4,771 research outputs found

    How does migration impact on mental health and emotional wellbeing of migrants? A case study of 25 Filipino migrants in the United Kingdom

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    This thesis presents findings from a qualitative case study to explore the experiences and perceptions of 25 Filipino migrants in the United Kingdom (UK) on how migration has impacted their mental health and emotional well-being. Through semi-structured interviews and participant observation, this study determined the factors Filipino migrants associated with their mental health and emotional well-being, and what coping strategies they have used to deal with the impacts of migration. Although migration is a well-researched phenomenon, little is known about how Filipino migrants conceptualise mental health, nor is there a great deal of qualitative research on how their mental health is impacted by the experience of migration. The main thesis of this study was the significance of culture in the migrants’ understanding of mental health and in making sense of their migration experiences.Guided by Bhugra’s framework (2004), this study found sociological and economic factors that were associated with mental health including loss of social support, loss of identity, discrimination and racism, and financial obligation to the family. This study showed that for economic migrants, the voluntary nature of their migration and their motivation to migrate factored in coping with the impact of migration. Culturally appropriate coping strategies that correspond to Filipino values and norms include faith, religion, social support, or togetherness, and fulfilling the obligation of providing economic support to the family. This study offers another way of understanding the role of the family of the migrants and challenges some concepts of the migrant behaviour model where sending remittances is seen as an intertemporal contractual arrangement. Instead, the study highlights the deeply rooted sense of obligation by the migrants to fulfil their provider role.Finally, this study showed how qualitative research using a case study design could investigate a sensitive topic such as mental health and provide a voice to research participants. Using participant observation proved effective in understanding the dynamics of relationships within social groups and how culture manifests in social interactions.<br/

    The Relationship between Natural Resource Abundance and Human Development in Belt and Road Initiative Countries: The Role of Financial Development

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    The goal of this study is to explore the relationship between natural resource abundance and human development. In particular, account for the role of financial development. This study uses data from 51 BRI countries over the period 2000-2018. Concerning the HDI, the results suggest U-shaped relationship between total natural resource rents and HDI. Similarly, gas rents, mineral rents and oil rents are non-linearly related to HDI in BRI countries. For example, in the case of total rents, once its share in GDP exceeds 42.8%, further dependence on natural resources leads to increase in HDI. In our sample, only Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Oman were above the turning points at some observation years. The interaction term is positive and significant. This implies that increase in natural resource rents in countries with higher levels of financial development does not lead to a reduction of human development. In a similar vein, domestic credit to private sector alleviates negative effect of oil and mineral rents

    Tecnopolítica de la desigualdad en el acceso al agua en una zona minera: Territorios de escasez y participación tecnificada en Candarave (Tacna, Perú)

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    El objetivo de esta tesis es analizar cómo la implementación y funcionamiento de la Gestión Integrada de Recursos Hídricos reproduce desigualdades socio-ecológicas en el acceso al agua. Para ello, se define a la GIRH como un proyecto tecno-político, el cual articula tecnologías materiales e inmateriales para definir las características del control sobre el agua, es decir, del ejercicio del poder sobre los recursos hídricos y los sujetos. En esta línea, el modelo de gobernanza GIRH despliega mecanismos territoriales e institucionales para lograr el control material del agua y su legitimidad. Se argumenta que la implementación de la GIRH, a pesar de presentarse como una ruptura con formas previas de manejo del agua es, en realidad, una nueva forma de modernización del agua que sitúa a la escasez como un problema natural y a la eficiencia técnica como el valor más importante de la gestión. Frente a estos procesos, las comunidades campesinas han empleado distintos tipos de estrategias para el uso del agua y para tener incidencia sobre las políticas públicas que lo regulan, apelando a movilizaciones sociales y a la construcción de instituciones, algunas de ellas estatales. Usando el modelo de gobernanza GIRH, la respuesta del estado fue tecnificar la participación, imponiendo categorías de usuarios y jerarquías de conocimiento que limitan la incidencia de las comunidades locales en los procesos de toma de decisiones sobre sus fuentes de agua. Desde una perspectiva que combina la ecología política del agua y el institucionalismo sociológico, esta investigación propone un acercamiento teórico que permite enlazar la producción del territorio y las instituciones con la reproducción de las desigualdades, para lo cual, se apoya en un diseño metodológico etnográfico. En resumen, este estudio revela cómo el estado ha contribuido a la reproducción de desigualdades socioecológicas en la gestión del agua en la cuenca alta del río Locumba

