In contrast to the municipalities across the United States that restrict migration and criminalize the presence of immigrants, Philadelphia is actively seeking to attract immigrants as a strategy to reverse the city’s limited economic and political importance caused by decades of deindustrialization and population loss. In 2010, the population of Philadelphia increased for the first time in six decades. This achievement, widely celebrated by the local government and in the press, was only made possible through increased immigration. This dissertation examines how efforts to attract migrants, through the creation of localized policy and institutions that facilitate incorporation, transform assertions of citizenship and the dynamics of race for Colombian migrants. The purpose of this research is to analyze how Colombians’ articulations of citizenship, and the ways they extend beyond juridical and legal rights, are enabled and constrained under new regimes of localized policy. In the dissertation, I examine citizenship as a set of performances and practices that occur in quotidian tasks that seek to establish a sense of belonging. Without a complex understanding of the effects of local migration policy, and how they differ from the effects of federal policy, we fail to grasp how Philadelphia’s promotion of migration has unstable and unequal effects for differentially situated actors. This becomes evermore salient as increased migration wrought through local policy efforts guarantees that Philadelphia will continue to uneasily shift away from its Black-White racial polarity. Second, I explore how the racialization of Colombians is transformed by the dynamics of localized policy in Philadelphia, where their experiences of marginalization as Latinos belies the construction of immigrants as a highly valued group, and shaped by the particularities of Colombian history, the imperial nature of US-Colombia relations, and shifting geopolitics among Latin American nations. The dissertation highlights how Colombians seek to meaningfully distinguish themselves from other Latinos by examining the ways changes in Latin America have shaped and continue to shape the politics of race in the US, and thus how Colombians navigate and produce the boundaries between groups. The dissertation contextualizes Colombian migration within three significant shifts in the contemporary US.: 1) the increasing attempts of states, municipalities and cities to craft their own immigration policies, specifically declining cities attempting to rebound from population loss and deindustrialization, 2) the emergence of Latinos as the largest demographic minority group and their increasing heterogeneity with respect to race, legal status, class and national origin and 3) heightened attention to citizenship as legal status and performances and practices of belonging. This research contributes to the theorization of racial formations and citizenship by providing critical information about local immigration policies as transforming intra- and inter-group relations, thus offering an analysis of Philadelphia as a new immigrant destination. / Anthropology

In this thesis, I examine the global implications of the "War on Terror" by exploring how China exploits the discourses of the "War on Terror" to justify the internment of Uyghur Muslims. In the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Chinese government is responsible for human rights abuses, violations, and genocide of Uyghur Muslims and other Turkic minority groups. In 2018, it was reported that approximately more than one million Uyghur Muslims and other Muslim minorities in China have disappeared and are subject to arbitrary detention, surveillance, forced labour, forced sterilization, and regulations which restrict religious and cultural expression in supposed "counter-extremism centers" allegedly committed to political indoctrination fighting terrorism (Human Rights Watch, 2021; United Nations Human Rights, 2018). This study explores the processes and practices used to deny the internment of the Uyghur Muslim population. I achieve this through my research question, which aims to explore: How the Chinese government manufactures and justifies its own "War on Terror" by suppressing Uyghur Muslims and simultaneously denying the use of internment camps? I analyzed pro-government national China Daily English newspaper articles from 2001-2020 using qualitative content analysis to answer this research question. As a result, my main argument is that the Chinese government has manufactured and exacerbated a domestic "terrorism" problem by exploiting the discourses of the "War on Terror" to justify its internment of Uyghur Muslims. Simultaneously, the Chinese government has produced a deflection campaign committed to diverting criticisms and denying the use of internment camps under the guise of the "War on Terror." I conclude this thesis by presenting the need for additional research to explore how other countries in the East might also suppress different racialized groups in the context of the "War on Terror."

This dissertation examines geographies of schooling in relation to how a group of new teachers in Canada conceptualize “inner city” schooling as a uniquely Canadian construct. The study uses a critical approach that explores issues of race, and their intersections with issues of gender, social class, and other identity markers. Seven new teachers graduating from a 2009-2010 teacher education program in the province of Ontario, Canada took part in this study. As a function of the inner city, the inner city school is problematized as a particular geographical space, complete with its own meanings. Results of this study indicate that new teacher conceptualizations of Canadian inner city schools are not uniform and coherent, but complex, contradictory, and dependent upon each individual teacher’s experiences with difference. Overall, participants demonstrated limited ability to speak to their own racial identities in relation to teaching in such schooling contexts. Because most participants learned to teach in predominantly White field-placement settings, they perceived race to be a non-issue and recognized it as a construct only if raced bodies were present. With respect to issues of gender, participants most often discussed what is often referred to as the feminization of teaching in elementary schools. However, there was a profound sense in which inner city schools were conceptualized as “male space” or as space from which female teachers needed protection. This was informed by a widespread conception that male teachers could more effectively manage inner city students. Classroom management emerged as an issue that concerned participants with the least experience with difference. Finally, there was a direct relationship between the theoretical approaches used by the teacher education program in discussing inner city schooling and individual teacher ability to articulate their pedagogical approaches to teaching in this milieu. / Thesis (Ph.D, Education) -- Queen's University, 2011-07-11 20:54:49.407

This thesis provides a complex understanding of the phenomenological experience of whiteness as a racial category. Based on theories of critical whiteness studies, intersectionality and (white) phenomenology, I conducted five semi-structured interviews with five white women about their understandings of their whiteness within a context of transnational travel. The interviews have been interpreted using thematic analysis, with the aim to show that whiteness is inherently relational and contextual, always in conjunction with Others and in interplay with the spatial context, while at the same time intrinsically related to other intersectional parts of the self. By making use of autoethnography as a methodology, my situated knowledge as a researcher was integrated within the entire thesis. The study has shown that whiteness never stands alone but is inherently relational, not only with racialized Others, but also with other intersections such as womanhood, which complexifies the experience and understanding of it. Moreover, whiteness is perceived as the most normalized standard from which everything different and other is measured by, while it serves as an invisible social category that can move through the world unnoticed. Consequently, the normality of whiteness creates a feeling of reassurance and comfort and thus keeps it in its place as the most normalized social category from which the world unfolds.