<p> This Master's thesis seeks to gain further understanding of the issues confronting Latino speakers of ESL with respect to language learning and identity. Specifically, through group and individual interviews that I conducted with Latino immigrants involved with a community-based ESL program in Southeast Michigan, I investigate the factors that shape these individuals' attitudes towards the English language as well as the ways in which pedagogical practices may foster or impede the development of ownership, confidence, and a positive sense of self in the target language. In the first chapter, I examine how recent applications of poststructuralism in second language acquisition (SLA) research serve as the theoretical underpinnings of the present study. Additionally, I outline some of the social, political, and cultural hegemonies impacting the lives of Latinos living in the United States and how SLA researchers have investigated these as they concern the social aspects of language learning. Chapter Two not only delineates the ethnographic methods I used to carry out the current research, but also aims to describe in detail many of the difficulties I encountered as a novice researcher in the hopes that it may benefit other newcomers to empirical exploration. The third chapter of this paper is dedicated to elucidation and analysis of the insights shared by interview participants. Amidst findings that life circumstances and the opinions of others (both native English speakers and Hispanic peers) often preclude these individuals from feeling they can take legitimate claim to English, I offer implications for the ESL classroom that may help students to explore their relationship to the language. Lastly, I propose the limitations of my research as well as directions for future inquiries.</p>

<p> The main objective of this dissertation is to evaluate the unexpressed effect of Cross-Listing on stock prices of Companies from Latin America, in particular, I expect stock prices to get closer to their intrinsic or true value after cross-listing. Specifically, I test the impact of the issuance of ADRs on two market microstructure variables, namely, volatility and efficiency, which will be assessed throughout the usage of three models: the GARCH model, which measures the impact on volatility, second, the news impact curve, which assesses the effect of volatility over bad news, and third, the proper ARMA model is specified to gauge efficiency.</p><p> Overall, in 82% of the cases at least one result is as expected, and 49% of results are consistent with the hypotheses. First, in the case of the GARCH model, 59% of the results are as expected, particularly in the case of Brazil 73% of the results are as expected, in the case of Argentina 43% are as expected, Mexico 50%, Chile 40%, Peru 50% and Colombia 100%. On the other hand, 32% of the results show improvements in terms of efficiency, specifically, in the case of Brazil 40% of the results are as expected, in the case of Argentina 43% are as expected, Mexico 25%, Chile 0%, Peru 50% and Colombia 0%. Finally, in the case of the News Impact Curve test, 56% of the results are as expected, in the case of Brazil 67% of the results are as expected, in the case of Argentina 43% are as expected, Mexico 0%, Chile 60%, Peru 100% and Colombia 100%. In contrast, assessing the effect of companies that issue ADRs versus the competition, I find that in 80% of the cases, companies that cross-list are better-off in terms of expected results when comparing with the competitors. Moreover, dividing the findings before and after the introduction of electronic systems in each country, I find that in general, before the introduction of electronic systems, overall, there is a consistency of 54% in the whole region, whereas after the introduction of electronic systems, there is a consistency of only 38% of expected results. This outcome suggests that once the electronic systems are implemented there is an improvement in terms of the information environment, thus reducing the effects of crosslisting This study contributes to the financial literature because it tests the impact of crosslisting on two specified market microstructure variables through the utilization of novel models. </p>

