Negotiating Belonging: Attitudes Towards Immigrants and Refugees, and Experiences of Displaced Syrians in the U.S.

In this dissertation, I follow a migrant-centered approach in investigating the meso-level e.g., intergroup) and micro-level (e.g., individual) challenges and affordances that influence refugee and immigrant belonging in the United States. I situate my analysis in the larger socio-historical context in which migrant communities have been dehumanized by White-supremacist rhetoric and a series of policies that enabled deportations, entry quota restrictions, and travel bans. This dissertation is comprised of three studies, using multiple methods (quantitative and qualitative), and viewpoints of privileged and marginalized members of the society (e.g., American citizens, Syrian refugees). In the first study, I found that when ordinary U.S. citizens viewed Syrian and Mexican immigrants as part of a historical narrative, they felt affinity towards the recent waves of immigrants from both groups. Those who perceived contemporary immigrants from these two dehumanized groups as similar to immigrants in the past were more likely to feel warmly towards them; and this affinity towards Syrian and Mexican immigrants predicted voting for Clinton (as opposed to Trump) in the 2016 Presidential Election. The second study had two parts. In the first part, with an online sample, I examined Americans’ representations of various immigrant groups (e.g., undocumented, refugee, documented, Mexican, Syrian, Nigerian, German) using an inductive approach to elicit contemporary public discourses about immigrants. I found that refugees were constructed as more vulnerable (and less hardworking) and more like drains on national resources (than assets to the nation). In the second part, I examined how consequential these social representations were for granting Syrian refugees legal and institutional rights. This study showed that people who viewed Syrian refugees as vulnerable and drains were less likely to believe that refugees deserve to belong; while those who viewed them as hardworking and assets for the nation were more likely to agree on granting them legal and institutional rights. In the third study, I interviewed with recently resettled Syrian families in order to understand how they negotiate belonging in this new context. I found that the pressure to quickly become self-sufficient deterred refugees from engaging with their ethnically close communities, contributed to isolation, and cycle of poverty. Furthermore, this isolation and fear of stigma was experienced differently based on the family type. Women-headed refugee households were up against double stigma: for not sharing their home with male kin, and for being welfare-dependent. The three studies altogether showed that acceptance of contemporary immigrants and refugees by the American public requires the perception of them as fitting into the historical narrative of American immigration, an appreciation of the migrants’ heritage culture, and perception of them as assets and hardworking rather than vulnerable and resource draining. On the other hand, for recently resettled refugees, their sense of belonging in the U.S. depends on the relations with their ethnic relatives and co-nationals in the ethnic enclave, and the expectation to quickly become self-sufficient and economically independent created fractures in these otherwise close-knit communities.PHDPsychology and Women's StudiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163275/1/osavas_1.pd

Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality

Winter moth (<i>Operophtera brumata</i>) adaptation to climate change::Embryonic response to temperature

Climate change influences the seasonal timing of many organisms, but at different rates such that mismatches can occur between trophic levels. Increased winter temperatures caused winter moth egg hatching to advance, leading to a mismatch in timing between winter moth caterpillars and their food source young oak leaves. In response, winter moth egg development has genetically adapted to climate change. Eggs now need higher temperatures to complete development at a given time compared to 10 years ago, leading to a better match with oak bud burst. To investigate how and when temperature influences embryonic development, an experiment was carried out. The aim of the experiment is two-fold, to determine (1) which stages of winter moth embryonic development can be distinguished, and (2) the effect of temperature in- or decreases on developmental rate in these different stages of development. In a split-brood design, sub-clutches of eggs were transferred from a baseline temperature of 10 degrees to a colder or warmer temperature for two weeks at different times during development. Before transfer and two weeks after transfer, eggs were fixated and imaged using confocal fluorescence imaging. Here we present the first glimpses of winter moth embryonic development, a moth with an unusually long development of multiple months, and one of the few species that has been able to rapidly adapt to climate change

The great divide? Occupational limbo and permanent liminality amongst ‘teaching only’ staff in higher education

In this paper, we contribute new theoretical perspectives and empirical findings to the conceptualisation of occupational liminality, specifically in relation to so-called ‘teaching-only’ staff at UK universities. Here, we posit ‘occupational limbo’ as a state distinct from both transitional and permanent liminality; an important analytic distinction in better understanding occupational experiences. In its anthropological sense, liminality refers to a state of being betwixt and between; it is temporary and transitional. Permanent liminality refers to a state of being neither-this-nor-that, or both-this-and-that. We extend this framework in proposing a conceptualisation of occupational limbo as always-this-and-never-that. Based on interviews with 51 teaching-only staff at 20 research-intensive ‘Russell Group’ universities in the United Kingdom, findings revealed participants’ highly challenging occupational experiences. Interviewees reported feeling ‘locked-in’ to an uncomfortable state by a set of structural and social barriers often perceived as insurmountable. These staff felt negatively ‘marked’ (Allen-Collinson, 2009), subject to identity contestation as academics, and were found to engage in negative, often self-deprecatory identity talk that highlighted a felt inability to cross the līmen to the elevated status of ‘proper academics’ (Bamber et al., 2017). The findings and the new conceptual framework provide sociological insights with wider application to other occupational spheres

Family Dynamics over the Life Course

This open access book examines how families and other social institutions interact to shape outcomes over the life course. It considers how to use research evidence to reduce social disadvantage through translation of evidence to support public policies and programs. The chapters focus on key life course stages such as early child development, adolescence, emerging adulthood, parenting, marriage, relationships and ageing, as well as examining experiences and outcomes for selected social groups such as Indigenous children, migrants and refugees, and gay, lesbian and bisexual groups. The book presents evidence using high-quality and recent data. With a focus on Australia, the volume provides new insights into how context shapes life course pathways and outcomes and a contrast to work that typically focuses on Europe and the United States. It will be of value to anyone interested in understanding how family background and life course pathways influence social disadvantage