This thesis presents interdisciplinary work on indigenous Mexican migration from a gender perspective. It uses a conceptual framework drawn from Agarwal (1994) and Kabeer (2001) to explore the role of transnational migration in the transformation of gender relations and identities and to enrich our understanding of the link between transnational migration and empowerment. Based on innovative multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in the Mixtec town of Santiago Cacaloxtepec, the Zapotec town of San Bartolomé Quialana; both located in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico; and the state of California, US; this research presents a high resolution comparative analysis of changing gender relations in the communities of origin and diaspora due to indigenous (mainly) male migration. Migration from both communities is transnational, gendered and undocumented; indigenous men are still seen as the natural subjects of migration, especially when this is international, but nowadays indigenous women are also expected to migrate at least while they are single. Longer-term absence of male inhabitants has been understood as a determining factor which progressively re-constructs gender relations, increases female participation in political life and is a catalyst for women's empowerment. However a close scrutiny of the socio-political context of the communities, the dynamics of migration and a desegregation of female respondents by age/generation allows this research to argue that not all women are sharing equally in the shifts in gender relations. Moreover, while transnational migration is found to be both initiating and contributing to processes of women’s empowerment, its significance is differentiated by the location, age, civil status and migrant experiences of women, and it is not the only factor at work. In the diaspora, changes in gender relations have been observed in favour of women, as they take advantage of new opportunities in employment and education and men are obliged to participate in household work. Important processes of empowerment were detected among male and female migrants who have found opportunities that they could not have obtained in their communities of origin. However, their clandestine status still jeopardizes their transformative achievements. Transnational migration has also served as an opportunity to re-construct and question the forms of femininity and masculinity practised in the communities. Femininity has ceased to be represented only through motherhood and marriage, to give way to more active and transformative expressions. Dominant forms of indigenous masculinities have been based on elderly-wisdom power arrangements; however the trajectory of transnational migration is seeing them give way to a masculinity represented by the younger "brave" and experienced migrant.

In one of his publications, the politician and merchant Anthony Bacon asked if ‘some honest Persons, of plain Understanding, and of tolerable Judgement and Experience, could be engaged, at the Government’s Expence, to make the general Tour of North America’. This person, he thought, would be able to forge a connexion between the metropolitan centre and the far-flung reaches of America and improve the relationship between mother country and colony by increasing the level of understanding of the other on both sides of the Atlantic. Bacon appreciated that this lack of knowledge of their American brethren meant that British politics and politicians were often working with limited, or biased, information when formulating imperial policy. This thesis analyses the ways six MPs with significant American connexions operated throughout the imperial crises of the 1760s and 1770s. It establishes that these men operated at the highest levels of British politics at this time and sought to create themselves as the predominant experts on the American colonies. In the debates on the nature of the British Empire throughout the 1760s and 1770s, these men were at the forefront of the political mind and, at least until the hardening of opinions in the 1770s, had an impact on the way in which the colonies were governed. More than that, however, this work has shown that – contrary to much earlier belief – the House of Commons in the later eighteenth century was not working in ignorance of the situation in the Americas: rather, there were a small but significant number of men with real and personal connexions to, and knowledge about, the colonies. As the imperial grounds shifted through the 1770s, however, even the most well-versed of these ‘American MPs’ began to appear to have suffered some disconnection from the colonial viewpoint. This thesis takes into account the Atlantic and imperial networks under which these MPs worked and formed their political theories and opinions. In addition, it seeks in some way to bring the politics of the American Revolution into the fold of Atlantic History and to assess the ways in which those with the greatest experience of working in the peripheries of empire sought to reshape and reorganise its structure from the metropole after the close of the Seven Years War.

