This is a project that takes inequality as its starting point to ask not why it persists in all its myriad forms, but rather how we might better understand its resiliency in order to re-orient our responses. It asks how we can re-imagine one another and work across asymmetrical divides in ways that move us towards substantial forms of social justice, actively disallowing the entrenchment of hierarchical valuing systems, and how we can engage with literature as part of reconfiguring ‘equality’ in the process. These questions are traced through Indigenous women’s literatures in Canada and black South African women’s literatures as sites of deeply textured resistance and re-imagined relationality. My analysis focuses on select texts from the 1980s to present in two primary archives: from Indigenous Canada, The Book of Jessica: A Theatrical Transformation (Maria Campbell in collaboration with Linda Griffiths) and Monkey Beach (Eden Robinson); and from South Africa, Mother to Mother (Sindiwe Magona) and Coconut (Kopano Matlwa). I use conversation as my methodological and thematic compass for seeking modes of enabling comprehension across perniciously unequal systems of making meaning and considering the possibilities for transformative knowledge production and textual interpretation at sites of unequal intersubjective exchange. I employ an uneasy comparative practice that I base on horizontal forms of juxtaposition within conversational structures, and I argue that conversation’s generative instability and risky uncertainty open onto hopeful possibilities for transformative change. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This project examines a small selection of the literatures by Indigenous women writers in Canada and black South African women writers to conceptualize anti-oppressive approaches to working across differences in both literary/scholarly and activist/lived contexts. It uses conversation as a critical methodology for engaging four primary texts and practicing an uneasy comparative method based on horizontal forms of juxtaposition rather than vertical relations of evaluative power: Mother to Mother (Sindiwe Magona) and The Book of Jessica (Maria Campbell and Linda Griffiths); and Coconut (Kopano Matlwa) and Monkey Beach (Eden Robinson). The overall aim is to re-imagine forms of engaging across difference along a range of registers – racialization, gender, nation, class, language, and geographical location – that create conditions for more expansive and substantive forms of social justice than are currently visible. The project draws on feminist, Indigenous, postcolonial, critical race, and related areas of scholarship with an orientation towards social justice.

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Desis and Racial Minority Politics: Disrupting Assumptions of Ethnoracial Solidarity: Current sociological analyses of Desi political interests are incomplete because they gravitate toward flattened identity-based, and electoral-based, understandings of ethnoracial groups. This study examines the political agendas and campaigns of four political organizations, located in New York City and Washington, D.C., with South Asian-origin members and constituents. These groups are 1) The Washington Leadership Program; 2) South Asian Americans Leading Together; and 3) Seva New York; and 4) Desis Rising Up and Moving. I collected qualitative data via in-person interviews (n=40) and participant observations (n=10) with members and organizational leaders, and at public events and programs. A key finding from this study is that South Asians are not a cohesive political force. The narratives demonstrate that the political agendas and activities of each organization undoubtedly shift and evolve in response to racializing moments (such as the events and aftermath of September 11, 2001). The data also illustrate that because the political interests of South Asian Americans get activated in subgroups, along the margins, and fragmentally, their agendas still cannot be captured through a shared ethnoracial or "panethnic" experience. While the desire for ethnoracial solidarity comes from an identification of common cause, the internal fragments – defined by issues of class, religion, gender, sexuality, nation of origin, immigration and citizenship status, and language – point to the difficulty of developing an authentic practice of intra-ethnic solidarity for Desis. Further, each organization's relationship to building alliances and coalitions cross-racially further delineate the fragmented nature of Desi political values. Based on the narratives from participants and leaders in these organizations, I make a case for why sociologists need to expand their theoretical lens for interpreting South Asian political agendas and locate Desi politicization along an “assimilation-to-racialization continuum” that intersects the paradigms of “assimilation” and “racialization” in conversation with one another. The categories between the “assimilation-to-racialization continuum” are as follows: “Wholehearted Assimilation (of Racial Minorities into the Mainstream Elite),” “Model Minority Assimilation (into "Honorary Whiteness”) ,” “Normalizing Minority Representation and Racial Diversity,” “Racial Justice and Progressive Inclusivity,” and “Empowering the Most Marginalized for Social Justice & Transformative Change.” Although this study reveals the specificity of an “assimilation-to-racialization continuum” and its application to the political lives of South Asian Americans, we can nevertheless think of ways that this model can be extended to other ethnic and racial groups in the U.S. I posit that we adopt the “assimilation-to-racialization continuum” to better understand how fragmented ethnoracial communities engage the political sphere. / Sociology

