Research to date in South Africa has explored the coming out narratives of lesbian and gay people. Most of this research suggests these people experience their parents’ reactions as largely negative. This negativity is attributed to the patriarchal culture and religious beliefs which insist on compulsory heterosexuality that dominate African discourse in South Africa. However, thus far, little work has been done focusing specifically on the perceptions of the parents of lesbian, gay or bisexual offspring, and on the parents’ own coming out about their children’s alternative sexual orientation. In this qualitative study, I explored the lived experiences of black mothers of lesbian, gay or bisexual children from diverse backgrounds with the aim of capturing their own voices and gaining an understanding of their journeys, from the moment that each discovered that her child belongs to a sexual minority to her acceptance of the child’s alternative sexuality. I conducted semi-structured interviews with six black South African mothers of lesbian, gay or bisexual offspring in order to learn about these mothers’ experiences. I analysed the interview transcripts using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. I identified three main themes, namely the mothers’ journeys; responses to the study’s research questions, and other concerns the black mothers still have regarding their lesbian, gay or bisexual offspring. Each main theme was comprised of several sub-themes. In a nutshell, the study shows that in contrast to the assumption that South African black urban communities are hostile spaces with no visible familial support for lesbian, gay or bisexual youth, in reality, there are examples in urban African communities of parental support for members of sexual minorities. Although all the mothers in this study held Christian beliefs, none subscribed to a ‘same-sex attraction is a sin’ discourse. Instead, most of these mothers regarded their children as special gifts from God, and some saw their children’s alternative sexuality as God’s way of teaching them as mothers about unconditional love. / Psychology / M.A. (Psychology: Research Consultation)

This thesis aims at analysing the attitudes of youngsters in Brussels towards sociological minorities. The term “minorities” is used to refer to the main social groups that suffer from subordination and misrecognition by the wider society according to the philosophical theory of recognition: women, lesbians and gay men, and ethnic minorities. Our dataset is composed of a sample of seventy schools in the Brussels Capital Region. In total, three thousand one hundred and twenty one pupils attending in 2007 the last grade of secondary education participated in the study. About half of the sample consists of pupils with a migrant background originating from about 100 different countries. This cultural diversity, reflecting one of the main characteristics of the population of the Brussels Capital Region, is at the centre of the thesis. <p>Because of the hierarchical structure of the sample (pupils aggregated within schools), the culturally diverse population of our sample and the multidimensionality of prejudice, multilevel multivariate linear responses models were performed. In brief, these models allowed us to interpret items regrouped according to their common variation across social (and ethnic) groups and not according to their a priori content similarities. Furthermore, these models allowed us to integrate three different research traditions on prejudice: social psychology on the dimensionality of prejudice, sociology on the impact of socio demographic characteristics on prejudice and school effectiveness research on the role schools may play in reducing pupils’ prejudice. With these models, we could demonstrate the capacity of multilevel techniques to encompass the complexity of prejudice and norms, and to provide an interdisciplinary approach of social processes. <p>Besides the impact of gender and socio economic differences on prejudice, the association between ethnic origin and prejudice was the focus of the analysis at the individual level. Hence, the empirical literature showed that respondents of foreign descent and respondents from the receiving society do not hold similar attitudes towards minorities. This association was investigated in a twofold strategy: after having assessed ethnic differences on the different kinds of prejudice, the explanatory power of possible mediators -such as the experience of group-level institutional discrimination or the bidimensional identification- on this association was tested. The choice of these mediators was influenced by different disciplines of the social sciences. Hence, besides the empirical literature specific to the topic of prejudice, these mediators are derived from theories of political sciences, of sociology of immigration, of social psychology and of cross-cultural psychology. The results showed that these mediators could indeed explain to a large extent ethnic differences on prejudice towards minorities. <p>On the school level, we have shown that the impact schools may have on pupils’ prejudice is a differentiated one. Hence, this impact varies according to both the targets and the dimensions of prejudice. Moreover, besides school institutional characteristics, several contextual characteristics were investigated such as the cultural and social diversity within a school. Our results showed that the impact on prejudice of social and cultural diversity within schools was non-significant. This is, however, most probably related to a masking effect by the specificities of the education landscape in Brussels: differences between schools are huge and homogeneity within schools is important, given that the educational field is highly segregated both in social and in cultural terms. The implications of these results based on an interdisciplinary approach for future research and for policymakers are discussed. <p> / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Young people are a central group in revitalisation efforts that aim to turn the tide of language shift for speakers of endangered languages. In the context of the five national minorities of Sweden, this thesis looks at the motivation of young Sweden Finns to participate in or lead revitalisation efforts for Finnish in Sweden. The study circles in beginner’s Finnish organised by the Sweden Finnish Youth Organisation provide a point of entry into the way young people plan and adapt revitalisation efforts to the needs of other young people. Along with a study of materials pertaining to the study circles, five young people have been interviewed about their participation in or leadership of the study circles, or their involvement in the Sweden Finnish Youth organisation. Grin’s (1990) COD model has been used to explore the relationship between motivation (Desire) and the Sweden Finnish context. The study found that the study circles have been adapted to the needs and desires of young people on several levels. It also found that identity, a practical and emotional need for the Finnish language, an awareness of the situation for the national minorities in Sweden, and the acceptance of varying goals and non-standard varieties of Finnish, play important roles in young people’s motivation to learn Finnish and participate in or lead revitalisation efforts.

