Formerly incarcerated students comprise a population that has been largely overlooked, when it comes to the recognition of their higher education promise and potential (Strayhorn et al., 2013; U.S. Department of Education, 2021). This lack of recognition contributes to the perpetuation of race- and class-based inequities and discounts the talents and potential of a multitude of individuals. In order to advance social justice and equity for this marginalized group, further exploration of their experiences with higher education is warranted. This exploration is increasingly timely, as the reinstatement of Pell eligibility for incarcerated students may place many more incarcerated individuals on a trajectory to continue pursuing their degrees at higher education institutions located outside of prison walls post-release. Although much research has been done on higher education courses offered in prison, relatively little is known about the experiences of formerly incarcerated students as they pursue higher education after prison release (Donaldson & Viera, 2021; Livingston & Miller, 2014; McTier et al., 2020b; Strayhorn et al., 2013).This qualitative study used the theoretical framework of social capital to explore the experiences of formerly incarcerated students as they have transitioned out of prison and into on-campus learning at institutions of higher education. The study was primarily aimed at obtaining a better understanding of the barriers and supports that formerly incarcerated students experience as they pursue higher education, focusing specifically on the ways in which they are able to cultivate a sense of belonging. Additionally, the study explored the motivations behind formerly incarcerated students’ decisions to continue pursuing higher education after their release from prison as well as their expectations for the future post-graduation. Data were collected through surveys, semi-structured, in-depth interviews with formerly incarcerated undergraduate and graduate students, and publicly accessible articles and video featuring the higher education experiences of formerly incarcerated students. Findings revealed that formerly incarcerated students’ decisions to continue higher education after prison were influenced by several factors, including personal transformations that led to the revaluation of higher education and the desire for better professional prospects after prison. Additionally, the decision to continue higher education was influenced by the acquisition of meaningful social capital that occurred through in-prison education. Connections to faculty members and fellow students made the task of earning a college degree on campus seem more attainable. Pertaining to barriers to experiencing a sense of belonging on campus, students who were formerly incarcerated dealt with culture shock during their transition from prison to on-campus learning; concerns over being stigmatized and perceived negatively by others; limitations and restrictions imposed on them by the halfway houses in which many of them lived; and a lack of shared experience with others on campus. Conversely, formerly incarcerated students found support and a sense of belonging in the context of the program in which they were involved, which offered them a sense of family and access to multi-faceted support services. Positive relationships with faculty also facilitated the cultivation of a sense of belonging among formerly incarcerated students, as did instances where they were able to leverage their life experiences in order to educate, inform, and mentor others on campus. Notably, the program provided various resources and opportunities to form meaningful connections with others, including other formerly incarcerated students, program staff, and faculty connected to the program. In this way, social capital acquisition—in the form of meaningful and supportive relationships fostered through the program—was most instrumental in facilitating a sense of belonging within their institution of higher education. Findings also showed that the higher education experiences of formerly incarcerated students had an overall positive effect on their perceptions of post-graduation opportunities. Through their higher education experiences, and more specifically through their time in the RISE-UP [a pseudonym] program, participants expanded their perspective on what they thought possible for themselves and gained confidence that their goals for the future were attainable. The program facilitated widespread networking and other opportunities for students, which led them to acquire a great deal of social capital. This social capital they acquired was most important in shaping their positive expectations for their post-graduation futures. As formerly incarcerated students are not a homogenous group, findings differed slightly based on factors such as gender, age, race/ethnicity, and campus attended. Findings of the current study show that in higher education spaces formerly incarcerated students have much to contribute but often face considerable barriers, particularly when it comes to establishing a sense of belonging. The findings have many important implications and suggest that by adopting certain policies and practices universities, administration, and faculty could help to better meet the needs of formerly incarcerated students and thereby increase their chances of academic, professional, and personal success. Future research should be conducted to further understand the experiences of diverse groups of formerly incarcerated students situated in various higher contexts. / Policy, Organizational and Leadership Studies

No, she is not my mom, not my aunt, we are not family. Yes, we do look alike, we do live in the same neighborhood, we smell the same coffee beans each morning, and we share the same zip code. The only difference between us is I do have an actual address here, she does not. Yes, she must have lived here much longer than me, she has a history in this town, a lot of the people would recognize her smiling spirit right away, yet she only occupies a corner in a street near a coffee shop most of the year. Everyone knows that space is hers, except the legal papers. Where are you from? The question may seem so simple, but regardless of how many times I am asked the answer has never been so easy for me each time I am asked, and I am asked very often. Belonging, identity, countries, tribes, bloodlines and borders are things that confuse me a lot, and for that I decided to do my thesis about them, trying to find an answer to a simple question, in a very complicated universe. I chose to study these matters through a transitional program, in a transforming neighborhood and for users who are in their most confused age; an international 6 boarding school in Dupont circle. / Master of Architecture