As Skolverket (2022b) highlights, reading fiction novels can develop students’ understanding of both themselves and others, as well as challenge new ways of thinking about the world. This study aims to examine how racialized characters and multicultural encounters are portrayed in four chosen young adult novels, and to discuss their didactic potential. To accomplish this, the young adult novels were chosen through asking Swedish teachers what young adult novels they used. The method used is a qualitative thematic text analysis. Moreover, the material has been analyzed through two main themes: Racialized who are observed and Racialized who observe. In addition, three subthemes have been subject to our analysis: exclusion as feeling and action, social relations and the importance of place. Further, the theoretical basis of the study is based on concepts which include multiculturalism, racialization, representation, the Other, and recognition. Accordingly, the results suggest that racialized characters are often portrayed as the deviant and exotic Other, and this is done through clear as well as subtle mental and linguistic representations, which reinforce the multicultural encounters characterized by power structures. Finally, we discussed their didactic potential, such as the advantages of the double perspective and counter-stories, in fostering students’ understanding and empathy towards all cultural identities.

My research studies immigrants’ learning experiences as socially organized practices. Informed by the sociocultural approach of learning and institutional ethnography, I treat learning as a material and relational phenomenon. I start by examining how fourteen Chinese immigrants learn to fit into the engineering market in Canada. I then trace the social discourses and relations that shape immigrants’ learning experiences, particularly their changing perceptions and practices and personal and professional investments. I contend that immigrants’ learning is produced through social processes of differentiation that naturalize immigrants as a secondary labour pool, which is dismissible and desirable at the same time. My investigation unfolds around four areas of learning. The first is related to immigrants’ self-marketing practices. I show that core to immigrants’ marketing strategies is to speak to the skill discourse or employers’ skill expectations at the “right” time and place. The skill discourse, I argue, is culturally-charged and class-based. It cloaks a complex of hiring relations where “skill” is discursively constructed and differentially invoked to preserve the privilege and power of the dominant group. The second area is immigrants’ work-related learning. I find that workplace training is part of the corporate agenda to organize work and manage workers. Amid this picture, workers’ opportunity to access corporate sponsorship for professional development is contingent on their membership within the engineering community. To expand their professional space, the immigrants resorted to learning and consolidating their knowledge in codes and standards, which serve as a textual organizer of engineering work. The third area is related to workplace communication. My participants reported an individualistic communication ‘culture’, which celebrates individual excellence and discourages close interpersonal relations. Such a perception, I argue, obscures the gender, race and class relations that privilege white and male power. It also leaves out the organizational relations, such as the project-based deployment of the engineering workforce that perpetuate individualistic communicative practices. My last area of investigation focuses on immigrants’ efforts to acquire Canadian credentials and professional licence. Their heavy learning loads direct my attention to the ideological and administrative licensure practices that valorize Canadian credentials and certificates to the exclusion of others.

My research studies immigrants’ learning experiences as socially organized practices. Informed by the sociocultural approach of learning and institutional ethnography, I treat learning as a material and relational phenomenon. I start by examining how fourteen Chinese immigrants learn to fit into the engineering market in Canada. I then trace the social discourses and relations that shape immigrants’ learning experiences, particularly their changing perceptions and practices and personal and professional investments. I contend that immigrants’ learning is produced through social processes of differentiation that naturalize immigrants as a secondary labour pool, which is dismissible and desirable at the same time. My investigation unfolds around four areas of learning. The first is related to immigrants’ self-marketing practices. I show that core to immigrants’ marketing strategies is to speak to the skill discourse or employers’ skill expectations at the “right” time and place. The skill discourse, I argue, is culturally-charged and class-based. It cloaks a complex of hiring relations where “skill” is discursively constructed and differentially invoked to preserve the privilege and power of the dominant group. The second area is immigrants’ work-related learning. I find that workplace training is part of the corporate agenda to organize work and manage workers. Amid this picture, workers’ opportunity to access corporate sponsorship for professional development is contingent on their membership within the engineering community. To expand their professional space, the immigrants resorted to learning and consolidating their knowledge in codes and standards, which serve as a textual organizer of engineering work. The third area is related to workplace communication. My participants reported an individualistic communication ‘culture’, which celebrates individual excellence and discourages close interpersonal relations. Such a perception, I argue, obscures the gender, race and class relations that privilege white and male power. It also leaves out the organizational relations, such as the project-based deployment of the engineering workforce that perpetuate individualistic communicative practices. My last area of investigation focuses on immigrants’ efforts to acquire Canadian credentials and professional licence. Their heavy learning loads direct my attention to the ideological and administrative licensure practices that valorize Canadian credentials and certificates to the exclusion of others.