This thesis is a case study applying George Lakoff’s theories regarding frames to a specific series of legislation dealing with immigration. First, literature is examined regarding changes in Congress and media and the relationship between the two. George Lakoff’s theories on framing are discussed, playing special attention to the familial models and biconceptualism. The case study regards immigration reform legislation that was attempted to pass through Congress in 2007, specifically the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 and the STRIVE Act. The application of Lakoff’s theories to this case study aids in further understanding the link between politics and communication and the importance of persuasion in a political setting. / Department of Political Science

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In a context characterised by the shift from fordism to post-fordism in the Iberian peninsula, this thesis addresses the following question how are capital, governments and social movements organised in the processes of integration and resistance that affect foreign immigration' in Barcelona and Lisbon? Thus, in the first chapter, an analysis of the concept of "integration" is undertaken in order to understand the complexities and elusiveness that hide behind it, giving special attention to immigrants' integration literature. A distinction between systemic integration and social integration is adopted, and thus in the second chapter recent theorisation on capital and the state (i. e. systemic institutions) is approached, while in the third chapter social movements and organisations are taken into account. In chapter four epistemological and methodological elements are noted. The last three chapters are devoted to analyse original fieldwork data (mainly qualitative interviews): chapter 6 analyses immigration governmental policies at European, 'national-state', 'national-regional', and local levels; chapter 7 studies social and capital organisations in Barcelona in relation to 'foreign immigration'; and in chapter 8 social and capital organisations are studied in relation to 'foreign immigration' in Lisbon. Finally, some conclusions are revealed whilst other questions are posed.

The present work examines writings by authors of Somali origin in the Italian language. The analysis draws on and critically evaluates Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of minor literature. Firstly, it investigates the different strategies through which these texts insert Somali words within the Italian text. Secondly, it scrutinizes the political engagement of Somali-Italian writings with the issue of racism, and their attempt to show the legacy of colonialism in contemporary Italy. Thirdly, it considers the ways in which these partly autobiographical texts envision a relational, plural and dialogical identity for Somali-Italian characters. In particular, the construction of alternative communities and multiple belongings beyond the dichotomy between Italians and Somalis through means of exclusion and inclusion of other minoritarian groups is analyzed. In conclusion, this work suggests rethinking the ways in which Italian literature is conceived, in order to include “minor” transnational narratives that exceed national paradigms.

This research examines the proliferation of discourses associated with the development of Postcolonial Studies in the field of historical and philological sciences. The principal objective of the thesis is to describe this cultural phenomenon as a discursive event in the history of critical practices. Analyses developing Michel Foucault's work on regulations of discursive practices and Michel de Certeau's work on the historiographical operation are organised around three sites. The first site features Jean de Léry's Histoire d‟un voyage fait en la terre du Brésil (1575). The purpose of the work on this ethnographic document is not to reconstitute its early modern context, but first to interrogate this documentary relation when Claude Lévi-Strauss and Michel de Certeau rediscover the text. In this perspective, the text functions as the archive of an inaugural moment referring to the exclusion of the 'Savage' from the making of history. To that extent, the first part of the thesis focuses on the illegible/inaudible part of Jean de Léry's text, in order to question what postcolonial readings try to circumscribe in the colonial corpus, and which historiographical rituals make this reading possible in the case of Histoire d'un voyage. The second site is constituted by the formulation of Gayatri C. Spivak's famous question: 'Can the Subaltern Speak?' and her archival work endeavoured to attempt to answer the question. This foundational intervention in the field of Postcolonial study pertains at the inclusion/exclusion of the historical positivity of the discourse of the Other. Building on this proposition, this second part of the thesis reinscribes the historicity of postcolonial criticism in the project of a cultural history of the hermeneutic listening. The third site addresses the historicity of haunting in a series of Patrick Chamoiseau narratives dealing with ghosts of the Caribbean past: Lettres créoles (1991), Ecrire en pays dominé (1997), L'Esclave vieil homme et le molosse (1997), and Biblique des derniers gestes (2001). This part of the thesis examines rituals that enable Chamoiseau to convert the return of the repressed into a historiographical operation. Following this, it appears that the development and proliferation of postcolonial scholarships cannot be properly explained by the crisis of a historiographical paradigm, but has to be referred in the first instance to a ritual dimension of the making of history in the Western modernity.