An alarmingly high level of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) college students in the United States end up dropping out of secondary education institutions. One important predictor of academic success and retention at the secondary level is student sense of school belonging. This thesis explores NHPI college students' perceptions of how their university instructors foster or undermine their sense of school belonging. A snowball sample of 97 NHPI students participated in 18 focus groups that included students from various islands and ethnicities in Oceania who were attending one U.S. university in the Pacific Rim. Focus group data were transcribed and analyzed using a thematic analytic approach. Open coding was conducted to investigate ways that NHPI participants talked about how their instructors did or did not help them feel a sense of belonging at the university. Four main findings emerged from this study. First, NHPI students were able to articulate ways their instructors fostered or undermined school belonging, highlighting the importance of instructors for fostering school belonging. Second, responses reveal that NHPI students feel a sense of school belonging when instructors show care and build bridges for academic success. NHPI students also noted why these were so important for them, given their cultural backgrounds and experiences. Conversely, when instructors failed to show care or build bridges, NHPI students shared how directly and devastatingly their sense of school belonging was undermined. Third, many NHPI students shared the positive and negative impacts of these school belonging experiences as pertaining to academic self-efficacy, motivation, and persistence. Finally, NHPI students articulated how important it was for them to have instructors who chose to attend to the student-teacher relationship and were able to provide cultural representation within their classrooms. There are several implications from this study for university instructors who work with NHPI students. First, the teacher-student relationship really matters for these students and instructors must develop relationships with their NHPI students in meaningful ways. Second, instructors should seek to create safe spaces for their NHPI students to speak and share. Third, instructors need to be explicit in their instruction and build the bridges for academic success that NHPI students cannot build for themselves. Overall, instructors should be made aware that they really matter for fostering or undermining NHPI students' experiences of school belonging in the college or university setting.

This study explores the role of language in constructing identity and promoting belonging for seventeen Fijian college students at one U.S. based university in the Pacific Rim. Focus group interviews were analyzed for how students described the role that language played in constructing student identity and mediating connection. Analysis was grounded in post-structural perspectives of identity alongside vā – the Oceanic notion that encompasses identity and belonging. Students described themes of native language proficiency in reinforcing kinship relationships and in participating in cultural traditions and practices. They also expressed other ways of maintaining vā without proficiency in their native languages. Other students noted the affordances of speaking English to participating in global economies and global cultures, including schooling at the university. Implications highlight the need for educational policies, practices, and pedagogies that empower Fijian students to be successful in academic and public spaces, while helping them maintain connection to their ethnic communities and identities—to promote belonging, and to maintain their positions in the vā.

This dissertation explores how internationally educated youth in contemporary Egypt negotiate issues of national identity, postcoloniality and belonging while participating in globalizing class practices. Based on fourteen months of ethnographic research in and around for-profit international schools in Cairo, it focuses on how this privileged youth group constructed, experienced and enacted belonging at the intersection between class and nation. I argue that internationally educated Egyptians were caught in a cultural bind between competing constructions of class and national belonging. On the one hand, globally-oriented socialization practices and international education reproduced a historically-specific and colonially-inspired configuration of social distinction that linked elite belonging to a cosmopolitan-inflected distance from local culture. On the other hand, these markers of elite belonging excluded internationally educated youth from a materially embodied conception of Egyptianness that tied national belonging to essentialist constructions of local culture and identity. I suggest that the tension between class and national belonging expressed a single dialectical process that was rooted in colonial binary conceptualizations of culture and difference, which split ‘elite’ and ‘local’ into mutually exclusive cultural and symbolic repertoires. My analysis challenges dominant theoretical approaches that conflate the reproduction of class and nation by exposing the educational, gendered and linguistic gaps between class and national culture in contemporary Egypt. I present a bottom-up approach to understanding national attachment that highlights the embodied and moral labor that goes into the production of local selfhood in a transnational postcolonial setting. This approach also shows the differential gendered dynamics of class and national reproduction. The burden of maintaining cosmopolitan-inflected class boundaries falls squarely on the girls while boys are expected to embody the nationally-inflected skills and dispositions necessary for personal and professional trajectories that transcend class boundaries. In telling this story, I expose the sociohistorical dynamic by which colonial/postcolonial categories are reconfigured through globally-oriented class practices and highlight the unexpected ways that neoliberal globalism can become the incubator for intensely and irreducibly local gender and cultural norms.