On note de nos jours une intensification, aux États-Unis, de l’usage de la race en santé publique, une idée qui est parfois rejetée dans la mesure où elle est associée à des pratiques controversées. Les races sont vues, dans ce contexte, comme le produit du racisme, une technologie du pouvoir de l’État moderne qui a consisté à fragmenter l’humanité pour permettre les colonisations. C'est ainsi que la race a été prise en charge par le discours pour marquer la différence, discours qui est constitué d'un ensemble hétérogène de dispositifs, des institutions, des énoncés scientifiques, des normes et des règles. Le racisme s’est développé en parallèle avec l'affirmation d'un pouvoir sur la vie visant à assurer la gestion des corps et des populations, notamment par le biais des pratiques de santé publique. Cette thèse s'appuie sur une étude ethnographique réalisée sur un corpus de documents de la santé publique parus aux États-Unis et issus de bureaux fédéraux et d’une importante revue spécialisée dans le domaine sanitaire, et qui ont été publiés entre 2001 et 2009. Cette étude a analysé la manière dont la race est représentée, produite comme objet de connaissance, et régulée par les pratiques discursives dans ces documents. Les résultats confirment que le discours sur la race varie au cours du temps. Toutefois, les résultats indiquent la relative permanence en santé publique d'un régime racialisé de représentation qui consiste à identifier, à situer et à opposer les sujets et les groupes à partir de labels standardisés. Ce régime est composé d'un ensemble de pratiques représentationnelles qui, couplées aux techniques disciplinaires et à l’idée de culture, aboutissent à la caractérisation et à la formation d’objets racialisés et à des stéréotypes. De plus, cet ensemble d’opérations qui fabrique la racialisation, a tendance, avec la sanitarisation et la culturalisation, à naturaliser la différence, à reproduire l’ordre symbolique et à constituer les identités raciales. Par ailleurs, la racialisation apparaît tiraillée entre un pouvoir sur la vie et un pouvoir sur la mort. Enfin, cette étude propose une alternative postraciale qui envisage la constitution des groupes humains de manière fluide et déterritorialisée. / At present one can note an intensification of the usage of race in public health in the United States, an idea that is sometimes rejected because of its association with controversial practices. Races are viewed, in this context, as the product of racism, a technology of power of the modern State that consisted of fragmenting humanity to permit colonisations. Thus, race has been established within the discourse to mark difference, discourse that consists of a heterogeneous ensemble of apparatuses, institutions, scientific statements, norms and rules. Racism developed concomitantly with the affirmation of power over life aimed at ruling out bodies and populations through public health practices among others. This thesis is based on an ethnographic study of a corpus of public health documents in the United States from federal Government offices and a major public health journal published between 2001 and 2009. This study analyzed the ways in which race is represented, produced as object of knowledge, and regulated by discursive practices in these documents. The results confirm that the discourse on race varies throughout time. Hence, results indicate the relative permanence of a racialized regime of representation that consists of identifying, situating and opposing subjects and groups based on standardized labels. This regime constitutes an ensemble of representational practices which, together with disciplinary techniques and the use of culture as an idea, lead to the characterization and formation of racialized objects and stereotypes. Also, these operations that fabricate racialization, tend, together with medicalization and culturalization, to naturalize difference, reproduce the symbolic order, and constitute racial identities. On the other hand, racialization appears to be torn between a power over life and a power over death. Finally, this study suggests a post-racial alternative that envisages human group constitution as fluid and deterritorialized.

