Since the 1960s, the inhabitants of the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda have serially considered and rejected becoming a sovereign nation. This thesis investigates the extent to which the positions taken by politicians and social commentators, who are involved in the debates concerning independence, are informed by their lived experiences and understandings of the island’s past. Grounded in an analysis of the island’s past, this thesis also investigates how Bermudians have historically defined belonging in the political sphere and public spaces according to ‘race’ and class and how this affects the way in which they interact with each other and regard their relationship with the United Kingdom. The study critically engages with postcolonial theory and asks what the existence of this 21st century colony says about the processes of colonialism and post-colonialism. It also considers how this study fits with other research concerning other remaining Overseas Territories to show the value of conducting in-depth studies of specific societies. By surveying archival documents and conducting interviews a fuller understanding of the political and social development of this island is gained, as viewed by colonial administrators, local government officials, and those who publicly challenged the norms that allowed for social and political inequality on the island. These methods are used to engage with questions of how ideas of self and nation were shaped by segregationist formal education and how this was either reinforced or challenged by what was taught around the kitchen table and in the wider society. It explores how Trade Unionist and the fledgling Progressive Labour Party (PLP) saw a move to independence as part of a wider aim to rectify social injustices. The continuity and change in the debate is then reviewed to see how and the extent to which changes both internally and externally interact with narratives of the past to inform how those involved in the debate imagine the island’s future.

In this study I argue that the recent proliferation of punitive and restrictive asylum policies indicates that the British government is prepared to tolerate levels of violence against certain human bodies, from particular countries, to a much greater degree than would be tolerated for others. Archival evidence is presented to show that hierarchical conceptions of humanity have a long history, rooted in British colonial activities, and that such ideologies continue to operate in the contemporary period. The project involves documenting three ‘critical junctures’ when ideas of human hierarchy were challenged at the political institutional level. These critical junctures are used to make the case for a historically informed reading of contemporary British asylum policy which takes seriously the epistemic legacies of colonialism. The study adapts Desmond King and Rogers Smith’s ‘racial institutional orders’ approach, originally conceived in the US context, to the British case, and incorporates a post-colonial perspective into the analysis. Through analysing the debates around these issues, it is possible to glean some insight into both the enduring power of ideas of human hierarchy, and the possibilities for transformative change.

published_or_final_version / Applied Statistics / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Following the 1973 rise in the price of oil, the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations of the Middle East became hosts to hundreds of thousands of foreign workers taking part in the economic development of the region. From the beginning, the employment of migrant workers was seen as a temporary measure, necessary to compensate for the small indigenous populations in the Gulf. The numbers of foreign workers has become so great, that the migrants now constitute a majority of the population in several of the GCC countries. The relative permanence with which foreign workers have now established themselves is of great concern to the host governments. It appears that the insufficient skill-levels and sizes of the national workforces, together with the position the extensive and growing migrant communities hold in the growing Gulf economies point to the continued presence of large foreign populations for some time to come.

This study investigates the supranational policy engagement of Turkish migrant associations in France and Germany in EU immigration policy process from a comparative perspective. It seeks the answer to the following question: What explains similarities and differences in terms of forms and levels of participation by migrant associations in different national contexts as they engage in the EU immigration policy process? In addressing this question, it analyzes the forms and levels of migrants' supranational engagement by focusing on the combined impact of emerging macro-level political opportunity structures (EU institutional context and EU) and micro-level (collective action problems of nationally organized stakeholders) variables. / The study claims that in spite of the newly introduced supranational channels into the EU policy process, the collective organizational experience at the national level locks-in a certain path dependency that holds back the new policy actors (migrant groups) from making full use of EU-level opportunities. Consequently an incompatibility surfaces between the supranational opportunities provided by the EU and the capabilities of national-level stakeholders who intend to use them. Through an examination of two cases, this study claims that there exists a supranational opportunity/national capability rift in terms of stakeholder participation in EU policy processes. Underlying this rift are the problems intrinsic to the design of supranational opportunities which impair their potential to cater to national-level clients. At the same time, while national-level capabilities allow actors to operate in the domestic context (albeit with problems), they are not readily transposed so as to permit reaping supranational benefits. / Accordingly, this study claims that despite the variety and extensiveness of EU efforts, the re-definition of the dynamics of policy involvement and the expansion of the policy space to include multiple stakeholders remain at an incipient stage. The problems and limits of activities at the supranational level continue to originate from constraints associated with the nation state as much, if not more, than the problems of the supranational channels themselves.

The history of Canada's policies in the matter of Chinese immigration from 1870 to the present time may be divided into four distinct periods: The period of unrestricted immigration ending 1885; the period of the head-tax system from 1885 to 1923; the period of the exclusion of Chinese immigrants ending in 1947 and the period of limited admission of Chinese immigrants under the rules applicable to Asians in general. [...]

