This thesis advances the conceptual understanding of contemporary expressions of family migration, drawing upon the case study of Old Town, Hastings, in the South East of England. Based on rich, empirical findings from semi-structured interviews, content analyses of media sources, and household surveys, it is shown that flows of family migrants into Old Town are re-focusing attention on previously under-stated motives for migration. Furthermore, it is contended that findings signal the growing importance of emerging appeals, such as more family-friendly employment practices, enhanced qualities-of-life, and alternative lifestyles ‘by the sea’. It is argued that the findings disrupt conventional conceptualisations of family migration, and illuminate more complex and complicated forms of mobility.

Whilst scholarship has shown that conflict between the major churches and the National Socialist regime was inevitable, there has been little written on the relationship between the Nazis and the Christian sects. This work takes five of the largest and most representative sects in Gennany and examines what happened to them during the Third Reich. Two introductory chapters set the scene. Chapter One examines the complex and often contradictory views of the Nazis on religion and summarises the position of the major churches. Chapter Two outlines the history and teaching of the five sects and introduces those Nazi government agencies ith which the sects caine into contact. The central body of the work is devoted to an analysis of the fate of the sects. The Jehovah's Witnesses are accorded two chapters, one discussing their experiences in the Reich and one outlining their life in concentration camps. Christian Science, Seventh Day Adventism, the New Apostolic Church and Mormonism are each discussed in sepaxAate chapters. Of the five sects, one was banned, one survived untouched for eight years and three suffered little or no harassment. Nevertheless, it is clear that the Nazis were suspicious of all sects and only accepted a modus vivendi with reluctance. Those sects who enjoyed a temporary co-existence had more to offer than just a loyal and patriotic membership, for all managed to convince the government that they were useful. This was done by financial or welfare contributions to the state, or by the use of foreign contacts, and all had to implement positive and carefully worked out policies to ensure their survival. Each group's survival strategy was worked out according to its own criteria, based on its own history and theology. To the Witnesses, survival meant the preaching of God's word, whatever the personal costs. To others, it meant the safety of members and of the sect, even at the cost of some compromises. All the sects represented rival claimants to the loyalty and obedience properly due to the Nazi state and even with these compromises, it is likely that, had the war been won, what happened to the Witnesses would have happened to all sects in Germany.

This thesis examines agricultural and agrarian developments 1650-1850 in a region - south-west Lancashire - that was increasingly dominated by industry and large urban centres. The thesis is firmly located within two distinct historiographical traditions: 'agrarian capitalism' and 'agricultural revolution'. The debates encompassed by these concepts have been largely conducted around the development of arable agriculture. Large parts of the north and west of England have been peripheral to these debates and the models of agrarian development were not constructed with counties like Lancashire in mind. This thesis, therefore, offers a geographical corrective to the existing literature. Not surprisingly, the models are found wanting, and patterns of agrarian and agricultural developments in Lancashire follow a different path to arable counties in the English Midlands and East Anglia. Yet, agriculture in Lancashire did not stagnate and farmers and landlords were enclosing and improving land from at least the middle of the seventeenth century in a bid to increase productivity. However, change was much more pronounced from the last third of the eighteenth century, when population growth, industrial expansion, increasing market demand for food and the development of the transport infrastructure offered new opportunities to farmers. They responded in a way which suited the local economic and social setting. In terms of farm size, labour structure and land use, the farmers of south-west Lancashire fell outside contemporary (and subsequent) perceptions of best practice. Lancashire developed a highly specialised and productive agricultural system that was not predicated upon conventional agrarian capitalism and avoided many of the negative outcomes of the processes of agricultural revolution.

This study investigates creating antiracist spaces and determining what an antiracist sociohistorical geography looks like. I argue that an antiracist sociohistorical geography is always necessarily unfinished and in a state of becoming. I introduce as my study site a section of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, that was once a neighbourhood known as The Ward. At different times in the past, the land of this area was home to the Mississauga of the Credit First Nation, a Black community, a Jewish community, and a Chinese community. Through investigations of these historic racialized communities and through field site examination, I first document how current cultural representations within this space create racist exclusions. Next, through discussion of my experience with the Ontario Black History Society’s (OBHS) walking tour in and around this space, and through analysis of one-on-one interviews with OBHS representatives, I show the tour as creating starting points for developing antiracist geographies. Finally, by imagining the space devoid of racist exclusions, I illustrate what an antiracist sociohistorical geography might look like but also that the portrayal is a spatial and temporal moment and therefore unfinished. I combine an anti-essentialist antiracist historical methodology with critical discourse analysis and critical ethnography. My main finding is that inclusions of excluded racialized groups into dominant discourse can contribute to naming and perhaps troubling particular racisms, but do not automatically disrupt systems and structures that (re)create exclusions. To deconstruct these powers, antiracism must incorporate ongoing disruptions of dominance over space. My study shows the potential for shifting discursive meanings around racialized bodies in relation to each other and sociohistorical geographies they occupy. These shifts have implications for how sociohistorical spaces become forums of social studies and history education in everyday spaces and in schools, as people (re)learn to read bodies within sociohistorical spaces in antiracist ways.

