Thesis--PlanA (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references.

Issued also as thesis, Munich. / Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis makes a contribution to three areas of sociological thought. First, it is concerned with the elaboration and extension of the political economy approach to migration as it is represented in the work of Stephen Castles and his various co-authors. It suggests that the work of Castles, et al., is relatively silent on the role of the state, and ideological relations in the structuration of migration. In seeking to further refine the political economy framework as it is applied to migration, this thesis draws upon two other sets of literature which, in part, have emerged as counters to some of the more economistic of their formulations. In this light, the second area of sociological literature I draw upon is the recent work on the concepts of free and unfree labour. Finally, this thesis is informed by an analysis of recent debates on the concept of racialization. In synthesizing these three strands of sociology, this thesis advances the theoretical claim that political economy oriented theorists should focus on modes of incorporation, or the manner in which foreign-born labour articulates with capital and the state. Within this context, four distinct modes of incorporation under capitalism are identified. These modes of incorporation are designated as: free immigrant labour, unfree immigrant labour, free migrant labour and unfree migrant labour. This thesis suggests that agents are subject to particular modes of incorporation, in part, on the basis on the process of racialization. This thesis uses the cases of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Chinese migration to Canada, and the post-1945 migration of farm labourers, from a number of source countries, including, specifically, the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, and the Caribbean, to the south western Ontario fruit and vegetable industry to highlight the centrality of the state in the process of migration, and the differential modes of incorporation of foreign-born persons into sites in production relations. Furthermore, the process of racialization is seen to have an impact on whether particular groups are allowed entry to a social formation, and upon how they are incorporated into sites in production relations.

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According to the 1991 Census, Indians are the largest ethnic minority group in the UK. This thesis uses quantitative techniques to investigate the experiences of Indians in the British labour market over the past five decades. This study analyses the factors that encouraged Indians to migrate and settle in the UK and highlights the changes in their skill composition and labour market experiences over time. A comparative study is also made between Indian males and females and their counterparts from other ethnic groups in order to investigate the differences in industrial and occupational distribution, participation decisions and earnings across the various ethnic and gender groups. This thesis attempts to evaluate the extent of discrimination faced by Indians in the British labour market and investigates the consequences of discrimination and labour market disadvantages. Over the years, economists have made significant contributions towards analysing the employment prospects, earnings and disadvantages faced by minority groups in the labour markets of developed countries. Most of the UK studies in this area using quantitative techniques have attempted to evaluate the relative positions of different ethnic groups in the British labour market. This study is more focussed since it concentrates on the experiences of Indians - the largest minority group in the UK. The research also provides a perspective from India, that is, mainly the lessons learnt from the experiences of migrant Indians in the labour market of a developed country. This thesis investigates the impacts of migration on the Indian economy with emphasis on how the Indian government can address the problem of "brain drain" and benefit by utilising the technical know-how, skills and savings of Indians residing in the UK and other countries.

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This thesis offers an analytical discussion of contemporary fictional and autobiographical narratives by migrants who write in a language other than their mother tongue and/or grew up in a bilingual environment. While not all literature by ethnic minority writers is necessarily concerned with the experience of growing up in or living between cultures, the present study deals with those writers whose texts self-reflexively and counter-discursively seek to define and express individual identity at the interface of two or more cultures. The writers discussed not only move spatially between places but also shift emotionally and intellectually between different languages and cultures as well as literary texts from these cultures. The focus is on language and the literary text itself as it becomes the site for an interaction of cultural codes. The methodology adopted draws eclectically on theories which explore the space between" from anthropological, linguistic, post-colonial and feminist perspectives. The thesis examines different textual paradigms of countering dominant discourses as found in ten representative texts from Australia, Canada, Germany and the United States which have been chosen to cover a range of cultural experience. The texts discussed are: Angelika Fremd's Heartland and Josef Vondra's Paul Zwillinq; Caterina Edwards' The Lion's Mouth, Henry Kreisel's The Betrayal and Rachna Mara's Of Customs and Excise; Franco Biondi's Abschied der zerschellten Jahre: Novelle and Akif Pirincci's Tranen sind immer das Ende: Roman; Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street, Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language and Richard Rodriguez' Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez. It is shown that self-reflexive negotiation of Self and Other in the text takes different forms depending on the writer's ethnic and racial background, his/her gender and the adopted country's social and political attitudes toward the newcomer. Re-writing, however, which is understood as an intentional, political dialogue with specific texts, is a recurrent counter-discursive strategy in the texts discussed. Finally, the thesis argues that the re-writing of traditional literary genres, such as Novelle, short story cycle, autobiography, Bildungs roman and quest novel, rather than of a particular text, as in other post-colonial contexts, is the most prevalent form of "writing back" in migrant literature. Texts written by migrants not only creatively revise literary conventions, challenge the concept of “national literature" and undermine canonically established categories, but also defeat attempts to approach a text with a single "appropriate" theory to reveal the strategies and the effects of cultural hybridity.

This thesis performs a social mapping of the field of British-Asian independent film between 1976 and 1996. Through a practical application of Pierre Bourdieu's methodological approach to reading cultural production, this research examines a series of film production contexts as a means of revealing refracted homologies between particular texts, the cultural field and the broader field of power in Britain. The empirical core of the thesis identifies and examines five different film practices: an excluded film practice, an institutional film practice, a theoretical film practice, a successful film practice and contemporary film practices. The selected films are primarily analysed as cultural "barometers" of the given social contexts, providing for each of the empirical chapters a basis from which to map the genesis of a particular film practice. By mapping the relations between cultural production, the key social events and forces for change as actualised within the films, each empirical chapter aims to reveal the dominant logic which informed given film practices. Ethnicity, instead of functioning as the essential object of analysis, provides this research with a starting point and the key sampling device to map the British independent film field. In principal, this thesis examines the ways in which images of "ethnic minorities" in the British independent film field have been both liberated and regulated through the presence of dominant dispositions which have structured the field generating, and consecrating particular film-making practices over and above others.

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No description available.