This thesis is about women in the international cocaine trade and in particular about their experiences as drug mules. This is the first comprehensive qualitative investigation based on the accounts of women and men who worked as drug mules and those who organise and manage trafficking cocaine by mule across international borders. Two explanations for women’s involvement in drug trafficking compete. The ‘feminisation of poverty’ thesis contends that women’s participation in the drug trade results from (and is a response to) their economic and social subordination. The ‘emancipation thesis’ contends that women’s participation in the drugs trade is an effect of women’s liberation. This thesis explores if and how women’s involvement in the drug trafficking (recruitment and ‘work’) is shaped by their gender. I interviewed 37 men and women drug traffickers imprisoned in Quito, Ecuador. This location was chosen due to the high numbers of women and men imprisoned for drug trafficking crimes. Respondents came from all levels of the drug trade and from different parts of the world. Data was collected and analysed using narrative analysis to understand the way in which discourses of victimhood were created in prison. This allowed for a sensitive interpretation of the meaning of victimhood and agency in respondents’ responses. The substantive section of the thesis examines two aspects of women’s involvement in drug trafficking in depth. The first section examines aspects of women’s recruitment into the drug trade as mules; the second section examines the work that mules do. This research finds that women’s participation in the international cocaine trade cannot be adequately understood through the lens of either victimisation or volition. The contexts in which men and women chose to work as a mule were diverse reflecting their varied backgrounds (nationality, age, experience, employment status, as well as gender). Furthermore, mules’ motivations reflected not only volition but also coercion and sometimes threat of violence. Although gender was a part of the context in which respondents became involved in mulework, it was not the only, or the most important aspect. Secondly, this research examined the nature of mule-work. Most mules (men and women) willingly entered a verbal contract to work as a drugs mule; nonetheless the context of ‘mule-work’ is inherently restrictive. Mules were subject to surveillance and management by their ‘contacts’ had few opportunities to have control or choice over their work. Collaboration, resistance and threat were often played out according to gendered roles and relationships but gender was not a determining factor. Nonetheless, respondents could and did find ways to negotiate resist and take action in diverse and creative ways. Prior research on the cocaine trade has ignored the importance of women’s participation or has considered it only in limited ways driven by gender stereotypes. Thus, this research addresses a significant gap in available evidence on women in the drug trade. This research also contributes to contemporary debates in theories of women’s offending which have centred on the role of victimisation and agency in relation to women’s offending.

Women who have been incarcerated are disadvantaged in many respects as they enter community (Pedlar, Arai, Yuen, & Fortune, 2008). When putting their lives back together upon release they typically face tremendous hardships which are often intensified by the absence of healthy and supportive relationships (Richie, 2001). Hannah-Moffatt (2000) identified several gender-specific barriers facing women in prison that impede their chances for inclusion once they enter community. Women in prison, she explained, are often poorly educated, unemployed, and many have survived some form of physical or sexual abuse. Furthermore, feelings of guilt, fear, anxiety, and alienation are often compounded when women are apprehended and sentenced. This combination of challenges tends to produce a group of women with low self-esteem who will have difficulty readjusting in the community and are at risk of being socially isolated and excluded (Hannah-Moffatt, 2000; Maidment, 2006; Pollack, 2008). Structural determinants and individual agency both lie at the heart of social inclusion (Dominelli, 2005; Lister, 2000). Often overlooked in the literature is the fact that women who have been incarcerated have agency and possess a capacity to resist, overcome oppression, and counteract exclusion. As I embarked on this research project, an emphasis on women’s capacity was both a starting point and rationale for adopting a participatory approach. Very little is known about how women’s experiences with inclusion or exclusion shape their entry process. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine inclusion from the perspective of women entering community after release from a federal prison. Using a feminist participatory action research (FPAR) approach guided by anti-oppressive research (AOR) as my theoretical framework, I asked women living in community in a region of southern Ontario and who had been incarcerated to come together to discuss ideas around inclusion and explore ways to foster a more inclusive environment. This research project was rooted in a concern for social justice. Hall (2005) argues that negotiating the discourse of inclusion and exclusion requires a critical re-imagining of inclusion as social justice. Consequently, this study was designed to encourage dialogue and a critical re-imagining of what inclusion means among women entering community after incarceration, with an emphasis on collaborative learning. Plans and strategies were shaped and altered based on decisions of the research team and resulted in the development of three distinct phases of research involving team meetings, individual conversations, and engagement in photovoice. Data explored in each phase of the project, as well as my own reflexive knowledge acquired through ongoing critical self-reflection, provided insight into the complexities of difference, power, and identity. These findings are presented in four chapters beginning with a description of how the FPAR process based on principles of inclusion, participation, action, and social change unfolded. Then, themes were identified which revealed the swings of a FPAR process including: assumptions of collective identity and difference impede inclusion and participation, grappling with tensions around partnerships and power, and negotiating identity and resisting stigma. Findings also explored the contested nature of community and its role in inclusion. This chapter describes the kind of community women experienced before and after incarceration. Themes of feeling pushed out of community, being