This thesis investigates the lives of young Polish migrants living in Northamptonshire, who migrated to the UK following Poland’s accession to the European Union in May 2004. Over 1.1 million Worker Registration Scheme (WRS) applications were made in the UK between May 2004 and December 2010, of which around two-thirds were made by Polish nationals. It is noted that high numbers of young people in Poland migrated to the UK, and a little under half of all WRS applications in the UK have been migrants aged between 18 and 24 years. Research exploring the lives of young migrants details strong connections between migration and life course progression. Given the relatively young ages of those migrating, this thesis is concerned with the impacts of migratory experiences upon migrants’ senses of ‘self-identity’, and transitions through the life course. Explanations for these movements have often treated migration as an ‘empirical event’ by focusing upon economic rationales, and much less attention has been given to motivations for migration, everyday experiences and future intentions of A8 migrants. To address this gap, this research explores the biographies of 40 young Polish migrants, revealing individual factors that influenced their migratory decision-making, and considering distinguishing features that set groups of Polish migrants apart. To achieve this, participants were asked to prepare a narrative of their experiences, based upon four biographical periods: life in Poland, the decision to migrate, life in the UK and perceived future pathways. Following this, 10 case studies were conducted with participants different ‘types’ of Polish migrant. Semi-structured interviews were organised and participants led ‘photo tours’ of their everyday locales. The findings show that while economic triggers were important to decision-making, it was also the case that social factors were critical, and migration to the UK for some was viewed as a means of leaving the parental home. Traditional social markers of difference, such as gender or age, were found to be of less importance: rather, participants emphasised a range of shared migratory experiences: ‘priorities’, ‘planning’, ‘stability’ and ‘language’. The themes of ‘temporariness’ and ‘trust’ were found to be central to everyday experiences, and participants indicated they were vulnerable to exploitation from other Polish migrants, as well as from known contacts pre-dating migration. Connections were identified between participants’ migratory experiences and their transitions though the life course. Four factors were found to have influenced participants’ transitions through the life course - spaces, times, self identity and support - which combine to form the relative pace(s), ‘smoothness’ and risks of such changes. The term ‘turbulent transitions’ is used to encapsulate major changes within participants’ biographies as a result of migration, which many experienced as being made quickly with limited access to support structures and in environments that contain high degrees of risk. The research calls for a more sensitive account of post-accession migration, which can only be achieved by exploring the experiences, encounters and biographies of migrants

The focus of this thesis is the relationship between immigration historiography and the history of Basque migration to the United States. The depictions of immigration presented by historians Oscar Handlin, Marcus Lee Hansen, and John Higham have been influential in immigration historiography and are presented in the first chapter. The second chapter contains a description of Old World Basque culture and the third chapter presents a brief history of Basque migration to the United States. The fourth chapter discusses to what extent the immigration theories presented in chapter one match the Basque experience in the New World. The concluding chapter contains some observations on the nature of immigration historiography, on the Basques, and on new directions for research.

This thesis examines the relationship between British colonial legacies and a culture of migration amongst mobile Malaysians (tertiary-educated Malaysians with transnational migration experience). Drawing from Bourdieu’s “habitus”, I propose the concept of “citizenship habitus” – a set of inherited dispositions about the meanings and significance of citizenship – to understand how and why mobile Malaysians carry out certain citizenship and migration practices. These practices include: firstly, interpreting and practising Malaysian citizenship as a de-politicised and primordial (ethno)national belonging to “Malaysia” that is conflated with national loyalty; and secondly, migration (especially for overseas education) as a way of life (i.e. a culture of migration) that may not be recognised as a means of circumventing pro-Bumiputera (lit. “sons of soil”) structural constraints. Methodologically, I draw from my reflexive reading of archival documents and interview-conversations with 67 mobile Malaysians: 16 in London/UK, 27 in Singapore, six in other global locations, and 18 returnees. I argue that mobile Malaysians’ citizenship and migration practices have been informed by three British colonial legacies: firstly, the materialising of race and Malay indigeneity; secondly, the institutionalisation of race-based school systems and education as an aspired means towards social mobility; and thirdly, race-based political representation and a federal state consisting of an arbitrary amalgamation of socio-economically and historically diverse territories. The Malayan Emergency (1948-1960) further instilled state-led focus on “racial tensions”, resulting in default authoritative strategies to govern, educate, and motivate the citizenry. These colonial legacies, inherited and exacerbated by the post-colonial Malaysian state, contributed to the institutionalisation of Malaysia’s Bumiputera-differentiated citizenship and race-based affirmative action policies, with particular effects on education, migration and social mobility. By adopting a postcolonial approach to migration phenomena, this thesis highlights the longevity of British colonial legacies with long-lasting effects on Malaysia’s contemporary skilled migration, both in terms of migration geographies and citizenship practices.