FROM MIGRANT WORKER TO FAMILY SUPPORT WORKER: A CASE STUDY OF CHANGING PARENTING BELIEFS AND PRACTICES AMONG HISPANIC HOME VISITORS IN IMMOKALEE, FLORIDA
Year of Dissertation:
2012
Advisor:
Barbara Katz Rothman
This dissertation studied evolving parenting beliefs and practices among Hispanic women residing in the rural Southwest Florida town of Immokalee, who are currently employed as paraprofessional home visitors in parent education programs targeted towards new immigrants from Latin America. As styles of parenting and the manner in which individuals interact with children under their care are closely linked to class status, parenting beliefs and practices are the central variables examined in this study. This research sought to uncover transformations in participants' parenting belief systems and practices that occurred as they engaged in the work of socializing recent immigrant families to accept and adopt American middle class standards of mothering. The in-depth focus on the intersection of their traditionally held parenting beliefs and practices, with institutionalized expectations and practices found in the occupation of parent education/home visiting, provides novel insights into the dynamic processes of assimilation, acculturation, and identity development unfolding amongst second and third generation Hispanic women in contemporary American society. Qualitative research methods were used in this study including participant observation, content analysis, and in-depth interviews with study participants.
Ethnic Affinity as a Strategy of Boundary Making and Immigrant Incorporation: A Case Study in the Bronx.
Year of Dissertation:
2012
This dissertation explores the historical development of the `ethnic affinity' between Albanians and Italians within the Italian food trade in New York City. Relying on fieldwork on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, it examines the current ethno-racial makeup of the former Italian neighborhood, focusing on two related aspects of change: the influx of incoming Albanian immigrants and the transition from a resident neighborhood to a commodified urban space. Engaging recent efforts towards a unified theory of ethnic boundary formation and transformation, this study looks at the group formation strategies of incoming Albanian immigrants, traces the shifting ethnic boundary between them and Italian ethnics from the late 1960s onwards, and argues that Albanian occupational and cultural incorporation constitutes a new strategy of boundary making and immigrant incorporation. Further, this study examines the role of this boundary work on the transformation of Arthur Avenue from an old immigrant neighborhood to an `authentic' shopping enclave of Italian food. Outlining the changes in the neighborhood institutional setup that culminated in the formation of a business improvement district, as well as the transformation of street feste, it outlines the shifting strategy from a residential to a commercial definition of the neighborhood ethnicity, ensuring the remaking of Belmont as a Little Italy despite the residential succession of Italian ethnics by African Americans and Latino immigrant groups in the blocks surrounding the commercial strip.
Peasant Rebellions in the Age of Globalization: The EZLN in Mexico and the PKK in Turkey
Year of Dissertation:
2010
The formerly corporatist/populist states of Mexico and Turkey have faced significant armed peasant-based insurgencies in their post-1980 period of neoliberal reforms. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in Chiapas, Mexico and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Turkey's southeast serve as ideal case studies in order to deal with long unresolved questions in the literature on peasant rebellions: What is the role of greater capitalist penetration in the growth of these movements? Which peasants are the ones joining these movements? What role do political and militant organizations play in the process of mobilization?
A Rich Man's War and a Poor Man's Fight? Historical Memory and the Class Dynamics of the Vietnam Antiwar Movement and Antiwar Sentiment in the United States
Year of Dissertation:
2009
Advisor:
Stanley Aronowitz
This dissertation analyzes the relationship between social class, opposition to the war in Vietnam, and our collective memory of that opposition. It both refutes and contextualizes the myth of “worker hawks” opposing “elite doves” that dominates our collective memory of the period. Three central arguments are made. First, through archival research and secondary analysis, the dissertation argues that movement opposition to the war in its early years emerged mainly among middle-class students, privileged liberals and radicals, but as the war went on, this opposition was joined by working-class constituencies, including soldiers; veterans; African-American and Chicano/a movement activists; significant parts of the labor movement; and working-class students. Second, characteristics of the movement as it emerged limited its class base, a limitation amplified by inter-movement relations between labor, civil rights and antiwar forces in the period of 1965-1967. Finally, the antiwar movement's later cross-class nature has been elided because of the conventions of historical story-telling and because it contradicts a longstanding social narrative of “liberal elites” and “conservative workers” that, while largely false, is culturally resonant and expedient for multiple political elites.
Becoming Japanese: Contested Meanings of Race and Nationality in Contemporary Japan
Year of Dissertation:
2010
Advisor:
Stephen Steinberg
I examine the "final" phase of assimilation of Koreans born and raised in Japan (zainichi Koreans), an invisible racial minority fully acculturated yet kept in legal limbo for decades, in a society where immigration and naturalization continue to be exceptional. How do zainichi Koreans represent themselves and participate in Japanese civic life? By specifically focusing on the dilemma of becoming Japanese among the former colonial subjects and their descendents, I explore both the permeability and impermeability of Japanese collective identity.