pulled into community, and negotiating issues of responsibility upon community entry highlight the ambiguous nature of community and social inclusion for women who have broken the law. Deep exclusion experienced by women who have been placed outside of community and sent to prison is arguably unparalleled, and this study was ultimately concerned with society’s tendency to exclude people based on difference. Experiences of inclusion/exclusion are often a result of normative social beliefs that construct difference as “less than” (Moosa-Mitha, 2005). Indeed when difference is viewed negatively, it often results in the exclusion and marginalization of those who are defined as the other (Woodward, 1997). Alternatively, social inclusion involves respect for differences and the removal of barriers to participate in public life (Salojee, 2005). When women in this study felt free to participate in the life of their community in ways that did not undermine their sense of self and their differences they were in the process of being included. Supportive relationships and judgment free spaces seemed to remove pressures for women to conform to dominant expectations of behaviour to gain acceptance. Findings from this study suggest we need to create space for difference and social inclusion to co-exist in community. This space would be one that centres difference, promotes social justice, values different forms and levels of participation, acknowledges that relationships grow and change over time, interrogates taken for granted assumptions of power and privilege, and emphasizes dialoguing through difference.

Women who have been incarcerated are disadvantaged in many respects as they enter community (Pedlar, Arai, Yuen, & Fortune, 2008). When putting their lives back together upon release they typically face tremendous hardships which are often intensified by the absence of healthy and supportive relationships (Richie, 2001). Hannah-Moffatt (2000) identified several gender-specific barriers facing women in prison that impede their chances for inclusion once they enter community. Women in prison, she explained, are often poorly educated, unemployed, and many have survived some form of physical or sexual abuse. Furthermore, feelings of guilt, fear, anxiety, and alienation are often compounded when women are apprehended and sentenced. This combination of challenges tends to produce a group of women with low self-esteem who will have difficulty readjusting in the community and are at risk of being socially isolated and excluded (Hannah-Moffatt, 2000; Maidment, 2006; Pollack, 2008). Structural determinants and individual agency both lie at the heart of social inclusion (Dominelli, 2005; Lister, 2000). Often overlooked in the literature is the fact that women who have been incarcerated have agency and possess a capacity to resist, overcome oppression, and counteract exclusion. As I embarked on this research project, an emphasis on women’s capacity was both a starting point and rationale for adopting a participatory approach. Very little is known about how women’s experiences with inclusion or exclusion shape their entry process. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine inclusion from the perspective of women entering community after release from a federal prison. Using a feminist participatory action research (FPAR) approach guided by anti-oppressive research (AOR) as my theoretical framework, I asked women living in community in a region of southern Ontario and who had been incarcerated to come together to discuss ideas around inclusion and explore ways to foster a more inclusive environment. This research project was rooted in a concern for social justice. Hall (2005) argues that negotiating the discourse of inclusion and exclusion requires a critical re-imagining of inclusion as social justice. Consequently, this study was designed to encourage dialogue and a critical re-imagining of what inclusion means among women entering community after incarceration, with an emphasis on collaborative learning. Plans and strategies were shaped and altered based on decisions of the research team and resulted in the development of three distinct phases of research involving team meetings, individual conversations, and engagement in photovoice. Data explored in each phase of the project, as well as my own reflexive knowledge acquired through ongoing critical self-reflection, provided insight into the complexities of difference, power, and identity. These findings are presented in four chapters beginning with a description of how the FPAR process based on principles of inclusion, participation, action, and social change unfolded. Then, themes were identified which revealed the swings of a FPAR process including: assumptions of collective identity and difference impede inclusion and participation, grappling with tensions around partnerships and power, and negotiating identity and resisting stigma. Findings also explored the contested nature of community and its role in inclusion. This chapter describes the kind of community women experienced before and after incarceration. Themes of feeling pushed out of community, being pulled into community, and negotiating issues of responsibility upon community entry highlight the ambiguous nature of community and social inclusion for women who have broken the law. Deep exclusion experienced by women who have been placed outside of community and sent to prison is arguably unparalleled, and this study was ultimately concerned with society’s tendency to exclude people based on difference. Experiences of inclusion/exclusion are often a result of normative social beliefs that construct difference as “less than” (Moosa-Mitha, 2005). Indeed when difference is viewed negatively, it often results in the exclusion and marginalization of those who are defined as the other (Woodward, 1997). Alternatively, social inclusion involves respect for differences and the removal of barriers to participate in public life (Salojee, 2005). When women in this study felt free to participate in the life of their community in ways that did not undermine their sense of self and their differences they were in the process of being included. Supportive relationships and judgment free spaces seemed to remove pressures for women to conform to dominant expectations of behaviour to gain acceptance. Findings from this study suggest we need to create space for difference and social inclusion to co-exist in community. This space would be one that centres difference, promotes social justice, values different forms and levels of participation, acknowledges that relationships grow and change over time, interrogates taken for granted assumptions of power and privilege, and emphasizes dialoguing through difference.