Through a mixed thematic and chronological approach, this thesis attempts to place working-class anti-catholicism. within a broader social context whilst retaining. sight of the intricacies of the subject itself. Chapter One describes the city of Liverpool in the nineteenth century, with a view to providing not just a backdrop to the thesis but Pýso revealing some of the forces permanently exerting an influence on working-class opinion. The thesis argues that the most important of these forces was economic, in the form of intense rivalry for limited resources between Protestant English and Catholic Irish working people (Chapter 3). The sectarian dimension to this struggle is provided by the long-term popularity of an anti-Catholic agitation, in this case, the Papal Aggression. It finds that anti. -Catholic, in various intensities existed throughout the social classes of nineteenth century Liverpool, though its manifestations varied from class for class and between Protestant Sects. In Chapter Seven it is later suggested that the middle and upper-class deserted sectarianism leaving the working-class alone in their anxiety and outrage by the end of the century. In Chapter Five the physical manifestations of working-class anti-Catholicism are explored and it is argued that they fit into the mainstream picture of working-class leisure and middle-class respectability. Chapter Six suggests that a dual class and sectarian identity existed within the Protestant working-class which made any union with the social elite troublesome and even permitted Protestantism to be used as a vehicle for limited forms of class conflict whilst failing to prevent unity of industrial action across the sectarian divide. Chapter Seven reviews the development of anti-Catholicism as it shrinks in appeal between 1870 and 1914 to being a workingclass, Low Church or Nonconformist obsession.

The Windward Islands are vulnerable to a number of natural hazards. This thesis examines the possibilities for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in the Windward Islands. The Windward Islands offer a special case of “Island Vulnerability”. Island vulnerability is essentially defined as an increased probability in disaster events against what would be expected if vulnerability were to be measured against international levels of poverty, defined as Gross National Product per capita. There are three reasons for this namely the topography of islands, the site characteristics and the socio-economic setting. The topography is one where islands, largely of volcanic or coral origins, face multi-hazard experience particularly from flooding and storm surge. The site issue is that islands usually have a high ratio of coastline to land mass implying a relatively higher exposure to extreme events. The socio-economic conditions are peculiar to island including isolation, mono-agriculture and mono-industry essentially laid down by colonial experience, an absence of formal employment opportunities and weak capacity in local governance including the absence of NGOs. Though DRR has evolved over the last 20 years, some islands and communities remain more vulnerable than others. This research investigates the mainstreaming of DRR in the Windward Islands of Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines. The key issue researched was whether DRR could be effectively implemented at the community level. To address this issue, the research investigates the vulnerability and capacity of communities to hazards in the Windward Islands and suggests ways to reduce risk and build community resilience. The factors affecting vulnerability and capacity to hazards in the Anglophone Windward Islands were identified as a means of determining how to reduce risks and build resilience to hazards in the Windward Islands. Efforts to enhance community development and build resilience are not effective as they fail to address fully community needs. This research concluded that some communities are more vulnerable than others and a major contributor to their vulnerability is poverty. None of the methods used in this research are unique to island vulnerability analysis as they have been applied elsewhere in DRR. What is unique is the scoping of the application of these methods to gain an overview of DRR possibilities. What emerges as a conclusion is the limited impact of top down interventions, especially those interventions that try to address poverty alleviation to lower risk. This is essentially because the poor themselves barricade their own coping mechanisms against external interventions, thus building a wall against external help. Building on local organisational capacity, including religious groups, can help address this problem. Research in this area is limited for the Anglophone Windward Islands and this thesis on vulnerability of household and communities will contribute to knowledge in this field.

