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This paper puts into question ideas of politics limited to the theories of social movements and contentious politics. In using the concept of black counterpublic, understood as a web of relations and spaces, I show how black politics of folklore expands the sites and forms of politics in Colombia of 1960. In doing so, I describe two aspects of the black counterpublic from the point of view of black political intellectuals into the racialized field of Colombian folklore: a. the way black political intellectuals understood race and racism in Colombia and, b. their forms of politics. That is, their form of organization and mobilization. For this, I propose a new understanding of folklore beyond ideas of entertainments, apolitical culturalism and essentialism which, in turn, make black politics look trivialized and less political under the integrationist racial project of the mestizo State. Also, I shed some light on the idea of race and racism from below, from the point of view of black political intellectuals; and I pluralize and decentralize black politics from social movement understanding of politics.

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Much research has been done to explain how the late 2000s housing bubble burst, but little work has been done to see how working-class people responded and are responding to the issue of foreclosure in their communities. City Resistance, a grassroots community organization, transforms working class people from passive actors going through foreclosure to militant activists seeking to stay in their homes. My two-year ethnographic study chronicles the meetings, civil disobedience, and everyday lives of an organization of 300+ members in a medium sized, declining city, in the Northeast. It seeks to understand the multiple processes by which primarily Black and Latino members of the organization are transformed into radical subjects, but also the limits of that radicalism. A central contradiction is that the organizing model must address the immediate needs of members by servicing them and thus creating a belief in the legal system and the protections it offers, while simultaneously pushing them to think about housing as a human right, to move beyond their taken for granted conceptualizations of capitalism.

At the time of its debate and passage in 2010-2011, Alabama's immigration law evoked support and opposition from across the state and nation. Despite the outcry, the Alabama business community projected a pronounced public "silence". This silence was particularly curious because of the law's clear and intended goal of self-deportation of Latinos who are a significant labor source for Alabama agri-businesses and food processing industries. The key question for this dissertation is: Why did the poultry processing industry, which has high populations of Latino employees and a significant industrial presence in Alabama, stay publicly silent despite a predictable impact on their labor supply? This qualitative analysis used the lens of the circuits of power model to interrogate this question. The findings indicate that Alabama poultry processors found themselves susceptible to the same opportunities and challenges as any other social actor confronted with the racialized, politicized, and historically contingent challenges facing Latino labor in Alabama. In other words, these business actors were fully socially embedded actors within Alabama. I demonstrate that individual residents, relevant associations, Alabama's politicians, and even the poultry processors themselves never fully realized the political vulnerability of their particular embeddedness until it was too late for poultry processing employers to publicly act to protect their Latino employees from this unjust state law. I collected and triangulated data from multiple sources, including semi-structured interviews, media reports, state and national statistics, official websites, and legal documents. Through discourse and content analysis of this data, I developed a case study that demonstrates how Alabama's poultry processors were on a collision course with Alabama state politicians over immigration reform, but they never saw it coming. In so doing, I raise important questions about limits on the "real" power of economic actors for achieving self-interested business outcomes when those interests contest strongly-held social and cultural norms that are infused with a particular history of race, difference, and alterity in local spaces. I demonstrate that these limits raise questions for the democratic process and have consequences for economic actors with regard to corporate social responsibility claims as they pertain to labor justice. / Ph. D.

Religion is important to most African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans. Church attendance is positively associated with aspects of subjective well-being. However, research concerning the influence of religiosity on African Americans' and Afro-Caribbeans' subjective well-being is scarce. Research into whether measures other than church attendance is positively linked to measures of subjective well-being is thin. In addition, investigations into which mechanisms shape religion's impact on subjective well-being for both groups are also lacking. Next, investigations into whether religiosity buffers the influence of stressors on subjective well-being is limited. To address these concerns this three-part study examined the relationship among race/ethnicity, dimensions of religiosity, psychological and social resources, stressors, and subjective well-being for African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans. I used data from the National Survey of American Life (NSAL; Jackson et al. 2004) to conduct my investigation. Collectively these studies address the following overarching research questions: Is religiosity (organizational religious involvement and non-organizational religious involvement) associated with better subjective well-being for both African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans? Does religious social support mediate the relationship between religiosity and subjective well-being? Does racial discrimination adversely impact subjective well-being for African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans? Does religiosity buffer the adverse impact of racial discrimination on subjective well-being for both groups? Does religiosity interact with financial stress to influence subjective well-being? Does self-esteem mediate any buffering effects of religiosity on this relationship? Results showed that organizational religious involvement was positively associated with African American and Afro-Caribbean's subjective well-being. Non-organizational religious involvement had no association with most measures (Only position on the life ladder). Organizational religious involvement benefited happiness, life satisfaction, and position on life ladder more for Afro-Caribbean immigrants than African Americans and U.S born Afro-Caribbeans. Religious social support partially mediated the relationships between organizational religious involvement and life satisfaction and position on the life ladder for African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans. Organizational religious involvement fully mediated the relationship between organizational religious involvement and self-rated mental health for both groups. Next, organizational religious involvement did not help protect subjective well-being against the negative effects of racial discrimination for African Americans. Organizational religious involvement alleviated the negative impact of racial discrimination on happiness more for Afro-Caribbean non-immigrants and the other two groups. In addition, organizational religious involvement buffered the negative effect of racial discrimination on being on a better position on the life ladder more for Afro-Caribbean immigrants than their counterparts. Finally, organizational religious involvement was associated with less adverse effects of financial stress on subjective well-being. Organizational religious involvement buffered the deleterious effect of financial stress on subjective well-being by protecting self-esteem. / Ph. D.