<p> This study helps to broaden a growing body of literature by examining the growth of an urban Jamaican community in the southeastern port of Santiago de Cuba, Cuba.</p><p> <i>Background:</i> When the British colony of Jamaica abolished slavery in 1838, the upper classes attempted to tie free workers to sugar plantations; ex&ndash;slaves attempted to move away from the estates as soon as possible. Despite an increase in internal migration after abolition, the majority of the black population remained in rural areas, and dedicated their labor to the land. The Jamaican elite successfully argued for the introduction of contract laborers from Asia as a replacement for the slavery system. It brought the planters some limited economic success as export crops&mdash;particularly sugar&mdash;had the chance to rebound, but planters used immigrants to drive down wages. Increasing population pressure on the land, a series of natural disasters, few economic opportunities, and ineligibility for political participation prompted Jamaicans to look outside of their homeland for socioeconomic improvement by the late 1800s. Travelers emigrated in significant numbers to Panama, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua with the hope of earning higher wages, sending remittances to family members, and returning home with enough money to live independently. As work on the Panama Canal ended by the 1910s, Jamaicans turned their sights back to the Caribbean. During the second half of the 19th century, Cuba was one of Spain's two remaining Caribbean colonies despite attempting several wars of independence. At the end of the final effort in 1898, the United States intervened against the metropolis; the two powers reached an agreement giving possession of Cuba to the US, who would help to establish political order and assist the islanders in ruling themselves. US investment in Cuban industry, especially in sugar, allowed foreigners to purchase enormous tracts of land and to influence the restructuring of the island's political, social, and economic landscape. The seasonal sugar cane harvest attracted foreign workers from Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean seeking better wages than what they could find at home; between 1912 and 1920, thousands of British West Indians traveled to Cuba to labor in the agricultural industry or to occupy niches in the service industry. </p><p> However, Cubans scrutinized and discriminated against them for being black, for being foreign, for driving down wages, or some combination thereof. Though Cubans claimed to live in a color-blind society, racial discrimination persisted and the white elite supported a policy of &ldquo;whitening&rdquo; the island through selective immigration from Spain and miscegenation; these racial and cultural prejudices were particularly divisive given that a significant percentage of Cubans were of African descent. Furthermore, the general population was frustrated by the lack of Cuban sovereignty and saw foreign workers as complicit in the US intervention. As a result, calls for nationalism tended to veer into xenophobia and racism during economic downturns in the early 1920s and 1930s. </p><p> <i>Methods/Sources:</i> Due to limited access to archival sources in Cuba, the bulk of the data is from the British National Archives: the consular reports summarized political and social upheaval in Cuba, collected publications from the Cuban government, and gave a perspective of the migration from the viewpoint of the British government. Similar information came from the U.S. National Archives at College Park, Maryland. The provincial archive of Santiago de Cuba provided information on migrant activities: marriage and citizenship documents; and social, cultural, and political organizations. It also yielded the Cuban government's responses to West Indian immigration. Correspondence between colonial officials and international organizations came from the Jamaican National Archives; the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute for Social and Economic Studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona, held interviews of Jamaicans who lived during the period under study. Cuban and Jamaican newspaper reports detailed economic and political conditions in the two islands from journalists' investigations, letters from migrants, and governmental decrees. </p><p> <i>Findings:</i> I relate how different groups in Cuba reacted to Jamaican migration: the support for and against it, how this support changed over time, and how it differed by geography. I also attempt to give a fuller description of who these migrants were. I discuss their relationships with other West Indians and Cubans, their marriages, and the paths that they took to Cuban citizenship. How gender influenced and differentiated Jamaicans' experiences when they went abroad&mdash;how they were perceived and treated, and how they fared&mdash;receives special attention.</p><p> The work concludes by examining the reaction of the British officials who represented British West Indians in Cuba. It also puts the migration into a broader context by examining black British subjects who traveled to other parts of Latin America and the Caribbean during this era. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)</p>

<p> The 2006 student movement, termed the Penguin Revolution for the black and white uniforms worn by high school students, and the 2011 student movement, called the Chilean Winter, a reference to the "Arab Spring," have captivated the attention of the media and scholars alike. However, little work has been done to place these student movements into a broader historical context. Historically, Chilean students have had a long record of both general political activism and specific activism over educational matters dating back over 100 years. Even the most recent student protests, which developed into a broader movement against the neoliberal policies implemented under the dictator General Augusto Pinochet, were preceded by demonstrations with similar demands dating back to at least 2000. However, these precedents do not explain why the movements developed between 2000 and 2011, rather than immediately after the fall of the dictatorship in 1990. I argue that part of the reason is because that the students in the twenty-first century were the first ones to attend high school and college who were not raised under the dictatorship and for that reason they did not fear the repression and violence their predecessors, who grew up predominantly under the dictatorship, experienced. Thus, an analysis of the history of student political activism in Chile, the history of Chilean politics, the history of the Chilean education system, and the neoliberal reforms, especially in education, is necessary to provide a historical, political, and social context for the recent student movements.</p>

