ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
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- All Subjects: Sociology
- All Subjects: Rhetoric
- Creators: Fonow, Mary Margaret
Description
Following the implementation of federal immigration control measures in the 1990s, Arizona became the main point of entry for undocumented immigrants along the US border with Mexico in the early 2000s. Since then, reports have blamed human smuggling facilitators for the increase of undocumented immigration into the state and the apparent development of violent practices targeting the undocumented. However, little is known about the organization of the groups who work at facilitating the transit of undocumented immigrants along the US Mexico Border. Based on interviews and narratives present in legal files of smuggling cases prosecuted in Phoenix, Arizona, the present study provides an analysis of local human smuggling operations. It argues that far from being under the control of organized crime, smuggling is an income generating strategy of the poor that generates financial opportunities for community members in financial distress. The study, raises questions over smuggling's perceptions as violent and instead identifies smuggling-related violence as a reflection of the structural violence carried out by the state against immigrant communities through policing, surveillance and the consistent and systematic exercise of race-based policies.
ContributorsSanchez, Gabriella (Author) / Romero, Mary L (Thesis advisor) / Fonow, Mary Margaret (Committee member) / Tsuda, Takeyuki (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The stillbirth of a wanted baby is a devastating and life altering experience that happens more than 26,000 times each year in the United States, but the impacts and implications of this loss on families is rarely discussed in public spaces. While another kind of pregnancy ending, abortion, dominates political discourse about reproduction, the absence of talk about stillbirth prevention or support in those same contexts is worthy of further investigation. This project explores stillbirth as a communication phenomenon and draws upon narrative, performance and rhetorical articulations of testimony to extend our understanding of how narratives of stillbirth circulate in current conditions of discourse. A model for viewing how dominant and counter narratives circulate is explained (Narrative Loop Model) and a new model for illuminating the unique functions of testimony is given (Testimonial Loop Model). This dissertation employs performance and rhetorical methods to explore testimonies of stillbirth, both naturally occurring and solicited through interviews, in order to create several performance texts that put pregnancy-ending narratives in conversation with each other on stage. Analysis of the performance text and choices, as well as reflection on the embodied performance experience and member checking, yielded several findings. The discovery of somatic sentience and its influence on performance ethnography is discussed. Themes of relationality and temporality were found in the performance of testimonies of stillbirth. The implications of these findings add to the communication discipline’s understanding of how and why stillbirth testimony may circulate, its impact on conditions of discourse for pregnancy ending and its potential use as/in intervention, support, and advocacy. Ethical considerations and limitations are addressed.
ContributorsPullen, Suzanne (Author) / Brouwer, Daniel C (Thesis advisor) / Corey, Frederick C. (Thesis advisor) / Lederman, Linda (Committee member) / Fonow, Mary Margaret (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Low-income communities of color in the U.S. today are often vulnerable to displacement, forced relocation away from the places they call home. Displacement takes many forms, including immigration enforcement, mass incarceration, gentrification, and unwanted development. This dissertation juxtaposes two different examples of displacement, emphasizing similarities in lived experiences. Mixed methods including document-based research, map-making, visual ethnography, participant observation, and interviews were used to examine two case studies in Phoenix, Arizona: (1) workplace immigration raids, which overwhelmingly target Latino migrant workers; and (2) the Loop 202 freeway, which would disproportionately impact Akimel O'odham land. Drawing on critical geography, critical ethnic studies, feminist theory, carceral studies, and decolonial theory, this research considers: the social, economic, and political causes of displacement, its impact on the cultural and social meanings of space, the everyday practices that allow people to survive economically and emotionally, and the strategies used to organize against relocation.
Although raids are often represented as momentary spectacles of danger and containment, from a worker's perspective, raids are long trajectories through multiple sites of domination. Raids' racial geographies reinforce urban segregation, while traumatization in carceral space reduces the power of Latino migrants in the workplace. Expressions of care among raided workers and others in jail and detention make carceral spaces more livable, and contribute to movement building and abolitionist sentiments outside detention.
The Loop 202 would result in a loss of native land and sovereignty, including clean air and a mountain sacred to O'odham people. While the proposal originated with corporate desire for a transnational trade corridor, it has been sustained by local industry, the perceived inevitability of development, and colonial narratives about native people and land. O'odham artists, mothers, and elders counter the freeway's colonial logics through stories that emphasize balance, collective care over individual profit, and historical consciousness.
Both raids and the freeway have been contested by local grassroots movements. Through political education, base-building, advocacy, lawsuits, and protest strategies, community organizations have achieved changes in state practice. These movements have also worked to create alternative spaces of safety and home, rooted in interpersonal care and Latino and O'odham culture.
Although raids are often represented as momentary spectacles of danger and containment, from a worker's perspective, raids are long trajectories through multiple sites of domination. Raids' racial geographies reinforce urban segregation, while traumatization in carceral space reduces the power of Latino migrants in the workplace. Expressions of care among raided workers and others in jail and detention make carceral spaces more livable, and contribute to movement building and abolitionist sentiments outside detention.
The Loop 202 would result in a loss of native land and sovereignty, including clean air and a mountain sacred to O'odham people. While the proposal originated with corporate desire for a transnational trade corridor, it has been sustained by local industry, the perceived inevitability of development, and colonial narratives about native people and land. O'odham artists, mothers, and elders counter the freeway's colonial logics through stories that emphasize balance, collective care over individual profit, and historical consciousness.
Both raids and the freeway have been contested by local grassroots movements. Through political education, base-building, advocacy, lawsuits, and protest strategies, community organizations have achieved changes in state practice. These movements have also worked to create alternative spaces of safety and home, rooted in interpersonal care and Latino and O'odham culture.
ContributorsDiddams, Margaret (Author) / Bolin, Bob (Thesis advisor) / Fonow, Mary Margaret (Committee member) / Cheng, Wendy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This dissertation examines pro-immigrants' rights activism and advocacy among middle-class White women in and around Phoenix, Arizona, in order to analyze these activists' understandings and enactments of their racialized and gendered citizenship. This project contributes a wealth of qualitative data regarding the operation of race, gender, class, (dis)ability, sexuality, and community in the daily lives and activism of White women pro-immigrants' rights advocates, collected largely through formal and informal interviewing in conjunction with in-depth participant observation. Using a feminist, intersectional analytical lens, and drawing upon critical race studies, Whiteness studies, and citizenship theory, this dissertation ultimately finds that White women face thornily difficult ethical questions about how to wield the rights entailed in their citizenship and their White privilege on behalf of marginalized Latinx non-citizens. This project ultimately argues that the material realities and racial consequences of being a White woman participating in (im)migrants’ rights work in the borderlands means living with the contradiction that one’s specific and intersectionally mediated status as a White woman citizen contributes to and further reifies the gendered system of White supremacy that functions to the direct detriment of the (im)migrants one seeks to assist, while simultaneously endowing one with the advantages and privileges of Whiteness, which together furnish the social capital necessary to challenge that same system of their behalf. The dissertation contends that White women committed to pro-(im)migrants’ rights advocacy and antiracism writ large must reckon with the source of their gendered and racialized citizenship and interrogate to what complicated and unforeseen ends they wield the Master’s tools against the Master’s house. In doing so, the project makes the case that White women's lives, as well as their experiences of citizenship and activism, are inherently and fundamentally intersectional and should be analyzed as such by scholars in Women's and Gender Studies.
ContributorsVandermeade, Samantha Leigh (Author) / Fonow, Mary Margaret (Thesis advisor) / Switzer, Heather (Committee member) / Lee, Charles T (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020