This thesis examines how cultural competency operates as a regime of governmentality. Inspired by Foucauldian genealogy, institutional ethnography, and Said’s concept of contrapuntality, this thesis problematizes the seamless production of racialized bodies in relation to mental disorder. I begin by elaborating a theoretical framework for interpreting race and madness as mutually constructed ordering practices. I then analyze what cultural competence produces and sustains in a position paper published by the Ontario Federation of Community Mental Health and Addiction Programs. I argue the Federation dismisses ongoing institutional violence—suggesting it is simply the perception, as opposed to the everyday reality, of discrimination that causes problems such as low educational attainment among youth of colour. To further support this claim, I deconstruct narratives of low self-esteem, maladaptive coping, depression, and denial of mental illness in the community needs assessments of two of the Federation’s member organizations: Hong Fook and Across Boundaries.

This thesis examines how cultural competency operates as a regime of governmentality. Inspired by Foucauldian genealogy, institutional ethnography, and Said’s concept of contrapuntality, this thesis problematizes the seamless production of racialized bodies in relation to mental disorder. I begin by elaborating a theoretical framework for interpreting race and madness as mutually constructed ordering practices. I then analyze what cultural competence produces and sustains in a position paper published by the Ontario Federation of Community Mental Health and Addiction Programs. I argue the Federation dismisses ongoing institutional violence—suggesting it is simply the perception, as opposed to the everyday reality, of discrimination that causes problems such as low educational attainment among youth of colour. To further support this claim, I deconstruct narratives of low self-esteem, maladaptive coping, depression, and denial of mental illness in the community needs assessments of two of the Federation’s member organizations: Hong Fook and Across Boundaries.

Mixed race and African South African parents of children coming out as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Intersex, Queer, Questioning and A-Sexual+ have a unique set of challenges within their cultural, religious and social contexts. The problem statement for the study entails that parents have to deal with familial and societal perceptions and reactions to their child coming out, face their own challenges and fears concerning their child’s sexual orientation or identity, and find coping strategies to deal with their coming out as LGBTIQA+. During my research in the UNISA library and online I found that there is a paucity of literature on this subject matter, especially within the South African context. The aim of this study was to obtain an in-depth understanding of these mixed race and African parents’ experiences, challenges and coping strategies in relation to a child coming out as LGBTIQA+. The Resiliency Theory of Family Stress, Adjustment and Adaptation, as linked to Hill’s Stress Theory and the Strength-based approach, were adopted as related theories within the theoretical framework of this study. A qualitative approach was employed, as I intended to gain insight into the lived experiences, challenges and coping strategies of mixed race and African South African parents in relation to a child coming out as LGBTIQA+, as well as to gain advice on social work support. A phenomenological and collective instrumental case study design, together with an explorative, descriptive and contextual strategy of inquiry, were used to explore, describe and contextualise how mixed race and African parents of LGBTIQA+ children experienced their children’s coming out, what their challenges were, and the coping strategies they employed to manage the challenges experienced. The sample of participants was selected by utilising purposive sampling. Semi-structured interviews, contained in an interview guide, were used to collect the data that was analysed using Tesch’s method of analysis (in Creswell, 2014:198). The data were collected by means of individual interviews and presented in a cross-person manner using selected narratives from the participants. Guba’s model, as espoused in Krefting (1991) and Lietz and Zayas (2010), was used and the four aspects of trustworthiness, namely credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability, were applied. Ethical considerations were observed. The findings led the researcher to make recommendations regarding social work practice, education and further research into the phenomenon of parental experiences, challenges and coping strategies in relation to a child coming out as LGBTIQA+. In terms of parental experiences of their child coming out as LGBTIQA+, I found that parents were surprised and unhappy, disappointed, pained and shocked, and fearful for their child’s safety when they realised he or she was LGBTIQA+. When it came to their challenges and fears, the parents openly admitted that what the community, church and external family would make of their child being LGBTIQA+ caused stress for them. Lastly, the parents made recommendations to social workers based on their experiences, challenges and coping strategies, indicating that social workers should focus on sharing information and guiding parents; but firstly, social workers must have self-awareness and understand their own attitudes toward LGBTIQA+ matters. / Social Work / MA (Social Work)