Since at least the 1970s Australia has, as a nation, officially declared itself to be ‘multicultural’ and has adopted ‘multiculturalism’ as the approach to its increasingly culturally diverse population. Since then, multiculturalism in Australia, as elsewhere in the western world, has come under sustained critique by both those who think it has ‘gone too far’, and those who think it has ‘not gone far enough’. These critiques have left many wondering whether multiculturalism is still an appropriate and valuable response to cultural diversity for both governments/the state and the populations who contend with cultural diversity as part of their everyday lives. This study attempts to move beyond these critiques and proposes a local place-bound study as one way in which we might further our understandings of multiculturalism in the Australian context and capture some of the complexities elided by these nonetheless useful critiques. The study draws on both textual and ethnographic research material, and employs discursive and deconstructive techniques of analysis to achieve this. The population of the regional centre of Griffith in the Riverina region of New South Wales is culturally diverse. Griffith is located within Wiradjuri country and became home to large numbers of non-Indigenous people after the establishment of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Scheme in the 1910s. It continues to be a destination of choice for immigrants, largely because of the availability of work, particularly in agricultural and related industries. The study reveals that in Griffith multiculturalism is generated, negotiated and performed at the local level, in and through the everyday lives of local people, as much as it is through government intervention. It is part of the lived experience of people in culturally diverse Griffith. The kind of multiculturalism they live can be seen to be positive, pervasive and dynamic and it is something that is deemed to be of great value. They have embraced the idea of multiculturalism and of their community as multicultural to the extent that it is an important part of how they see themselves. While Australian Federal Government conceptions of multiculturalism clearly inform local discourses, with all the limitations this can bring, the conservative understandings articulated federally are made redundant by local manifestations of multiculturalism in Griffith, where there is a desire to both foster and further multiculturalism. The case of Griffith suggests that there is hope for multiculturalism and that multiculturalism can still inform an ethical mode of engagement for people from diverse cultural and ethnic traditions. Australia, however, also has an Indigenous past and present and this continues to pose the ultimate challenge to and for multiculturalism, including in Griffith. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Using a grounded theory methodology, this research sought to describe the occupational change process Indian women experience as they settle in a new environment, with a focus on how they sustain their sense of self and well-being. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with eight women of Indian origin who had immigrated to New Zealand within the past five years in an attempt to generate theory about the processes that these immigrants' experience. A constant comparative analysis revealed a central change process, Two Becoming One, which encompassed three interconnecting occupational processes. The first process women experience is Oh God, Where Did I Come?. In this process, where the environment is new and unfamiliar, the women feel compelled to do familiar activities that they know they can accomplish, thus increasing confidence and supporting well-being. The second process, Being In The Change, sees the women learning more about their new environment and engaging in new occupations, while continuing to hold on to doing familiar activities. A New Zealander with an Indian Soul finds the women doing more as they embrace a strengthening sense of self and well-being and strive to build their future in a new land. Central to these three processes is the core category Two Becoming One. This process is a commentary on the women's journeys of integrating the demands of two cultures, each with its own unique environment and ways of doing things, while supporting a healthy sense of self and well-being throughout the experience. The study findings demonstrate the dynamic interplay that occurs within a person-environment-occupation interface. Situating the findings within current literature reveals the limitation of previous understandings of the person-environment-occupation dynamic, in relation to people performing in an unfamiliar environment. With an increasing trend of immigration worldwide, this study brings to light the importance of understanding the bearing that environmental context has on occupation and the resulting impact for persons' sense of self and well-being. Further research in this area is required to gain deeper awareness of the ways in which people interact with their environment over time, and the resultant effect on occupation.

The problems of Russian speaking refugees from the Ukraine region of the former Soviet Union are the basis for ethnographic inquiry and the delineation of the role of voluntary agencies who assist their resettlement in Portland, Oregon. Interpretive methods are the foundation for an analysis of Ukrainians' perceptions of problems inherent in the migration and communication process. Though their reasons for emigration are understood, techniques of participant observation reveal otherwise hidden aspects of the effect of bilingualism and Ukrainians' perception of the role of resettlement agencies as representatives of the state. The intention of the research is to contribute to the field of anthropological study of social issues and refugee resettlement. In the aim of conflict resolution, the research focus seeks to improve communication between those in authority and those subordinate to the prerogative of immigration law. / Graduation date: 1994

Thèse de doctorat : SOCIOLOGIE : Metz : 1997. / 1997METZ009L. 158 ref.

Thesis (M.A.P.S.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [66]-67).

Thesis (M.S.W.)--University of Hong Kong, 1982.

