City of Sanctuary: A State of Deferral

Over the last decade, sanctuary has been evoked as an alternative to the problems associated with an exclusionary statist asylum regime. In Canada, the United States and Europe the ‘cities of sanctuary’ movement, which is articulated through various political vocabularies, has emerged. This movement conceives of sanctuary not simply as a church-based space where asylum seekers may be secured, but offers a host of welcoming practices within and beyond cities. This thesis specifically explores the UK-based City of Sanctuary movement, with a focus on the case of Glasgow, which has widely been read as exemplifying hospitality towards and empowerment of asylum seekers. Whilst a statist discourse of fear, a ‘politics of unease,’ positions migrants as a threat to be policed the City of Sanctuary aims to stimulate a softer approach. Yet this thesis illustrates how the City of Sanctuary is also mobilizing a deeply troubling ‘politics of ease.’ Based on a genealogical-ethnographic investigation, which traces an array of ancient and modem practices, I show how the politics of ease renders intractable the serious problem of protracted waiting that many asylum seekers face. In so doing, I demonstrate how the seemingly hospitable City of Sanctuary in fact contributes to a hostile asylum regime by indefinitely deferring and even extending a temporality of waiting. Although the City of Sanctuary may serve to smooth over and ease away this serious problem, this thesis also explores a myriad of minor practices that I indicate as challenging this waiting state

The “missing” politics of whiteness and rightful presence in the settler colonial city

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Sage publications via the DOI in this record.This paper engages the global nexus of colonization, racialization, and urbanization through the settler colonial city of Kelowna, British Columbia (BC), Canada. Kelowna is known for its recent, rapid urbanization and for its ongoing, disproportionate ‘whiteness,’ understood as a complex political geography that enacts boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. The white urban identity of Kelowna defines Indigenous and migrant communities as ‘missing’ or ‘out-of-place,’ yet these configurations of ‘missing’ are politically contested. This paper examines how differential processes of racialization and urbanization establish the whiteness of this settler-colonial city, drawing attention to ways that ‘missing’ communities remake relations of ‘rightful presence’ in the city, against dominant racialized, colonial, and urban narratives of their absence and processes of their displacement. Finally, this paper considers how a politics of ‘rightful presence’ needs to be reconfigured in the settler-colonial city, which itself has no rightful presence on unceded Indigenous land

Zines: Crafting Change and Repurposing the Neoliberal University

bell hooks famously insists that education can be ecstatic! It can be a ‘practice of freedom’ that disrupts unequal power relations and generates social justice. According to hooks, university education can only become this type of energetic practice if students and educators alike experiment, feel and take risks in the classroom. This paper asks: how can we cultivate and sustain this energetic approach to education given the restructuring of the neoliberal university comprising reduced state funding, increased precarious labour and an expectation for speedy delivery? Grounded in classroom experience, I explore how slow pedagogy can contribute to a growing Slow Scholarship Movement that takes collective action against the fast-paced, metric-driven neoliberal university. In particular, I examine how the practice of crafting feminist-inspired ‘zines’ might function as a tool to repurpose universities into more generative, loving spaces for engaged learning and living

Insight into kytococcus schroeteri infection management : A case report and review