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No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseMCS.pdf: 2997068 bytes, checksum: 7f84184a2f58192e394eaee3ae05cdec (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-09-06 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Cette thèse analyse la relation entre les pratiques policières quotidiennes et la conformation avec la police militaire de l'Etat de São Paulo, responsable pour mantenir l’ordre. Issu d’entretiens et d’analyses de données officielles, le présent travail cherche à comprendre comment les policiers, lors de leurs opérations, sélectionnent les personnes qui subiront les actions de la police et, par conséquent, celles du système de justice criminelle. Partant de là, il a été possible de comprendre, de manière plus particulier, quels sont les publics et les crimes les plus surveillés par les policiers militarisés et, d'une manière globale, les caractéristiques du modèle de police ostensible de São Paulo. L'objectif des opérations policières ostensibles est de prendre en flagrant délit des suspects criminels, ce qui confère à la Police Militaire la responsabilité de sélectionner et « d’expulser » des rues tous ceux que les policiers identifient comme des criminels. Cela autorise la Police Militaire à avoir recours notamment à trois actions : a) l’arrestation ou b) l’élimination des personnes identifiées comme des criminelles et c) le « bon sens » du policier en tant qu’outil pour distinguer les criminels et les « bons citoyens ». Une des conclusions de cette recherche repose sur le constat d’un ample usage du « bon sens » policier lors des opérations de vigilance ostensible, ainsi que de son aspect racial. De ce fait, le « bon sens » policier, au même titre que la létalité et les arrestations, est devenu le responsable de l’accumulation de désavantages pour la population jeune et noire, en ce qui concerne le droit à la vie en sécurité ; en effet on observe que ce groupe risque beaucoup plus d’aller en prison que le reste de la population. De plus, nous avons constaté que pendant les vingt dernières années la politique sécuritaire menée dans São Paulo s’est focalisé sur le type de vigilance ostensible décrit ci-dessus, et ce en dépit de l’échec de l’opération pour ce qui concerne la diminution du nombre de crimes contre les biens à São Paulo. / This thesis analyzes the relation between daily police practices and the conformation with ostensible policing run by the Military Police of São Paulo State. This work started from interviews and analysis of official data to understand how the Military Police, during the ostensible policing, selects the people who will suffer the police approach and therefore the prosecution of the criminal justice system. Thenceforth it was possible to understand specifically which public and which crimes were most closely watched by the military police and, in an embracing way, the characteristics of the São Paulo ostensible policing model. The purpose of ostensible policing is to catch criminal suspects, implying to the Military Police the responsibility to select and remove from the streets those who the police itself identifies as “bandits”. It is also observed that this framework does not configure a public security policy, but a crime and violence management, marked by the "war" against certain types of crimes that are available to the Military Police, especially with three features: a) imprisonment; b) elimination of those identified as “bandits”, and c) the “police scent” as a differentiation tool to identify "bandits" and "good citizens". One of the study highlights is that the wide use of the “police scent” by the military police which has racial aspects in its composition added to the lethality and imprisonment, became responsible for the accumulation of disadvantages for the young black population, referring to the right to secure life and a higher risk of being arrested for property offenses in relation to the rest of the population. In all, it became clear that in the last twenty years there is an insistence from the state public security in an ostensible policing with such characteristics, even in the face of failure in the decrease of numbers of property offenses in the state of São Paulo. / A tese analisa a articulação entre práticas policiais cotidianas e a conformação do policiamento ostensivo militarizado protagonizado pela Polícia Militar. O presente trabalho partiu de entrevistas e análise de dados oficiais da segurança pública paulista para compreender como os policiais, durante o policiamento ostensivo, selecionam as pessoas que sofrerão as investidas da polícia e, por conseguinte, do sistema de justiça criminal. A partir daí foi possível entender, de forma específica, quais são os públicos e os crimes mais vigiados pelos policiais militares e, de forma abrangente, as características do modelo de policiamento ostensivo paulista. Constatou-se que o objetivo do policiamento ostensivo é flagrar suspeitos criminais, o que incute à PM a responsabilidade de selecionar e “retirar” das ruas aqueles que os policiais identificam como “bandidos”. Para tal estão disponíveis à PM, sobretudo, três recursos: a) o aprisionamento ou b) a eliminação daqueles identificados como bandidos e c) o tirocínio policial enquanto ferramenta para diferenciar “bandidos” e “cidadãos de bem”. Uma das conclusões da pesquisa é a constatação da ampla utilização do tirocínio pelos policiais que atuam no policiamento ostensivo e de seu aspecto racializado; isto significa que, para a fundamentação da suspeita policial, são utilizados marcadores raciais. Desta forma, o tirocínio, ao lado da letalidade policial e do aprisionamento se tornaram responsáveis pelo acúmulo de desvantagens para a população jovem e negra, no que tange ao direito à vida segura e a um maior risco de serem presos por crimes patrimoniais em relação ao restante da população. No mais, constatou-se que nos últimos vinte anos há uma insistência por parte da segurança pública paulista num policiamento ostensivo com tais características, mesmo diante do insucesso na diminuição no número de crimes patrimoniais no estado de São Paulo.

This study’s aim was to identify what racialized adoptees experience as strategies and support in relation to racially differentiating expressions (racism). Data was collected using qualitative interviews with five racialized transracially adopted adults. The transcriptions from the interviews were analyzed via thematic analysis. The theoretical approach was based in critical race theory and postcolonial theory. Identified strategies was modification of the body, use of adoptionhood, identity, silence, violence and knowledge of racism. Identified sources of support was other racialized people, white people with special relations to the respondents, the adoptive parents, the LGBTQ-community, separatist rooms for people of colour and the internet. White people are described as a particular group with less ability to give support. The study’s results show that racialized adoptees have little support in their immediate environment and have to develop strategies mostly on their own.

This research explores the lived experiences of South Asians college students. This research, through a qualitative study that is rooted in the philosophy of phenomenology, explores the essence South Asians’ identity formation. Qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews with South Asian college students. The data analysis was under a phenomenological lens that centered the lived experiences and the essence of these experiences in the results. Seven themes emerged from this phenomenological study: negotiating bicultural identity, model minority expectations, meaningful impact of religious spaces, understandings of intra-community tensions, racialization of Islamophobia, understandings of South Asian identity and efficacy of Asian American identity. This study’s findings provide a foundation to build a more expansive framework for understanding the identity formation of South Asians.