Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection

Universal Basic Income is a proposed policy where the government would regularly pay all citizens in cash. The idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) has had a resurgence in recent years because of popular figures like Andrew Yang and Elon Musk, but its history and potential implications go deep into the structure of human society. This thesis delves into how a basic income would transform social concepts of work and disrupt the personal economic model. With the bargaining power and freedom granted by a basic income, workers would find themselves in a position of work freedom and choice that has never existed in human history. With new freedom to do as they wish, the place of work in people’s lives needs to be reimagined as a source of fulfillment instead of an unlikeable but necessary part of everyday life. Workers will be given the choice to leave unfair or unfulfilling work and decide for themselves how they want to contribute within society. From increasing mental and economic well-being for most Americans to serving as a response to unemployment trends in the automated future, to encouraging greater business innovation, there are myriad ways in which basic incomes have the potential to benefit society. Framed by Martin Luther King Jr. and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the only policy capable of abolishing poverty forever, Universal Basic income will be an important feature of transformative innovative policy advocacy until it is adopted by a major world government at which point the effects in practice will become clear.

In recent years, immigration, especially concerning those individuals immigrating from Central America and Mexico, has become increasingly controversial. Within the last five presidents, policies concerning immigration have shifted. Under President Bill Clinton in 1997, the Flores Settlement, an agreement between immigration activist organizations and the government that created standards for detaining accompanied and unaccompanied minors was made. Following 9/11, in 2005, President George W. Bush increased the amount of money spent on immigration enforcement in an effort to deport more immigrants. President Barack Obama increased the number of deportations from President Bush during his first term. However, in 2014, an already imperfect immigration system was disrupted by an influx of child immigrants. As a result, detention centers were at capacity and unable to accommodate the increasing numbers of immigrants. Child migrants were placed in caged-areas, immigration lawyers and courts quickly became overwhelmed with cases, and children were alone and could barely communicate. This thesis explores the various relationships between accompanied and unaccompanied minors from Central America, the American legal system, and the media and broadcast news outlets’ rhetoric concerning child migrants. Focusing on the ways in which immigrant minors are objectified by the legal system and the framing of immigrants in the media, it is evident that their complex interaction allows for the oppression of the child migrants. Since the American legal system and the media influence and respond to each other, the responsibility of the child migrants’ dehumanization is on both the legal system and the rhetoric of the media and broadcast news outlets.

This thesis examines the current polarization of news media, specifically written journalism, either in newspapers or on news websites. Americans increasingly get their news from polarized sources, and that is leading to a large divide in information. This issue is also exacerbated by political idealogy. Furthermore, I explore how the traditional business model of advertising-based revenue is leading to more polarized news coverage. To combat this, I offer interventions for news organizations, including the importance of journalistic ethics and the possibility of more news organizations transferring to nonprofit status, which has gained traction in recent years. Access to accurate news and information is essential in a functioning democracy, and if polarization and issues in news continue, it will be harmful to America as a whole.

First-wave ecocriticism, while studying the relationship between humans and the environment with the focus of emphasizing the value of nature, maintains a categorical divide between these two highly connected subjects. However, second-wave ecocritical studies reduce this gap between nature and humans by analyzing the environment’s ultimate self, humans as part of that environment, and comparisons between the treatment of enslaved bodies and the land. A second-wave ecocritical approach is used to examine the vilification of wilderness versus the claim of the cultivated environment despite its violent history and its impact on other captive bodies within Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) and Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987). It finds the perception of the wilderness is used to define other enslaved entities, characterizing them as villainous and so excusing their exploitation and mistreatment. Conrad's novel follows the story of Marlow and internally, the story of Kurtz, both of whom are members of The Company that goes on expeditions to find ivory in the Congo. The jungle, which is seen as a possession and exploitable by other colonists, differs from Kurtz’ view after living with the Natives in the Congo. Rather, Marlow finds that European colonists possessive hunt for ivory, a sought-after commodity, into territory they claimed for themselves after brandishing it wild, reflected their perceived darkness of the jungle back onto themselves. Morrison’s novel introduces Sethe, who kills her child, Beloved, to spare her from the life of a slave. In both novels, the utility of the enslaved body is regarded as more important than its selfhood, which serves to not only categorize slaves as lower than both humans and animals, but removes their ability to represent themselves through communication, further disallowing them to own themselves or speak against actions that have been taken against them.

The application of Toni Morrison’s Beloved as a lens through which one can analyze intergenerational trauma on an individual and communal level results in a blueprint towards a remedial process. The characters and their experiences in her novel are representative of a myriad of ways in which trauma is manifested. I have broken down the concept of intergenerational trauma into the idea that it can be seen as the state where one is both simultaneously “falling” and “fallen” at the same time. Used here, the term “falling” refers to the consistent, individual trauma that one is experiencing. On the other hand, the term “fallen” refers to the trauma that a community as a whole has experienced and internalized. This framework that I establish based off of Beloved is a launching point for the conversation surrounding the topic of remedial actions in relation to intergenerational trauma that resulted from slavery. Using it as a basis of knowledge allows one to truly gather the weight of the situation regarding trauma postbellum. Considering the current climate surrounding any meaningful dialogue, knowledge is one of the most important aspects. Along with the concepts of “falling”/”fallen,” I also coined the term productive memory, which refers to the act of confrontation as well as the remembering of intergenerational trauma. The use of productive memory is imperative in addressing the prior ideas presented regarding intergenerational trauma and the possible pathways to move forward.

For immigrants around the world, the United States represents hope for a new life and new opportunities. Colleen Vesely, Bethany Letiecq, and Rachael Goodman, in their article “Parenting Across Two Worlds: Low-Income Latina Immigrants’ Adaptation to Motherhood in the United States” provide examples of how real-world Latinx immigrant mothers view their experience in the United States. Many of the stories they include tell idealized versions of the American dream, what all people hope for when they immigrate to America. The immigrants they interviewed commonly talk about how they want to create a better life for their children and how by creating a better life for them it made the entire struggle worth it. Vesely, Letiecq, and Goodman do not just focus on the positives of immigration, they also explore the different barriers they must overcome in order to even try and achieve the ideal immigration experience they dream of. Cristina Henríquez perfectly embodies both the hopes and struggles of immigrants in her novel The Book of Unknown Americans (2015) by using the viewpoints of multiple immigrants to tell their specific immigration stories. This project uses Vesely, Letiecq, and Goodman’s article about the challenges of Latinx immigrant mothers’ experiences in the United States as a basis for my argument. In this thesis I postulate that motherhood, as it others women, has a negative impact on the ability of these Latinx immigrant mothers to create a place for themselves and feel a sense of belonging as depicted in Cristina Henríquez’s The Book Unknown of Americans (2015).