Publisher Copyright: Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.Background: Kytococcus schroeteri is a member of normal skin microflora, which can cause lethal infections in immunosuppressed hosts. In this review we attempted to draw patterns of its pathogenicity, which seem to vary regarding host immune status and the presence of implantable devices. Evidence suggests this pathogen houses many resistance-forming proteins, which serve to exacerbate the challenge in curing it. Available information on K. schroeteri antibacterial susceptibility is scarce. In this situation, a novel, genome-based antibiotic resistance analysis model, previously suggested by Su et al., could aid clinicians dealing with unknown infections. In this study we merged data from observed antibiotic resistance patterns with resistance data demonstrated by DNA sequences. Methods: We reviewed all available articles and reports on K. schroeteri, from peer-reviewed online databases (ClinicalKey, PMC, Scopus and WebOfScience). Information on patients was then subdivided into patient profiles and tabulated independently. We later performed K. schroeteri genome sequence analysis for resistance proteins to understand the trends K. schroeteri exhibits. Results: K. schroeteri is resistant to beta-lactams, macrolides and clindamycin. It is susceptible to aminoglycosides, tetracyclines and rifampicin. We combined data from the literature review and sequence analysis and found evidence for the existence of PBP, PBP-2A and efflux pumps as likely determinants of K. schroeteri. Conclusions: Reviewing the data permits the speculation that baseline immune status plays a role in the outcome of a Kytococcal infection. Nonetheless, our case report demonstrates that the outcome of a lower baseline immunity could still be favorable, possibly using rifampicin in first-line treatment of infection caused by K. schroeteri.publishersversionPeer reviewe

Relearning black presence in Amsterdam through guided tours: Teaching beyond the classroom

This article features an interview with Jennifer Tosch, the founder of Amsterdam’s Black Heritage Tours. Since 2013, Tosch has offered walking and boat tours, leading thousands of people through a colonial reading of Amsterdam’s topography and celebrated institutions. As a cultural historian, Tosch deploys ‘critical fabulation’ to redress the erasures of historical archives. These efforts are part of a wider Mapping Slavery project, bringing together Dutch scholars, activists, and artists who are revealing the Netherland’s links to slavery and reclaiming an early black presence. As geographers, we hope this conversation informs collaborative anti-racist work in our field (and elsewhere) and furthers anti-colonial practices in the teaching of cultural geography beyond the classroom

Picturing transformative texts: anti-colonial learning and the picturebook

This project suggests that the exclusion of children from social discourse has been naturalized, and remains largely unchallenged in the West (Salisbury and Styles, 2012, p. 113). While some didactic picturebooks and pedagogies construct and perpetuate this exclusion, I will explore the potential of critical picturebooks and critical pedagogy to counter it. Critical picturebooks and critical pedagogy, I propose, can help to build and support the critical consciousness of readers, transforming their social relations. Specifically, this project is concerned with the exclusion of children from discourse on colonialism in Canada, and it highlights the need for critical consciousness in this area. I suggest that critical picturebooks can play a role in unsettling settler relations, or shifting Canada-Aboriginal relations towards more ethical ones. I therefore offer an anti-colonial pedagogy for picturebooks to facilitate these aims. This pedagogy is generated through putting theory on picturebooks, critical pedagogy, Indigenous methods, as well as local pedagogy in Alert Bay into an interdisciplinary conversation. I begin by asking ‘how can picturebooks function as transformative texts?’ Drawing on picturebook theory, I present five elements of critical picturebooks that make them conducive to transformative social discourse: 1) flexibility of the form (enabling complex, cross-genre narratives); 2) accessibility of composite texts (allowing for multiliteracies); 3) textual gaps in composite texts; 4) their dialogical nature (often being read and analyzed aloud); and, 5) their ability to address content silenced in many educational settings. I hold that “the plasticity of mind” which Margaret Mackey suggests is engendered by the picturebook’s flexible form (explicated by these five elements) also fosters a plasticity of mind in terms of the reader navigating social issues or complex problems presented in its content (as cited in Salisbury and Styles, 2012, p. 91). This dual plasticity positions the picturebook as a valuable and empowering discursive or dialogical tool. If, as Paulo Freire asserts, “it is in speaking their word that people, by naming the world, transform it, dialogue imposes itself as the way by which they achieve significance as human beings”, then it is crucial that children are included in social dialogue that has been typically reserved for adults (Freire, 2000, p. 69). I then discuss the ways in which my participatory action research (PAR) in the community of Alert Bay, British Columbia, illustrates the transformative potentials of picturebooks, and helped to form an anti-colonial pedagogy for picturebooks. Workshops with local children, young adults and adults examined the unique form and content of picturebook narratives. In following with Freire, the aim was not only to explore the pedagogical promise of existing texts, but also to co-develop tools with which participants generate their own self-representations. We focused on developing narratives on food, an important generative theme that connects many facets of life including experiences of colonialism. Through additional conversations and embodied learning activities, I was introduced to local anti-colonial pedagogical methods. I put these experiences into conversation with theories of critical pedagogy put forth by Freire, Ivan Illich, bell hooks and Henry Giroux and a discussion of Indigenous research and pedagogical methods offered by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Sandy Grande, Leanne Simpson, Lynn Gehl, and curricular resources. This research culminated in making Grease, a picturebook on the importance of oolichan oil to Alert Bay, told from a visitor’s perspective. In creating Grease, I have aimed to practically apply my proposed pedagogy, and make my work available to both Alert Bay and (in the future) to readers farther afield. This is an effort to address the dearth of anti-colonial literature and education available to children in Canada and elsewhere. The final chapter of my thesis serves as an annotative guide to be read alongside Grease. The pedagogy and picturebook combined present tenable ways in which picturebooks can engage children in critical discussions of colonialism and function as transformative texts