The aim of this research is to contribute ideas toward the possibilities of what music therapy can be, by examining the therapeutic potentials of creating and performing music within the context of an Australian maximum-security women’s prison. Until recently, music therapists rarely documented or explored the potential of performance for music therapy practice while some health professionals even suggested that performance is anti-therapeutic (See Maratos, 2004). Music therapists writing about their practices in forensic settings emphasise the therapeutic potentials of singing and song writing rather than performance and they predominantly approach these activities from a behavioural orientation. The almost singular theoretical approach to practising music therapy in forensic settings reflects a lack of relevant research. Consequently, the purpose underlying this research is to explore the therapeutic potentials of making and performing music with women in prison from an alternative perspective; namely humanistic rather than behavioural. The aim of this research is not only to examine previously undocumented processes in music therapy such as performance but also to contribute to the literature concerning the health and wellbeing of women in prison. / The research was designed as a qualitative case study of a ten-week creative process involving seven women in prison who collaboratively created a musical together with artists from a theatre company. As a culmination of this ten-week process, the women in prison and the artists of the theatre company performed the musical to an audience of approximately 60 prisoners, prison officers, health professionals and prison staff. In order to examine the therapeutic potentials of creating and performing music in this case, post-performance interviews were conducted with the seven women who were in prison as well as with the artists involved in the theatre company. The researcher also wrote session notes throughout the ten-week process and these, as well as the interviews and five songs created during the ten weeks, comprise the data set for this study. / The data was analysed using a variety of qualitative techniques chosen for their suitability to two main research tasks: 1) describing the case and 2) analysing the therapeutic potentials of creating and performing music in this case. In order to describe what happened collectively throughout the ten-week process, a content analysis was performed upon the researcher’s session notes. Phenomenological techniques of analysis were then applied to the interviews with the women in prison in order to describe the essence of each individual’s experience of the ten-week process. The five songs are presented in their original form as a way of further illustrating the case. In order to describe the work of the theatre company, techniques of grounded theory were used to analyse the interviews with the participating artists. Grounded theory analysis was also the method used to ultimately explain various aspects relating to the therapeutic potentials of creating and performing music in this case. / The main results of this analysis are presented in three parts. The first set of results explains how creating and performing music in this case served the participating women in prison as a bridge from the ‘inside’ to the ‘outside’. These women described a real and symbolic divide between their realities inside prison and the world outside the razor wire. By creating and performing music, the women were able to experience five different ways of shifting outside of their realities in prison, by moving 1) from physical and symbolic ‘inside’ places to ‘outside’ places, 2) from privacy to public, 3) from solitude to togetherness, 4) from self-focus to a focus on others, and 5) from subjective thought processes to objective thought processes. The results outline different therapeutic potentials for each type of outward movement. The exploration of an outward-directed approach to music experience in this case can help to extend conventional music therapy practices where inward-directed therapeutic shifts are more commonly described. / The second set of results depicts the influence of five personal resources that helped the women to enact the therapeutic potentials associated with each of the five outward shifts. In particular, these results suggest that each type of outward movement was especially powerful when courage, readiness, exchange, support and trust were present in their fullest dimensions. It was these resources, rather than the processes usually associated with therapy, that enabled the therapeutic potentials of creating and performing music in this case to be fulfilled. Consequently, the notions of ‘therapy’ and ‘therapeutic’ are further delineated while important implications for the use of music as therapy and for the related practice of ‘arts in health’ are highlighted. / The third and final set of results suggest that music in this case, when compared with visual art and drama, provided the women with a ‘middle road’ in terms of the levels of exposure required by each art-form. As a predominantly gentle form of exposure, music in this case provided therapeutic potentials that differed more in strength rather than quality when compared with drama and visual art. These results suggest the importance of creativity in explaining the relationship between the therapeutic potentials of all arts therapies while also representing important implications for the development of indigenous theory in music therapy. / In relation to the stated aims, this research documents and explores the therapeutic potentials of musical performance and directly relates these potentials to new possibilities for music therapy practice. Furthermore, the research presents a humanistic rather than behavioural approach to creating and performing music with women in prison, thereby adding variety and depth to the sparse music therapy literature related to forensic health. More broadly, however, this research adds to the slim body of literature concerning women in prison by outlining a creative and powerful approach to helping such women improve their health and well-being.