group than the JSO group. It was also hypothesized that participants' relationship with their familial supervisor will predict adolescent membership and that acculturation will mediate this relationship. Results for both hypotheses were inconclusive. The probability of using a specific acculturation strategy was not statistically different for either adolescent group. The relationship between supervisor relationship quality and juvenile group membership was non-significant; therefore, the meditational role of acculturation could not be assessed. Further research, using a larger sample size with more complete data is recommended. Suggestions for other design improvements are also provided.