A Community of Women: A Model Intervention For Overcoming Poverty and Domestic Violence
Year of Dissertation:
2012
Advisor:
Hester Eisenstein
Women and Work is an innovative and holistic approach to workforce development that relies on the power of community to deliver the technical and social skills needed for today's competitive job-market. This study explores the impact of the Women and Work Program on survivors of intimate partner violence, their ability to obtain and retain sustainable employment, and their ability to work towards establishing violence-free lives.
Mother Country: Reproductive Tourism in the Age of Globalization
Year of Dissertation:
2011
Mother Country is a multi-sited, qualitative study of the United States fertility industry. I analyze the industry in two dimensions: as a particularly American institution and nascent profession, and as a destination for "reproductive tourism." The United States fertility industry, buttressed by lax federal regulation, free market principles, and high technology resources, is organized to benefit certain classes of American citizens and foreign nationals in their quest to have children. As such, the United States has become a prime destination for people seeking assisted fertility services such as commercial surrogacy, egg donation, and sex selection, which are unavailable, inaccessible, or illegal in many countries.
WASTING AWAY: SUBSTANCE ABUSE AND HEALTH RISK OUTCOMES AMONG DOMINICAN DEPORTEES
Year of Dissertation:
2012
This is a mixed-methods study conducted among heroin-using deportees in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo, from 2008 to 2010. The study illustrates how forced mobility in transnational groups can lead to sudden changes in cultural environment, which promote risk-seeking attitudes, such as substance abuse, in the absence of structural checks and balances on high-risk behavior. In this study I adapt Merrill Singer's Syndemics model to illustrate how social isolation, mental health issues, and substance abuse are synergistic forces that aggravate the deportee's risk for serious health conditions. Data were gathered through a combination of (a) participant observation (inside shooting galleries, private homes, and public spaces); (b) life-histories, open-ended (N= 12); and (c) semi-structured interviews (N=120). In order to obtain detailed information about the life trajectory of the returnees, I first conducted participatory observation in various marginalized neighborhoods of Santo Domingo, such as Guachupita, Capotillo, San Carlos, and Villa Juana. Qualitative data served as the foundation for the semi-structured interview protocol. These research tools were used to illustrate pre- and post-removal protective and risk factors, and the subsequent health risk outcomes in the deportee life-course. According to the findings in this study, risk factors that may encourage risk seeking behavior and substance abuse are the lack of positive social networks, lack of financial means of subsistence, lack of adequate health care services, and institutional and structural stigmatization. Additionally, deportation-related trauma heightens the returnee's likelihood to suffer from mental health conditions.
Constructing Multiethnic Space: East Asian Immigration in Fort Lee, New Jersey
Year of Dissertation:
2012
This dissertation investigates the social formation and organization of the East Asian ethnic communities in Fort Lee, from the 1970s to the present. Beginning in the later-twentieth century the American suburb became an important site for immigrant settlement. A rapid influx of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean immigrants into Fort Lee, located in the metropolitan area of New York, has had an important influence on the social structures and everyday practice of this formerly white suburban community. The research is considered against existing social scientific theories of immigration including models of "spatial assimilation" and "ethnoburb." The central research question concerns how assimilation and ethnic retention are structured among East Asian immigrants and their offspring in Fort Lee.
PARENTS OF DEAF CHILDREN WITH COCHLEAR IMPLANTS: DISABILITY, MEDICALIZATION AND NEUROCULTURE
Year of Dissertation:
2012
Advisor:
Barbara Katz Rothman
Changes in technology are radically altering how conditions are treated, transforming the way we understand diseases and disabilities, and creating new stakeholders and subjectivities. This dissertation is an ethnographic study of parents and professionals involved in cochlear implantation in and around New York City. In the last two decades, the cochlear implant (CI) has become a common treatment for deafness, and since deaf children born to hearing parents are the fastest growing demographic of recipients, this research focuses on pediatric implantation. By spending time in a CI clinic, parents' homes, and children's schools, I learned how these parents and professionals participate in a social world based on interconnected institutions and the integration of clinical aspects of care into the home. I found that the success of this was significantly correlated with a mother's style of parenting, which was influenced by her class position. Perhaps the most striking quality of this social world was how dependent it is upon neuroscientific knowledge. I found that parents saw themselves as engaged in a `neural project' to overcome their child's deafness. I describe parents' desires to be successful at this, their willingness to comply with medical professionals, but also the ways they struggle to find their own agency in the middle of it all. Lastly, all of this must be seen within the larger context of social and technological change. There has been tremendous controversy over CIs; many in Deaf culture argue against their use because they diminish the numbers of children that learn sign language. They argue that CIs ultimately represent a case of a technology destroying a community. I found that this technology also generates community. The battle has been characterized as medical knowledge versus Deaf cultural knowledge. However, this research shows that the world of implantation, while steeped in medicine and presumed `objectivity,' is equally cultural and uses neuroscientific arguments that help to maintain controversy and division between the communities.