<p>The dominant cartography of post-Revolutionary Mexico has relied upon strategic constructions of a unified and homogenized national and cultural consciousness (mexicanidad), in order to invent and map a coherent image of imagined community. These strategic boundaries of mexicanidad have also relied upon the mapping of specific codes of being and belonging onto the Mexican geo-body. I argue that these codes have been intimately linked to the discourse of mestizaje, which, in its articulation and operation, has been fashioned as a cosmic tool with which to dissolve and solve the ethno-racial and social divisions following the Revolution, and to usher a unified mestizo nation onto a trajectory towards modernity. </p><p>However, despite its rhetoric of salvation and seemingly race-less/positivistic articulation, the discourse of mestizaje has propagated an uneven configuration of mexicanidad in which the belonging of certain elements have been coded as inferior, primitive, problematic, and invisible. More precisely, in the case of Mexicans of African descent, this segment of the population has also been silenced and dis-placed from this dominant cartography.</p><p>This dissertation examines the coding of blackness and its relationship with mexicanidad in specific sites and spaces of knowledge production and cultural production in the contemporary era. I first present an analysis of this production immediately in the period following the Revolution, especially from the 1930's to the 1950's, a period labeled as the "cultural phase of the Mexican Revolution." This time period was strategic in manufacturing and disseminating a precise politics of culture that was used to reflect this dominant configuration and cartography of mexicanidad. That is, the knowledge and culture produced during this time imbedded and displayed codes of being and belonging, which resonated State projects and narratives that were used to define and secure the boundaries of a unified, mestizo imaginary of mexicanidad. And, it is within this context that I suggest that blackness has been framed as invisible, problematic, and foreign. For example, cultural texts such as film and comics have served as sites that have facilitated the production and reflection of this uneasy relationship between blackness and mexicanidad. Moreover, this strained and estranged relationship has been further sustained by the nationalization and institutionalization of knowledge and culture related to the black presence and history in Mexico. From the foundational text La raza cósmica, written in 1925 by José Vasconcelos, to highly influential corpuses produced by Mexican anthropologists during this post-Revolutionary period, the production of knowledge and the production of culture have been intimately tied together within an uneven structure of power that has formalized racialized frames of reference and operated on a logic of coloniality. As a result, today it is common to be met with the notion that "no hay negros en México (there are no blacks in Mexico). </p><p>Yet, on the contrary, contemporary Afro-Mexican artists and community organizations within the Costa Chica region have been engaging a different cultural politics that has been serving as a tool of place-making and as a decolonization of codes of being and belonging. In this regard, I present an analysis of contemporary Afro-Mexican cultural production, specifically visual arts and radio, that present a counter-cartography of the relationship between blackness and mexicanidad. More specifically, in their engagement of the discourse of cimarronaje (maroonage), I propose that these sites of cultural production also challenge, re-think, re-imagine, and re-configure this relationship. I also suggest that this is an alternative discourse of cimarronaje that functions as a decolonial project in terms of the reification and re-articulation of afromexicanidad (Afro-Mexican-ness) as a dynamic and pluri-versal construction of being and belonging. And, thus, in their link to community programs and social action initiatives, this contemporary cultural production also strives to combat the historical silence, dis-placement, and discrimination of the Afro-Mexican presence in and contributions to the nation. In turn, this dissertation offers an intervention in the making of and the relationships between race, space and place, and presents an interrogation of the geo-politics and bio-politics of being and belonging in contemporary Mexico.</p> / Dissertation

<p> Women&rsquo;s movements and feminisms in Brazil have taken various forms throughout the years, contributing significantly to socio-political actions that favor gender justice. However, Brazilian feminisms remain on the margins of American academic discourse. In the United States, conceptualizations of feminism are often complicated by epistemological practices that treat certain political actions as feminist while dismissing others. The invisibility of Brazilian feminisms within feminist scholarship in the United States, therefore, justifies the need for further research on the topic. My research focuses on feminist articles published by <i>Revista Estudos Feministas</i>, one of the oldest and most well known feminist journals in Brazil. Using postcolonial, postmodern, and critical race feminist theories as a framework of analysis, my thesis investigates the theories and works utilized by feminists in Brazil. I argue that Brazilian feminisms both challenge and emulate the social, economic, and geopolitical orders that divide the world into Global North and South. </p>

<p> This thesis explores perspectives of 30 women hosting international students in a rural, coastal town in Costa Rica through an International Studies lens &mdash; interdisciplinary, critical, and bridging theory and practice. Analysis of 30 semi-structured interview sessions, which included 2 questionnaires, conducted over 10 weeks living with 3 host mothers contributes to understanding the impact of study abroad on host families. Hosting is discussed as a preferred form of paid care work in that it is flexible and enjoyable. Women host for the income as well as for the joy of mothering students. Host perspectives are shared regarding benefits and challenges of and lessons learned from hosting. Recommendations are made for homestay program administrators and international educators, including recommendations for addressing power dynamics to ensure reciprocal exchanges.</p>

