Since the founding of the United States, education has been used as a means to create and maintain the idea of a citizen. Classrooms are therefore always social and political spaces. Often classrooms are spaces where people are socialized into dominant ways of thinking and understanding of the world which perpetuates existing structural inequalities and systemic violence. Mainstream understandings of poverty that hold individuals responsible for their own situation fails to recognize structural causes of poverty and its relationship with the reproduction of privilege. In order to push back, it is important to begin unlearning these dominant ways of thinking about poverty and privilege. The purpose of my research was to better understand how university classrooms can be spaces where previous beliefs and social norms about poverty and privilege are affirmed or altered. I examined what role the teacher’s instructional content, class activities, and approach to learning played in that process of possible transformation for students. Specifically, I examined how these pedagogies affect pre-existing ideas about poverty, privilege, and class relations in the U.S and how people understand their own class identities and shape their. My research had two main components: 1) participant observation in a University of Washington class where themes of poverty and privilege are related to course content, during Winter Quarter 2016; and 2) several focus groups with students enrolled in the class. Through my research I found that the instructor incorporated radical pedagogies through decentering his own authority, creating lots of space for discussion, and presenting ideas and questions that challenged dominant ways of understanding. Students expressed that these methods helped build a trusting yet rigorous space that allowed them to begin a process of unlearning previous assumptions. My research therefore has implications for educators working to create spaces of unlearning in their own classrooms.
 

Mass media can play dual role in the social life: reflect or affect political and social opinion. The current migration crisis in Europe is one of the cases when mass media can reflect the people's opinion and interpret the reaction of political officials, and in some cases can influence the possible changes in immigration policies of taking in refugees. This research analyzes mass media representations of migration from the Middle East to Europe between July, 2015 and February, 2016. This period spans the terrorist attack in Paris in November 13, 2015, which my research finds is an important turning-point in the discourses about migrants, with potential implications for changes in migration patterns in the wake of high profile terrorist violence. The research examines mass media representation of the current migrants in more depth and shows that the revising of immigration policies in many cases can reflect mass media representation of migrants and social discourses about immigration. Also, the study analyzes shifts in asylum admission numbers accepted by some European countries, mostly Germany, the United Kingdom, and France before and after the Paris attack. This research uses mixed methods including quantitative method to analyze existing statistical data which can provide main data about accepted asylum applications, and qualitative content analysis to study mass media editions and to analyze representation of immigrants in mass media at different periods of time.

This research examines how three Seattle-based global health organizations produce particular perceptions of mental health in the “developing world.” The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Health Alliance International, and The University of Washington Program on Global Mental Health all incorporate mental health into their work abroad in some capacity. Their programs and the way they publicize them are both methods of setting standards for the global health industry and of acquiring potential major donors. I use critical discourse theory, relational poverty theory, and critical development theory in examining these materials to determine which organizations produce what types of representations. I argue that certain representations serve to reinforce unequal power structures between those giving and receiving aid while other representations challenge these structures. Some programs and publicity for mental health interventions support the discourse of people living in the Global South as only being susceptible to mental illness after traumatic events. Other programs take a more holistic approach that acknowledges the daily burden of mental illness and challenges unequal power structures by encouraging collaboration between the organization and the communities receiving aid. Using content and discourse analysis in this research, I argue that specific key terms such as “mental health” are strategically placed in press releases and other publicly available materials to produce either a discourse of otherness or one of similarity. The types of discourses produced through these representations have real world implications as they either reinforce or challenge existing power structures.

Food security is the measure of an individual’s ability to access and utilize sufficient food to ensure a healthy and productive lifestyle. Previous research has highlighted this issue in various populations in the Seattle area. However, the effectiveness and coverage of the available nutritional programming has yet to be determined. The goals of this project were to 1) better understand which areas of Seattle are at the greatest risk of hunger and food insecurity as measured by income, and 2) to measure which areas are most underserved by nutrition programming. A visual representation of Seattle was created to identify specific census tracts with a population that is at-risk of food insecurity by incorporating economic, social, and demographic data from the 2013 American Community Survey [ACS] and the 2010 Decennial Census. From this map highlighting at-risk populations and data regarding numerous social programs run by nonprofits, governmental agencies, and businesses, a geographical analysis was performed to determine the coverage and the ability of these programs to fulfill the studied population’s nutritional needs. The results of this study will enable nutritional programs and future researchers to better serve at-risk populations by focusing their efforts on underserved areas and allow more efficient allocation of resources to ensure food equity in Seattle.

