Browsing by Author "Dowell, Anna"
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Item Open Access A Home of Our Own: Social Reproduction of a Precarious, Migrant Class(2019-04-29) Aguilar, ErickMany of the recent migrants from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico have experienced the rise of drug-related gang violence and declining economic conditions in their home countries brought on by transnational agreements. With the ongoing collapse of their communities and homes via these conditions, many of these migrants move to the United States and join precarious jobs, such as agricultural labor. This thesis explores the ways in which family connections, inside and outside the home, affects the decision-making processes that leads migrant parents to join these precarious labor regimes. Through participant-observation and semi-structured interviews with migrant mothers and fathers from Honduras and Mexico living in rural towns in Eastern North Carolina, I investigate the social reproductive forces of the family that help fuel mass migration into rural North Carolina. Furthermore, I use my own experience as the son of an agricultural worker to complement my findings within the fields. My findings show that migrant mothers choose to migrate to North Carolina to raise their sons in proximity to their fathers, which they believe will allow their sons to learn how to become successful laborers in the future. Additionally, migrant parents believe that the home can be a place where the trauma of displacement can be undone. These findings show a glimmer of how lives can be structured and shaped outside of wage labor.Item Open Access Critiquing Operation Streamline’s Role in the Mass Criminalization of Immigration(2019-04-29) Oballe Vasconcellos, JairStarting in the late 1990’s, U.S. immigration policy began categorizing and punishing illegal immigration as a criminal act, penalizing what had solely been a civil offense through the criminal justice system. This shift coincided with the implementation of various systems in the early 2000’s to address rising rates of apprehension and detention at the border. This thesis explores the impact of one of these systems, a judicial procedure in border states known as Operation Streamline. It explores the role of defense lawyers whose clients are parts of mass change of plea and sentencing procedures of up to 70 individuals in one court hearing. Drawing upon recent literature on Streamline, as well as interviews with lawyers familiar with and working in Streamline cases at the border, this thesis illuminates the numerous constraints placed upon lawyers and their clients from a compressed timeline between apprehension and sentencing. This includes the length of time a client must wait in jail for a bench trial, an inability to pay bail, and the irrelevance of an asylum claim within criminal justice procedure. Through this, I place Streamline within a larger narrative in understanding how the act of migration has been criminalized and subsequently punished through our immigration and criminal justice system and how this shift affects lawyers and undocumented immigrants.Item Open Access My Brother's Keeper: Two Generations of Black Duke Football Players(2019-04-30) Staggers, MichelleThe NCAA is a multi-billion dollar industry built on the athletic labor of African American males at predominantly white institutions. This thesis explores Black collective identity through the 1st cohort of African American football players and contemporary football players at Duke University. Utilizing interviews and archival material for the historical aspect, in conjunction with participant-observation for the present time, I look to understand the importance of kin-like bonds for Black male athletes, regardless of the era, in navigating a largely white hegemonic space. I integrate numerous theories such as Marx’s commodity fetishism, identity foreclosure, and fictive kinship to give a thorough analysis of ways in which Black Duke football players face exploitation and prejudice inside of the athletic and academic sphere on campus. My research argues that brotherhood among Black football players held more significance forty-two years ago than it does today. As modern capitalism has restructured the experiences of Black male athletes at big-time sports universities, more attention must be directed to developing and supporting modern Black athletes.Item Open Access THEATRE OF HEALTH: An Ethnographic Exploration of Female Physician Well-being and Applied Theatre in Accra, Ghana(2019-05-30) Darko, MargaretThis thesis brings together ethnographic research and theatre techniques to understand and confront the challenges - from gender barriers to professional burnout – faced by female physicians in Accra, Ghana. For three months, I shadowed three female doctors, conducted participant observation, interviews and focus groups and administered surveys in order to investigate local understands of well-being and its threats. I also worked with a local theatre group to design and implement workshops that allowed participants from the medical field to experiment with social theatre and embodied practices geared towards exposing and alleviating stress factors. Along with offering critical insights about gender politics and labor within the Ghanaian health workforce, my thesis offers a new global health theatre model , which is collaborative and interventional. Situated within the burgeoning health humanities field, this model as elaborated during my thesis project could serve as a well-being toolkit – not just for female physicians, but for members of different professional groups and social classes throughout Ghana and beyond.