The City of Claremont, California—a suburb of Los Angeles and the home of the Claremont Colleges—stands out as disproportionately non-Hispanic white in comparison to neighboring cities and counties. This research employs the concept of racialization of place to examine how Claremont has been racialized as “white.” Through an analysis of land-use regulations and descriptions of the city, this research analyzes the structural and ideological processes that racialized the city. The city government used exclusionary zoning ordinances and private citizens employed racially restrictive housing covenants to maintain Claremont’s majority-white status. The city government and local organizations and businesses also implicitly assert Claremont’s white identity through maintaining that Claremont residents are unique among the area and through relating Claremont to New England. The city government and local organizations also frame the city as peaceful and principled, which is typical of places racialized as “white.” This research focuses on the process of Claremont acquiring a “white” identity, but further research should examine how this identity facilitates disproportionate resource capture.

This thesis critically examines governmental responses to physical and social disorder in inner-city neighbourhoods through urban regeneration policies. Through an exploration of historical, social and political narratives on urban areas, the thesis identifies that the concept of dangerous places and faces has been a dominant discourse and feature in Britain for the past 200 years. Using Chapeltown, Leeds as a case study, this thesis explores the urban regeneration interventions in this area. Chapeltown is selected because it is, historically, a community with a high population of minority ethnic people and immigrants. Thus, ‘race’ and racism, and a critique of public policies as they affect UK Black and minority ethnic communities are the primary concerns of this thesis. It is argued that the tools of urban regeneration aimed at tackling physical and social disorder such as partnership, participation and community involvement/engagement are mere ‘rhetorical devices’ that are out of sync with normative standards of citizenship and fairness. The thesis has adopted a case study research methodology. It argues that for social and physical disorder to be tackled, there is the need to consider how the concept of citizenship should be the central issue in urban regeneration policies. The thesis concludes that the processes that result in some urban neighbourhoods being considered ‘bad’, ‘dangerous’ or ‘criminal’ must be understood as part of a broader set of political-economic forces which shapes the spatial distribution of urban populations and, in particular, the ‘placing’ of the poor in urban space. Hence there is the need to examine the social and physical disorder using the lens of citizenship.

The number of social housing developments in the city of Campo Grande, Brazil, has undergone a significant growth over the past few years. Between 2014 and 2016, averages of 3,000 new homes per year have been constructed in the city, which has around 860,000 inhabitants. However, there seems to be a mismatch between the provision and residents’ needs. This research investigates the history of housing for the lower income people in Brazil; and its development in the city. The theoretical perspective focuses on the concept of community and the nature of home; and the data collection analyses whether these are being delivered in practice. The studies on the history of housing for lower income people in Brazil and its development in Campo Grande identified top down strategies adopted by the government and local authority. By contrast, the investigations of community and home development demonstrate that the residents’ views should be incorporated into any development strategy. The data collection was based in six social housing estates in the city, built between 2011 and 2015, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The first stage was an investigation of documentation regarding social housing programmes and the local regulations. The second phase involved questionnaires with 464 residents; and the final part centred on interviews with heads of departments in the local authority and 36 residents. The data collection discovered issues regarding a lack of community facilities, and inflexibility in the layout and materials of the houses; especially regarding alterations and extensions. The outcome of the thesis is a set of Guidelines for the Development of Social Housing within the My House My Life Programme, to supplement the local regulations in Campo Grande. They provide guidance from the layout of the estate, to the design of the houses. They have been evaluated by the local authority departments, who have responded positively, and stated that they are willing to incorporate them in future proposals.

In the 21st century, increasing demand for energy stimulated by high rates of economic development has pushed China to increase imports, leaving the country highly dependent on foreign energy sources. China’s energy security is therefore under threat from the constant risk of supply falling short of demand. Historically, various approaches have been proposed to attempt to resolve or, at least relieve, this security issue but those discussions focus on either competition or cooperation. The combined approach, co-opetition has been applied in business and this research has attempted to combine these two approaches when dealing with energy security issues, thus the original contribution of this research is to take a unique approach, combining the co-opetition approach with the added benefits of a traditional Chinese philosophy known as ‘Hehe culture’. In addition, the ‘Chinese characteristics’inherent in the energy security strategy, advocated by the Chinese government, has contributed a specific viewpoint in the academic field. Moreover, this research employs the PARTS model from game theory, an analytical tool originally applied in the field of business and economics, to build a framework for evaluating Chinese co-opetition in energy relations. Three case studies of China’s energy co-opetition with Japan, Russia and Africa are analysed according to the framework, revealing how co-opetition affects China’s energy security. The findings of this research include the prerequisites for successful co-opetition, and the value and function of incorporating Hehe culture into co-opetition. The research identifies the impact of thesen prerequisites on the strategic value of co-opetition, generating a new model for Chinese energy security, which will allow for accurate determination of the best approach to the game of energy co-opetition with different players.