The federal government determines the poverty line in the United States by calculating untaxed income against the standardized cost of a calorically sufficient diet that is adjusted for inflation. The cost of living is much higher in cities; therefore, this methodology often fails to classify families living in urban areas as impoverished. The current methodology is unreasonable because it does not account for geographic variability in the cost of living for individual environments throughout the United States. There are other methods of measuring poverty, which attempt to acknowledge the shortcomings of an absolute poverty line, but these methods have shortcomings as well through the consistency of poverty measurement thresholds such as in the Supplemental Poverty Measurement. The European Union adopted a method of measuring poverty through a relational poverty line, which encourages the decrease of income inequality and also enables welfare policies to mark certain populations at risk for becoming impoverished. The goal of this project is to analyze and compare the use of the absolute and relative poverty measures in the United States to determine the differences in population size that would be eligible for government assistance. 

This research is a qualitative case study of the class identity and life aspirations of private school alumni, as a way of examining class formation that happens through individualized learning and school choice of private school students. There is a large body of social science research on school choice that focuses on parents’ aspirations for their children and how this shapes the parents’ choice to send their children to private school. My research extends this body of work by focusing on (adult) alumni of private schools and two aspects of their experiences: 1) how they perceived their private school experience in order to explore class formation in spaces other than home neighborhoods; and 2) how this experience might have shaped the alumni’s own choices about schooling, employment, and co-curricular activities as young adults (e.g. as college students). We examined these issues through research with adult alumni of a private school in Seattle (University Child Development School). My research methods include semi-structured interviews with alumni and content analysis of public materials on the school’s website. The results of this project show that after elementary school, many of the alumni continue on to private high schools and colleges as well. This indicates that individuals begin to desire classed spaces from an early age and can even influence the spaces they inhabit later in life. These findings point to a larger issue of class segregation, stemming from the separation private school alumni have from those of a lower class.

The University District in Seattle is home to both a premier research university and an assortment of social services. This brings people of relative economic privilege along with the businesses that cater to them and people experiencing poverty and homelessness to same neighborhood. When commercial establishments and social service agencies closely share public space, their differing needs may come into conflict. The perception of homeless people as disruptive to capitalist goals in urban environments has resulted in changes to cities that prioritize the demands of businesses and often exclude, punish or generally make life more difficult for homeless people. At the same time, there are spaces, actors and alliances that refuse this exclusionary cityscape and present hopeful alternative negotiations of shared public space. My research looks at these alternatives to ask how public space is negotiated between business and social service providers to understand why and how exceptions to the exclusionary patterns of the contemporary city and the pathologizing discourse of homelessness emerge. Methods include semi-structured interviews with business and social service leaders in an alleyway in the University district as well as participant observation in the alley. Individual beliefs of the key stakeholders that consider structural causes of poverty and homelessness, long-term investment in the community, a vision for cross-class interaction and features of the built environment all contribute to this location’s more inclusive community. Theorizing from already existing alternatives to normative scripts about the city can help us imagine what possibilities exist for a cityscape that is more inclusive and caring of marginalized groups. My findings are of particular relevance to other communities in Seattle where privileged and impoverished populations closely share public space, such as the current negotiations surrounding the formalization of tent cities in Ballard and Interbay.

The acquisition and consumption of food is a daily struggle for homeless individuals and those experiencing high levels of poverty. I use the concept of foodscapes - spaces in which food is grown, acquired, consumed, and prepared - to study the complex political, ethical, and practical factors that shape and influence the geographies of survival that homeless individuals use on a daily basis in their search for food. My research looks primarily at geographies of survival - the daily practices of provision and protection necessary to survive - that homeless individuals utilize while living in city-sponsored encampments in Seattle, WA. These unique encampments are semi-permanent in that the city has allocated the land on which they rest to this purpose for one year with the option to extend for another year. They are also unique in that they are self-governed by residents living on site, operated by local non-profit organizations specializing in homeless services, and held to city health and safety standards. This project focuses on the geographies of survival and the foodscapes utilized by residents living in these unique encampments. Central to this project's contribution to the growing literature surrounding homelessness and food security is an emphasis on “lived experiences" and perspectives of residents living in the encampments. Of particular interest were changes in provision and consumption practices by individuals after arriving at the encampments and the underlying driving factors that brought about these changes. Data generated from a series of semi-structured interviews with residents was transcribed and thematically analyzed using a series of salient codes. Reoccuring themes of Security, Community, and Sustainability emerged during this process, each of which I use to discuss the implications that semi-permanent city-sponsored homeless encampments have on the provision and consumption of food within homeless populations.