    Separately, Connectedly: Exploring Trauma Through Ekphrasis in Contemporary Novels

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    This thesis examines ekphrasis as a rhetorical tool to explore, represent, and contemplate trauma affect in contemporary novels. From the Greek phrase for ‘description,’ ekphrasis is part of a long and ancient literary tradition, dating as far back as the ancient depictions of art on urns, weaponry, as well as more disambiguated descriptions of scenes and people. The uses of ekphrasis as a literary device are broad and complex, but its use is under-researched in contemporary novels, and there is a near total absence of investigation into ekphrasis within the novel as a means of contemplating and understanding the affect of a condition that is inherently abstract and disorienting.Literary trauma theory has evolved considerably in recent years. In keeping with important findings in psychology and psychiatric research, there is a broad recognition that rethinking trauma representation beyond the recitation and reliving of events and into textured descriptions of trauma affect is essential for thoughtful, nuanced explorations of an experience that resists narrative convenience. As a result, there are increased calls to accept and represent its inherent fractured nature and resist the authorial temptation to forge a story around it that fits neatly into a cohesive whole. This thesis proposes a framework for considering how various aspects of ekphrastic descriptions of real and imagined art as well as their connotative and denotative significance in the novel reveals nuance in the representation of trauma affect through the activation of language and image. The contemporary novels explored herein are: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt, and How to Be Both by Ali Smith. Each of these novels present ekphrasis and affect differently, which enables broader testing of the flexibility of the proposed framework

    Climate Change and Critical Agrarian Studies

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    Climate change is perhaps the greatest threat to humanity today and plays out as a cruel engine of myriad forms of injustice, violence and destruction. The effects of climate change from human-made emissions of greenhouse gases are devastating and accelerating; yet are uncertain and uneven both in terms of geography and socio-economic impacts. Emerging from the dynamics of capitalism since the industrial revolution — as well as industrialisation under state-led socialism — the consequences of climate change are especially profound for the countryside and its inhabitants. The book interrogates the narratives and strategies that frame climate change and examines the institutionalised responses in agrarian settings, highlighting what exclusions and inclusions result. It explores how different people — in relation to class and other co-constituted axes of social difference such as gender, race, ethnicity, age and occupation — are affected by climate change, as well as the climate adaptation and mitigation responses being implemented in rural areas. The book in turn explores how climate change – and the responses to it - affect processes of social differentiation, trajectories of accumulation and in turn agrarian politics. Finally, the book examines what strategies are required to confront climate change, and the underlying political-economic dynamics that cause it, reflecting on what this means for agrarian struggles across the world. The 26 chapters in this volume explore how the relationship between capitalism and climate change plays out in the rural world and, in particular, the way agrarian struggles connect with the huge challenge of climate change. Through a huge variety of case studies alongside more conceptual chapters, the book makes the often-missing connection between climate change and critical agrarian studies. The book argues that making the connection between climate and agrarian justice is crucial

    ‘Mining women’and livelihoods: Examining the dominant and emerging issues in the ASM gendered economic space

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    The intractable challenges faced by female mine workers have come to dominate the discourse and scholarship on artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) operations. However, the extensive focus on the informal and labour-intensive segments has engendered a failure to capture the nuances in the duality of ASM operations and how it impacts female outcomes. Drawing on intersectionality as a lens, in this article the authors map the dynamics on how issues related to the gender, situatedness and positionality of female mine workers interact to shape their situated labour outcomes. Highlighting the differentiated outcomes for female mine workers within the contingencies of the broader socio-cultural context in which ASM work is organised, the article sheds light on how the social identity structures such as gender, sexuality and class interact to give form to the marginalisation, occupational roles, the ‘boom town’ narrative and occupational and health challenges that characterise the ASM gendered economic space