Despite the guidance provided by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's manual, which encourages workplaces to create policies that respect racial hair texture differences, hair-based discrimination still exists in workplace appearance policies. When Black women contest this discrimination in courts, presiding judges dismiss their racial claims by decoupling hair from the body as a racial signifier and reducing it to an aesthetic choice. While court decisions and workplace policies contend that Black women's hair's mutability separates it from immutable bodily racial markers, the words of Black women tell a different story. This study uses Black feminism qualitative inquiry to understand the meaning of natural hair and hairstyles from Black women themselves through semi-structured interviews of 16 Black women professionals who wear natural hair and hairstyles in the workplace. Results show that Black women's workplace experiences challenge the courts' assumption of Black women's hair as solely an aesthetic choice. By listening to Black women, we find that choosing to wear natural hair and hairstyles in the workplace is an embodied experience, one that makes their Black and female bodies hypervisible in white space and illuminates the systems of oppression at work within workplace appearance policies and practices that impact Black women's professional success. This study illustrates that white institutional spaces are not only racialized but gendered; that Black women have developed a strategy to combat conformity and embrace authenticity in the workplace, which I call presentability politics; and that using hair as a conduit, Black women practice Black feminist love ethic to reflect a love for self while welcoming others to also express themselves freely in the workplace.

Thesis advisor: Patrick Proctor / In this dissertation, I discuss how North Korean migrants and their children reflect on their migratory narratives and construct memories and postmemories vis-à-vis their North Korean heritage. The North Korean migration context has primarily centered on women (Sung & Cho, 2018), labeling them as Confucian communist mothers (North Korea), trafficked wives (China), smuggled refugees (Southeast Asian countries), and finally, unsettled settlers (South Korea) across their migration trajectories (Song, 2013). Considering the trafficking of North Korean women to rural Chinese men after crossing the border, and their subsequent experiences of human trafficking, forced marriage, and forced pregnancy (Kim, 2012, 2014, 2020), it is significant to understand how the children who were born to North Korean mothers make sense of their heritage. With this, I foregrounded the intergenerational transmission of family memories as a critical vehicle to examine how bi/multilingual North Korean migrants and their children construct identity and belonging across time and space. I found that the children mobilize multiple linguistic and cultural repertoires to understand varying narratives that run across multiple resources from family, school, and digital platforms to construct a multifaceted understanding of North Korean heritage. I also found that mothers seek a nuanced perspective on migration, challenging the reductionist approach that portrays them solely as impoverished victims by sharing personal and cultural memories in various contexts. By highlighting the evolving culture of memory construction, I argue that North Korean mothers and their children navigate, re-imagine, and re-construct the understanding of ethnic identity through shared narratives and literacy practices, often mediated by digital technology and cultural knowledge. This dissertation contributes to the field by focusing on the dynamic process of intergenerational transmission of memory between North Korean mothers and their children who live across multiple borders. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teaching, Curriculum, and Society.

This research seeks to grasp the effect that trust in algorithm word has on the decisions made by hiring managers when it comes to selecting candidates. Specifically, this research will focus on whether trust in algorithms affects how much emphasis hiring managers put on important traits such as Experience, Education, and Qualifications. Ultimately, the goal of this research is to assess whether algorithm formulas or traditional assessment methods are currently producing better hires for organizations. Understanding the impact of trust in algorithms will help determine which method is best for employers to use moving forward. Also, how managers cope with bias and what role they play during the hiring selection. The data collected from the experiment will help identify and analyze Artificial Intelligence's impact on hiring managers' decisions. The study will also use the data from the experiment to test the hypothesis. Ultimately, this will help us to determine if Artificial Intelligence can reduce bias in the recruitment process and provide employers with more accurate insights into applicants' abilities. This study is expected to lead to more efficient and effective use of Artificial Intelligence in recruitment while helping employers make more informed decisions. We hope this research will pave the way for a more equitable hiring process by reducing bias and providing an objective evaluation of applicants' abilities. By having such a variety of diversity in Industries, Race and Gender, this research is a piece of real world that every employer can replicate for their hiring or training employees. We look forward to seeing how AI can improve the recruitment process. By accurately assessing applicants and considering their abilities, employers can make informed decisions that benefit both applicants and employers. / Business Administration/Human Resource Management