The social organization of Canada's inland refugee determination system is explored in this institutional ethnographic study. First listening to refugee claimants' experience from their vantagepoint on the margins of society, the research then explicates the complementary social relations of the refugee determination system in order to examine the contributing social organization and underlying ideology of the politico-administrative system. Three adult, English-speaking single Nigerian men, seeking Convention refugee status or permanent resident status, were interviewed. Phenomenological methods were utilized to analyze the data. An initial explication of the social relations of the system was conducted through the observation of refugee determination hearings and interviews with knowledgeable informants. Through these interviews and textual analysis, ideology at the politico-administrative level was explored. The findings reveal a contradiction between refugees' expectations based on Canada's international reputation in refugee protection and support of democratic rights, and their reception in Canada. Refugee claimants spoke of their dual experience as characterized by exclusion and marginalization from Canadian society at the very time that they needed to reconstruct their sense of self and adapt; of being held suspect as 'criminals' and 'illegals' by the refugee determination system until proven 'genuine'. Inclusion depended on success in the socially, culturally, and politically constructed Canadian refugee determination system; a process that was foreign to them. Comprehension and successful participation in this process depended in part on the support, resources, and information they accessed during their initial settlement period. The organization of the refugee determination system with a focus on the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) revealed complex independent decision-making in a highly decentralized, but hierarchical and non-transparent administrative system. Inconsistencies in decision making and in the degree to which refugees had the opportunity to relate their experience in refugee determination hearings were articulated and observed. Aspects of the system such as selection of members, institutional culture, independence of the IRB, and discourse on refugees in the Canadian media and society were indicators of how the social relations of the system were organized by an underlying ideology. Implications for the profession of social work and for social change were examined.

My dissertation is an inquiry into issues of home and belonging. For many people, the struggle to create a home in a "new" country, and the oscillation between a past "there" and present "here" have become ways of existence. Displacement challenges and raises questions regarding one's roots, affiliations, loyalty and belonging. The yearning for a place such as home becomes a site of inquiry for communities of displaced people. Destined to live between languages, cultures and national affiliations, im/migrants construct their homes in the particular place of "border." Acknowledging Home(s) and Belonging(s): Border Writing is "homeward" journeying through the discursive landscapes of nation, ethnicity, diaspora, and "race." It explores how border interrupts/initiates a discourse of home. I am an im/migrant researcher. The word "migrant" connotes impermanence, detachment and instability. From this positionality I introduce a slash into the word "immigrant" to transform these connotations into a permanence of migration. As autoethnographic and conversational inquiry, I explore im/migrant experiences from the position of "I," rather than "We." However, "I" is not a position of isolated individual(istic) exclusiveness, but a position of the personal articulation through the relationships with/in community. My research includes conversations with: theorists, colleagues from different disciplinary backgrounds, members of the "ethnic" communities to which I belong, and my daughter. I construct these conversations as borderzone arriculations where a "third space" emerges. The word dissertation stems etymologically from Greek dialegesthai, to converse, to dialogue; whereby dia- means "one with another," and legesthai means "to tell, talk." My dissertation endeavors to recognize - to know again, to know anew these deep layers of border as dialogue and conversation. As an im/migrant inquiry, my dissertation intends to create a different, mother knowing and culture of scholarship that broaden and deepen the space of academic researching/writing.

Since the liberalization of Canadian immigration policy in the late-1960s, a significant development has been the increase in the ethnic and racial diversity of Canada's population. Indeed, the visible minority status of many immigrants to Canada has powerfully shaped interpretations of social and physical change. In the context of substantial Asian immigration to Greater Vancouver, a number of commentators have argued that critical responses to change on the part of long-term Caucasian residents represent a 'reinvented', and often subtly expressed, racism. It is the contention of this author, however, that such conclusions are compromised by an uncritical assumption of what constitutes racism and a diminished empirical focus on sensationalized media accounts. Working from this premise, this thesis attempts to examine in greater depth two categories poorly examined in these accounts: racism and the long-term resident. It traces the emergence of the category of race, the analytical and political imperatives which gave rise to a shift in focus from race to racism, and how—under the rubric of social constructionism-—theories on racism have been deployed to understand contemporary social relations in Greater Vancouver. A critique of this literature provides the springboard for further analysis of long-term resident responses to change. Extended interviews conducted with fifty-four long-term residents of Richmond, BC—a Vancouver suburb that has received considerable numbers of Chinese immigrants over the past twelve years—strongly suggest that our understanding of social and physical change at the community level cannot be reduced to one dimension. Moreover, the complexity of these responses also demands that the analytical and political import of evaluative terms like racism be prised open and subjected to scrutiny and open debate. Perhaps most importantly, the diversity of long-term Richmond residents' responses cautions against the production of racialized stereotypes in immigration research, and points to the need to provide more nuanced and contextualized interpretations of immigration and its impact on society.

The New York State politicians, notably members of Congress such as Irving Ives, Herbert Lehman, Samuel Dickstein, Emanuel Celler and Jacob Javits, were very involved in the immigration debates for the period from 1945 to 1953. By their interventions, they emerged as fiery supporters of a liberalization of American immigration policy. A willingness to satisfy a multiethnic electorate largely explains their position. But these individuals, mostly defenders of President Truman's foreign policy, also believed in this cold war context that an attenuation of restrictionism in immigration would provide numerous advantages to the nation. If their attitude seems dictated by considerations that were both pragmatic and idealistic, it generated non-negligible results. Thus, the granting of a quota to India in 1946, the act on the war brides in 1945, as well as the legislation affecting the refugees in 1950, were among the measures mainly ascribable to the activities of these politicians.