    Choreographing tragedy into the twenty-first century

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    What makes a tragedy? In the fifth century BCE this question found an answer through the conjoined forms of song and dance. Since the mid-twentieth century, and the work of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, tragedy has been variously articulated as form coming apart at the seams. This thesis approaches tragedy through the work of five major choreographers and a director who each, in some way, turn back to Bausch. After exploring the Tanztheater Wuppertal’s techniques for choreographing tragedy in chapter one, I dedicate a chapter each to Dimitris Papaioannou, Akram Khan, Trajal Harrell, Ivo van Hove with Wim Vandekeybus, and Gisèle Vienne. Bringing together work in Queer and Trans* studies, Performance studies, Classics, Dance, and Classical Reception studies I work towards an understanding of the ways in which these choreographers articulate tragedy through embodiment and relation. I consider how tragedy transforms into the twenty-first century, how it shapes what it might mean to live and die with(out) one another. This includes tragic acts of mythic construction, attempts to describe a sense of the world as it collapses, colonial claims to ownership over the earth, and decolonial moves to enact new ways of being human. By developing an expanded sense of both choreography and the tragic one of my main contributions is a re-theorisation of tragedy that brings together two major pre-existing schools, to understand tragedy not as an event, but as a process. Under these conditions, and the shifting conditions of the world around us, I argue that the choreography of tragedy has and might continue to allow us to think about, name, and embody ourselves outside of the ongoing catastrophes we face

    Governance quality and trade performance in Sub-Saharan Africa

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    In this study, nexuses between governance and trade performance in terms of natural resource rents are assessed in 44 sub-Saharan African countries. The empirical evidence is based on Tobit regressions. The findings show that political governance (entailing “voice & accountability” and political stability) and institutional governance (consisting of the rule of law and corruption control) have a negative effect on trade performance. The findings are consistent with the perspective that resources rents are linked to inefficiencies in governance which are further detrimental to trade performance within the remit of natural resource rents on the one hand and, on the other, the premise of the prevailing weak institutions in the region less likely to boost trade performance.Colleges of Economic and Management Science

    Fictocritical Cyberfeminism: A Paralogical Model for Post-Internet Communication

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    This dissertation positions the understudied and experimental writing practice of fictocriticism as an analog for the convergent and indeterminate nature of “post-Internet” communication as well a cyberfeminist technology for interfering and in-tervening in metanarratives of technoscience and technocapitalism that structure contemporary media. Significant theoretical valences are established between twen-tieth century literary works of fictocriticism and the hybrid and ephemeral modes of writing endemic to emergent, twenty-first century forms of networked communica-tion such as social media. Through a critical theoretical understanding of paralogy, or that countercultural logic of deploying language outside legitimate discourses, in-volving various tactics of multivocity, mimesis and metagraphy, fictocriticism is ex-plored as a self-referencing linguistic machine which exists intentionally to occupy those liminal territories “somewhere in among/between criticism, autobiography and fiction” (Hunter qtd. in Kerr 1996). Additionally, as a writing practice that orig-inated in Canada and yet remains marginal to national and international literary scholarship, this dissertation elevates the origins and ongoing relevance of fictocriti-cism by mapping its shared aims and concerns onto proximal discourses of post-structuralism, cyberfeminism, network ecology, media art, the avant-garde, glitch feminism, and radical self-authorship in online environments. Theorized in such a matrix, I argue that fictocriticism represents a capacious framework for writing and reading media that embodies the self-reflexive politics of second-order cybernetic theory while disrupting the rhetoric of technoscientific and neoliberal economic forc-es with speech acts of calculated incoherence. Additionally, through the inclusion of my own fictocritical writing as works of research-creation that interpolate the more traditional chapters and subchapters, I theorize and demonstrate praxis of this dis-tinctively indeterminate form of criticism to empirically and meaningfully juxtapose different modes of knowing and speaking about entangled matters of language, bod-ies, and technologies. In its conclusion, this dissertation contends that the “creative paranoia” engendered by fictocritical cyberfeminism in both print and digital media environments offers a pathway towards a more paralogical media literacy that can transform the terms and expectations of our future media ecology
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