This dissertation assesses the degree of assimilation achieved by Irish immigrants in the US in the last decades of the nineteenth century. It employs a matching technique to link specific individuals in both the 1880 and 1900 US censuses. I use this technique to create matched samples of Irish immigrants and native born Americans, allowing me to capture significant information concerning these individuals and their families over this timeframe. Utilising these samples, together with other data, I assess the degree of assimilation achieved by Irish immigrants, in aggregate and in selected subsets, with native born Americans across a range of socio-economic characteristics over this period. Among my principal findings are that Irish immigrants did not assimilate quickly into American society in this period, nor did they achieve occupational parity with native born Americans. Younger Irish and those who immigrated to the US as children experienced greater assimilation and achieved higher levels of occupational mobility, as did those Irish immigrants who married a non-Irish spouse. Higher levels of geographic clustering were associated with lower degrees of assimilation and lower occupational outcomes. My research provides support for the argument that such clustering delays immigrant assimilation. My results also indicate continued cultural persistence by Irish immigrants as it relates to their choice of names for their children. Irish immigrants who gave their children a common Irish name closely resembled those who married an Irish-born spouse - they underperformed in the workplace and experienced a lower degree of assimilation. These results suggest that the flame burning under the Irish melting pot in the last decades of the nineteenth century was not very hot, and that the assimilation process for Irish immigrants into American society was a varied and multidimensional one.

This thesis offers a new interpretation of the life and importance of George Padmore (1903-1959). Padmore was one of the most well-known ‘black communists’ in the 1930s. He became a major nexus for anti-colonial resistance in London between 1935- 1957 and one of the foremost political thinkers behind the pan-African movement. Through an analysis of his writing and his networks this thesis argues that Padmore engaged in a permanent state of political activity, guided by a practice of ‘pragmatic anti-imperialism.’ By tracing his journalism in West African and West Indian colonies, it shows that Padmore’s influence was far more extensive than previously imagined. This study begins from the hypothesis that the pragmatism of Padmore’s politics can only be demonstrated by examining his whole life, and thus takes the form of a biography. Taking Padmore’s pragmatism as a starting point, the forms in which he was understood and labeled by others are fundamental to this study since they demonstrate the extent to which Padmore was willing to compromise and ‘play the game’ of imperial politics, and they show the boundaries of the field in which he operated. Overall, this thesis aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of race and non-violent resistance in anti-imperial politics in the first half of the twentieth century by focusing upon the role of a mobile, life-long activist from the diaspora who attacked the moral basis of late colonial rule from within.

This study is about refugee integration: how refugees become citizens, and more generally how outsiders become insiders. More specifically, it is about an appropriate conceptual framework for studying and understanding refugee integration processes. I propose that refugee integration be understood as local politics, and that, therefore, refugees and hosts negotiate their relationships with each other based on their respective interests and using a series of material and symbolic exchanges. While this conceptual approach to integration seems self- evident, this empirical, process-oriented, and spatially and temporally specific approach radically departs from the predominant normative assumptions in the policy and academic literature. The thesis sets out and develops how this simple framework, consistently applied, carries analytical correlates which stand in marked contrast to most analyses of refugee integration processes. My argument is supported empirically with a detailed case study of villages in a rural border area of South Africa where many (former) Mozambican refugees are settled since the 1980s. I spent four years (2002-2006) living and conducting field work in this area. The thesis by published (and publishable) works includes five articles covering different aspects of refugee integration as political negotiation. These include: 1) analysing the conceptual dangers and empirical fallacies of approaches to local integration which frame it as a ‘solution’ within the international refugee assistance and protection regime; 2) illustrating how common conceptual and methodological approaches to studying refugees tend to hide the presence of integrated refugees; 3) applying the political negotiation approach across time periods by comparing the integration processes of two ‘waves’ of Mozambicans fleeing conflict into South Africa in the mid-1800s and the 1980s; 4) showing how integration processes, including those related to legal status, often function according to very different logics than intended by national or international legal frameworks and policies targeting refugees; and 5) looking at processes of negotiated integration at the level of the village and how they are spatialised.

This study explores the `gendered' process of international migration in Asia. It proposes that gender is one of the principal analytical factors for theoretical conceptualisation in the study of international migration. The study examines the case of Korea, which has been transformed into one of the major labour receiving countries in Asia since the early 1990s, but which has received less attention in the English literature on migration. The aim of the study is to examine the process of international migration in the historical, social and political contexts of Korea, by way of the integration of theoretical analyses with a critical gendered lens. A theoretical framework for this study is based on the observation that theorising the multifaceted process of international migration - which takes place with various interrelated variables - requires multidisciplinary and multidimensional approaches. The study therefore analyses the social formation of the `gendered' process of international migration by looking closely at the three different migratory stages of women migrants: the migratory journey; employment; and settlement in the country of destination. The primary empirical data used in the study were collected during a six-month period of field research - between April and September 2005. Qualitative data were derived from in-depth interviews with 31 migrant women, as well as employers, government officials and NGO workers. Based on a feminist standpoint of the outsider-within, the study locates the lives of migrant women from the margin to centre of the analysis. The empirical study shows that migrant women are `outsiders' who exist `within' the very core of international migration system in which they are, nevertheless, marginalised and silenced. The study suggests that the ostensibly gender-neutral process of migration is gender specific, resulting in different migration experiences between women and men. Gendered and racialised social relationships of power are pervasive in the structure of international migration and state institutions. At the same time, the differently `sedimented' practices of women and men - who strategically draw on institutional rules and resources to facilitate migration - become institutionalised in a gendered way. This, in turn, influences the gendered process of international migration that is reproduced and transformed over time.