<p> Neighborhood Politics investigates the role of commoners in the social production of an ancient city. Traditional archaeological approaches examine cities primarily through the lens of elite power and agency. Recent approaches have taken a bottom-up approach to research. Neighborhood Politics explores the ancient city as a product of both commoner and elite agencies, power, and practices. Neighborhood Politics proposes a novel methodology: 'neighborhood archaeology.' Neighborhood archaeology emerges out of household archaeology and community archaeology. In order to fully understand urbanism, neighborhood archaeology examines commoner houses, related buildings, and their inhabitants as complex socio-spatial contexts. Consequently, neighborhood archaeology here highlights the multiple contours and tensions of authority, identity, and space that characterized an ancient neighborhood. Investigations in El Purgatorio's residential district focused on architecture, domestic assemblages, and urban planning in order to understand the diverse social identities, shared practices, and built environment of El Purgatorio's commoners. Investigations examined the social history of the Casma Polity's capital city, the configuration of community there, and local-regional linkages from the perspective of commoners' everyday lives. For El Purgatorio's commoners, social diversity was configured around household composition and labor output. Diversity was materialized in unequal access to space, building materials, and construction labor. Urban hierarchies were concretized during neighborhood feasts that simultaneously created neighborhood solidarity. Elites provided raw materials for the neighborhood economy; but commoners prepared food and chicha for ritual and quotidian consumption, some of which was returned to elites in tribute. Diverse residence and circulation patterns show that the neighborhood was a negotiated landscape created through both commoner authority and the extended authority of elites from the monumental district. Neighborhood Politics highlights the complexity of urban identities, the significance of everyday activities, and the tensions in the built environment of the residential district at El Purgatorio.</p>

<p> How do young people in Paraguay develop social identities as they engage in multilingual language practices? What are the impacts of language policies that at times encourage the use of Guaran&iacute;, and at others discourage it? The primary goal of this study is to explore the relationships between children's language ideologies and the sociohistorical roots of societal level discourses regarding the power and prestige associated with Spanish and Guaran&iacute; in Paraguay. Of equal importance is the role of educators in either challenging or reinforcing those discourses. Field-work was conducted in an urban school in Paraguay's capital, Asunci&oacute;n. Participants' language use, language ideologies, and processes of social identification were analyzed through classroom observations, unstructured interviews, and surveys. </p><p> Findings revealed that students' and teachers' use of Guaran&iacute; is closely related to perceptions of the language's ability to provide opportunities for upward social mobility. Data also suggests a generational decrease in the use of Guaran&iacute; amongst students, and a tendency to reserve Guaran&iacute; for the private sphere. Despite efforts to elevate the status of Guaran&iacute;, prestige is overwhelmingly associated with European languages (Spanish, English, and Portuguese). Guaran&iacute;, in contrast, is strongly associated with Paraguayan national identity, and communicating closeness. While English and Portuguese are perceived to potentially provide financial and social capital, students lack similar motivation to learn Guaran&iacute; within the context of the classroom. Although teachers cannot change societal discourses that devalue Guaran&iacute;, they <i>can</i> facilitate a critical inquiry into such attitudes, and encourage students to challenge the status quo.</p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to construct a guided therapeutic activity workbook, in English and in Spanish, for Latino children and families who have experienced the actual or threatened deportation or detention of a primary caregiver. The workbook is primarily intended to be utilized by Latino children between eight and twelve years of age with assistance from a family member or substitute caregiver, although the workbook can also be used with mental health professionals and other helping adults. The theoretical foundation of the workbook is largely based on the Reflective Network Therapy Model, as well as a narrative approach to trauma treatment. It also utilizes the concept of ambiguous loss, and incorporates the therapeutic use of writing and drawing about traumatic experiences. </p><p> The workbook is designed to strengthen the relational resilience of children forced to deal with a parent or caregiver's detention or deportation. Children are invited to think, write, and draw about their positive memories of their caregivers, strengthening their internalized relationship to them. They are given tools for self-soothing and for turning to others for support, and offered avenues for active mastery. Helping adults, are given guidance on using the workbook to strengthen resilience rather than retraumatize children. </p><p> Five mental health professionals with substantial experience in different aspects of this topic were recruited as consultants to provide oral and written feedback on how to improve the workbook. Their critiques and recommendations were categorized and analyzed by the researcher with the assistance of her doctoral research committee. Interpretations and conclusions regarding the analyzed data were incorporated into a final draft of the Spanish and English versions of the workbook. Recommendations included simplifying the workbook language, expanding the introduction for helping adults, and increasing the number of meaningful interactions between the children using the workbook and the adults helping them. </p><p> The resulting workbook provides a much-needed therapeutic tool. The workbook's adaptability for use within children's natural support networks or with a mental health professional is designed to increase its accessibility and utilization. Future studies should evaluate the effectiveness of this workbook with the target population.</p>