abstract: During the 1980s hundreds of thousands of Central American refugees streamed into the United States and Canada in the Central American Refugee Crisis (CARC). Fleeing homelands torn apart by civil war, millions of Guatemalans, Nicaraguans and Salvadorans fled northward seeking a safer and more secure life. This dissertation takes a "bottom-up" approach to policy history by focusing on the ways that "ground-level" actors transformed and were transformed by the CARC in Canada and the United States. At the Mexico-US and US-Canada borders Central American refugees encountered border patrol agents, immigration officials, and religious activists, all of whom had a powerful effect on the CARC and were deeply affected by their participation at the crisis. Using government archives, news media articles, legal filings and oral history this study examines a series of events during the CARC. Highlighting the role of "ground level" actors, this dissertation uses three specific case studies to look at how individuals, small groups, and a border town transformed and were transformed by the Central American Refugee Crisis. It argues that (#1) the CARC deeply affected the lives of those who participated in it, and (#2) the actors' interpretation and negotiation of, as well as resistance to, refugee policy changed the shape and outcomes of the Central American Refugee Crisis. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. History 2014

This [Temple] is an illegal construction, a typical case of land-grabbing. People do this to get power and earn money. This is not the right type of temple [...] 99% of the temples are constructed illegally [...]. The people don’t build houses but temples because they know that in this case no one can do anything against it and they can simultaneously earn money with it. Behind the shrine they can build their house in peace. All this happens because people are uneducated.'1 This statement by a top bureaucrat in the Bhopal administration summarises a widely felt sentiment among urban planners in India. For many bureaucrats, temples are nuisances, traffic obstructions, acts of landgrabbing, or means of political assertion that contribute to inter-religious tensions. By contrast, builders, trustees or worshippers defend temples as spaces of divine manifestation, as responding to religious needs and providing space for religious festivals and community activity. In this article, I use the case study of the establishment of a controversial goddess temple in Bhopal to shed light on a fundamental rift between two ideal-type approaches to the city – as a secular place and as religious territory. This is an abiding theme of my research on urban temples, which was undertaken in Bhopal, the capital city of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, over a total of twenty months between 1995 and 2001.2

Islamophobia and misconceptions or negative portrayal of Muslims have led Muslims in Western societies being discriminated by people who hold religious and racial prejudice. Against this backdrop, Muslim communities in Britain run a national campaign called “Visit My Mosque”. This thesis explores whether the campaign follows the three variables of social movements: political opportunities, mobilising structures, and framing processes to take shape and emerge. Close examination to data, collected from interviews with four Muslim activists, reveals themes which point to the variables. The regional political context in Europe following the terrorists attack at the office of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris triggers activists in Britain to launch the “Visit My Mosque” campaign. The political climate provides an opportunity for Muslims to take collective action. The pressure on Muslim communities, as a result of Islamophobia and negative portrayal of Muslims by some sections of the media, provides narratives to transform grievances into action. And finally, the campaign emerges due to the presence of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) which facilitates the campaign and provides support to networks of participating mosques. These findings may offer more understanding into the study of social movements in general and religious activism in particular.

Progressive religious leaders are playing an increasingly important role in the effort to combat climate change. Through a combination of unstructured in-depth interviews and primary source analysis, this thesis highlights nine U.S. religious leaders from various denominations of Christianity, Judaism and Islam who are actively involved in working on climate issues. Drawing on literature in social movement theory, I explore how clergy are uniquely influential in climate issues because of the organizational advantage and moral authority they hold through their positions as religious leaders, granting them the ability to highlight social justice implications of climate change with distinctive legitimacy. Clergy engage in climate issues through a number of tactics and myriad activities spanning three domains: their congregations, the climate movement, and policy circles. While religious leaders are imbued with moral authority that allows them to speak powerfully on the social justice implications of climate change, they are also limited in a number of ways precisely because they are working within a religious context.