Female Genital Mutilation: A Religio-Cultural Sensitive Issue Determining Maternal Health Care Choices among Somali Women in Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya

The paper addresses Kenya’s development challenges in maternal health care with a specific focus on the impact of traditional birth attendants (TBAs) and female genital mutilation (FGM) among the refugees. It purposes to achieve four objectives: to discuss the persistence of FGM among Somali women in Ifo Refugee Camp, to establish the hospital process of providing maternal health care to mothers who have gone through FGM; find out the level of preparedness of the midwives to handle mothers with religio- cultural concerns such as prayer, non-involvement of male nurses and how the practice of FGM contributes to the preference of TBA by mothers. The study assumes that midwives’ training may not have effectively addressed FGM, a social-cultural sensitive issue affecting childbirth and care. Secondly, the specific support of midwives in refugee camps contexts remains limited. A qualitative research approach was used in the study, involving Snowballing sampling method, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions (FGDs). These methods brought out pertinent issues that make TBAs the preferential option for some mothers in spite of the presence of level 4 category hospitals in the refugee camps. In case of birth complications, the mother’s choice for TBA delays the family’s decision to take her to the hospital and for health care workers to save mother and child. The shortage of midwives and the presence of male midwives in hospitals make some Somali mothers seek assistance from TBAs. There is a need to contextualize midwifery training by enhancing the curriculum with evidence-based /mother-centered skills

Female Genital Mutilation: A Religio-Cultural Sensitive Issue Determining Maternal Health Care Choices among Somali Women in Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya

The paper addresses Kenya’s development challenges in maternal health care with a specific focus on the impact of traditional birth attendants (TBAs) and female genital mutilation (FGM) among the refugees. It purposes to achieve four objectives: to discuss the persistence of FGM among Somali women in Ifo Refugee Camp, to establish the hospital process of providing maternal health care to mothers who have gone through FGM; find out the level of preparedness of the midwives to handle mothers with religio- cultural concerns such as prayer, non-involvement of male nurses and how the practice of FGM contributes to the preference of TBA by mothers. The study assumes that midwives’ training may not have effectively addressed FGM, a social-cultural sensitive issue affecting childbirth and care. Secondly, the specific support of midwives in refugee camps contexts remains limited. A qualitative research approach was used in the study, involving Snowballing sampling method, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions (FGDs). These methods brought out pertinent issues that make TBAs the preferential option for some mothers in spite of the presence of level 4 category hospitals in the refugee camps. In case of birth complications, the mother’s choice for TBA delays the family’s decision to take her to the hospital and for health care workers to save mother and child. The shortage of midwives and the presence of male midwives in hospitals make some Somali mothers seek assistance from TBAs. There is a need to contextualize midwifery training by enhancing the curriculum with evidence-based /mother-centered skills