Yes / Future populations of older adults in the UK, those aged 65+, will demonstrate increased diversity in terms of their ethnic identity resultant from the ageing of the post-war migrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Caribbean. As a consequence, there will be an increase in the numbers of older adults from these communities living with age-related chronic diseases such as dementia. In response to these demographic changes, we need to develop a research, policy and practice agenda that is inclusive and provides evidence for the development of culturally diverse and effective models of service delivery. This requires engagement with three key stakeholder groups: (a) people with dementia; (b) their carers; and (c) the wider community. As part of the IDEAL research programme on living well with dementia, we undertook semi-structured interviews with twelve community leaders, defined as known and trusted individuals active in their respective communities, and six community members (two people living with dementia and four carers). We explored their understandings, experiences, and views of about dementia. Our analysis identified two overarching themes. The migrant lifecourse highlighted issues of not belonging, discrimination and racism. This framed our second theme, the cultural context of dementia, which addressed dementia knowledge and attitudes, service provision and service access, and how being part of a minority ethnic community made a difference to these experiences. Our study highlights how lifecourse experiences of negative hostile social and policy environments and services can be profound and long-lasting and provide a prism through which accessing dementia care is experienced. Our findings argue for the inclusion of diverse views and lifecourse experiences within the context of developing a dementia strategy for research, policy and practice that is appropriate for a multicultural and heterogenous society. / This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, National Institute for Health and Care Research (ES/L001853/2), and Alzheimer’s Society (348, AS-PR2-16-001).

Yes / Most studies investigated the effectiveness of virtual reality (VR) for healthcare and educational purposes, but little is known on the effectiveness of VR in social interaction. Our aim was to examine whether VR would be similar to in-person interaction in reducing loneliness. A total of 73 participants participated in this study. They were randomly assigned to in-person or VR condition and interacted for 15 minutes about a tourist landmark. Participants completed a set of questions that measured belonging – acceptance and exclusion, positive and negative affect, wellbeing, trust, and mood before and after the interaction. Results showed that in both conditions, loneliness was significantly lower, with higher wellbeing, higher positive and lower negative affect, feeling happier and had more fun post task. Trust was higher in the VR condition post task but not for in-person. Our regression analyses showed that having higher wellbeing was a significant predictor in reducing loneliness for in-person condition and that being older and higher belonging – acceptance were significant predictors on feeling lonelier for the VR condition. In sum, our results demonstrated some success in reducing loneliness in VR but may not be sufficient to develop lasting friendship.

When heavy metal fans traverse through their everyday life, they are faced with countless opportunities to engage in social interactions with others. Such interactions question, establish, and strengthen fans’ heavy metal identities whilst providing them with a sense of community and belonging through engaging with others who also share a preference for heavy metal music. This thesis is built on a qualitative research approach, complimented by an insider and ethnographic orientation in order to explore identity expression, the feeling of belonging and community, everyday life processes, and the role of heavy metal music in the everyday life of heavy metal fans. Through social interactions based on shared musical preference, heavy metal fans are able to meaningfully engage with others through which communal affiliations are strengthened and reinforced. Despite mainstream, and largely negative attitudes towards heavy metal, the music provides a safety net for listeners and is a driving force in their experience of the reciprocal relationship between personal identity and group membership and community. Due to the deep connection listeners have with heavy metal, the music becomes something which fans are able to call theirs alone.

This dissertation explores both the production of underclass literature and the vibrancy of material between 1868-1935. During an era of rampant materialism, consumer capitalism, unchecked industrialism, and economic inequality in the United States, poor, working class Americans confronted their socioeconomic status by abandoning the linear framework of capitalism that draws only a straight line between market and consumer, and engaging in a more intimate relationship with local, material things – found, won, or inherited – that offered a sense of autonomy, belonging, and success. The physical seizure of property/power facilitated both men and women with the ability to recognize their own empowerment (both as individuals and as a community) and ultimately resist their marginalization by leveling access to opportunity and acquiring or creating personal assets that could be generationally transferred as affirmation of their family's power and control over circumstance. Reading into these personal possessions helps us understand the physical and psychological conflicts present amongst the underclasses as represented in American literature, and these conflicts give rise to new dynamics of belonging as invested in the transformative experience of ownership and exchange. If we can understand these discarded, poor, and foreign things and people as possessing dynamic and vibrant agency, then we will change the ethics of objectifying and ostracizing discarded, poor, and foreign humans, then and now.

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