Emigration and immigration

In the past two decades the tendency to view migrant communities as victimized, without agency, or oppressed has been challenged by the new rhetoric of "Diaspora". The recent formation of Diaspora movements globally suggests that these groups of migrants are not just financial remitters but are organized, visible collectives that influence the geo-political status quo in many ways. ... Utilizing qualitative methodology in conjunction with the analytical lenses of social movement theory and the rhetoric of movements, the study addresses the gaps in the literature on Diasporas by exploring the factors that contributed to the formation of the Jamaican Diaspora during the years 1962 to 2011. ... Moving even beyond our conceptualization of movements, this study also connects Diasporas to the notion of publics. Migrant communities, like the Jamaican Diaspora, negotiate global and local terrains, operate as self-organized publics and form new public spaces in which a common identity goal and imagination connects and motivates strangers.

Economic changes have made the immigration of women to the United States part of major political and social issues. Women from Latin America frequently immigrate alone and without legal documentation, leaving their children in the care of relatives or friends, thus becoming transnational mothers in the process. Hispanic/Latino groups comprise the largest minority in the U.S., and Latina women account for 48.9% of the total Latino population. This demographic trend is expected to continue, and Hispanic/Latino groups are projected to experience the largest population increase in the coming decades (Marshall, Urrutia-Rojas, Soto-Mas & Coggin, 2005). The separation from their family has a strong impact on the health and well-being of these women, rendering them vulnerable to health care barriers and health disparities. This qualitative research study explored the experiences of Latinas living transnational motherhood. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight Latin as living transnational motherhood between the ages 21- 39. The findings in this study describe the lived experience of Latina transnational mothers within their social, economic and cultural context. The narrative was analyzed using van Manen's (1990) interpretative hermeneutic phenomenological approach to narrative analysis. Findings indicate that Latinas experiencing transnational motherhood find meaning in mothering from afar through sacrifice, suffering, and hopefulness for a better life for their children, and for family reunification. Findings from this study inform nurses of the health care barriers that these Latinas living transnational motherhood encounter as they experience hardship in order to support their families abroad as well as themselves.

Immigration has become a hot button issue across the United States. Television newsmen dedicate hours of time to excoriate the "illegal invasion." I viewed the immigration debate as something not directly concerning me. I am a legal citizen of Hispanic descent. My mother is a naturalized citizen from Mexico. However, as the government conducted raids looking for illegal immigrants, my mother became more aware of her place as a Mexican woman living in the Midwest. She wondered whether people would assume she was illegal because of her accent and appearance. Our discussions prompted me to think about of my place in the story, and about my lack of connection with the Hispanic culture. I set out to interview migrants living in South Florida, and to document my and my mother's experience with immigration and assimilation.

Both Calixthe Beyala's Le petit prince de Belleville, published in France in 1992, and Cynthia Shearer's The Celestial Jukebox, published in the United States in 2005, explore similar questions regarding the place of immigrants in increasingly multicultural societies. Gilles Deleuze and Fâelix Guattari's concept of - smoothness and - striation illuminates the settings of these two texts, helping demonstrate that the Parisian neighborhood of Belleville presents a striated space dominated by State constraints, from which the residents yearn to break free, and the fictional town of Madagascar, Mississippi consists of relatively smooth space that allows for local improvisation and engenders insecurity. The stories of Loukoum and Boubacar illustrate how these two characters negotiate their respective spaces, with Loukoum creating a position thoroughly between striated majority French culture and the smoothness of his diasporic sphere and Boubacar functioning as a rhizomatic nomad, embarking on an autonomous journey of discovery.

Christian churches in the United States are very diverse. The diversity seen often goes unmentioned by religion and immigration scholars who write about the key role churches play in the assimilation of Hispanic immigrants. Scholars use the word "church" in order to refer to all Christian religious institutions. The use of one word to encompass the broad range of institutions can misguide readers to believe that all Christian churches in the United States help Hispanic immigrants assimilate in the same way. This comparative study includes Anglo, Immigrant, and Transnational Christian churches throughout the United States The focus is to explore the particular methods by which immigrants forge identities in Christian churches, identities with assimilation potential into an already multi-cultural, American society. Whether immigrants build an ethnic identity, a religious identity, or a mix of both, there is no guarantee that the identity developed will help immigrants assimilate.

Researchers who study Brazilian immigrants in the United States have noted a lack of camaraderie and social networks among Brazilians. Based on recent research conducted in Broward County, Florida, Manuel Vâasquez argues that while there are clear structural impediments to community formation among Brazilian immigrants, Brazilians do form social networks. This thesis examines the survey and ethnographic data from Vâasquez's sample to test a series of hypotheses about which factors impact levels of social capital and the potential for network creation and mobilization among Brazilian immigrants. Analysis of the data suggests that religious participation and levels of perceived discrimination are correlated with higher levels of social capital in this sample. For a group of immigrants characterized by a lack of collective solidarity and facing an increasingly hostile economic and social climate, religious organizations may be essential locales for achieving sufficient social capital for social, economic, and political integration.

This paper tests the religious economy model for predicting Church behavior which predicts that religious firms will become more politically active on behalf of potential members in areas where competition for those members is most fierce. An analysis of data from a survey of 106 U.S. Catholic dioceses and archdioceses on outreach to Hispanic immigrants does not support this hypothesis. Religious competition and Church activism on immigration issues did not correlate. Rather, demand for services (measured as Hispanic presence within each diocese) was a better predictor of Church activism on immigration issues. This finding suggests that the "inelastic demand" assumption of the religious economy model must be dropped, re-opening demand side explanations for Church behavior across national and local contexts.

The academic debate on gender and migration has missed some of the key factors that impact women's lives and communities of origin. Interviews conducted in Jacaltenango, a Mayan sending community in Guatemala, suggest that while the migration of a spouse does bring substantial financial benefits there are significant individual and social costs that result from migration. More importantly, the interviews uncovered the crucial impact of transnational gossip on women's lives, a feature that has been absent in previous academic treatments of gender and migration. Transnational gossip has exacerbated the negative effects of migration for women in migrant-sending locations, pushing women to stay in the "private sphere" and serving as a form of social control that keeps women from actively participating in their communities. For many women, long periods of time living apart from their spouses combined with fears about transnational gossip have brought severe loneliness, anxiety, health problems and even seclusion. This phenomenon is helping define the contemporary social structures of Jacaltenango, and represents one of the most important effects of migration in terms of the lived reality of spouses and families of the predominantly male immigrants who leave Mayan communities in Guatemala to seek work in the United States.

This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. Timothy Steigenga, and has been approved by the members of her supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of The Honors College and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences. Using the United States and Spain as case studies, this thesis argues that increasingly restrictive immigration policies instituted by receiving countries have little to no effect on the net inflow of immigration, nor do they promote a higher rate of assimilation for those immigrants already present within the host country. An analysis of the net inflow of immigrants, their social and economic status, and their rate of assimilation in the U.S. and Spain suggests that restrictive policies only further the social and economic exclusion of immigrants from the host society. Restrictive immigration policies are more effective at keeping immigrants outside of the host country's society than its borders.