Research on Mexican-migrants in the United States usually focuses on the 1st and 2nd generations; 1st generation being the migrant who exits their home country, and the 2nd their children born in the Unites States. Often overlooked by the complexities of the two is the 1.5 generation; migrants who were brought to the United States as children and have been socialized here. This is relevant since the 1.5 generation has increasingly become an integral and significant force in the political agenda of Mexican-migrants in the United States. In spite of their contribution to the movement for comprehensive-immigration reform, and small successes such as the Dream Act and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, there are many of the 1.5 generation that didn’t, and do not, benefit from these legislative efforts, and who have returned to their home country because of these and other circumstances.This proposed research project attempts to analyze how these individuals, specifically females of the 1.5 generation, lead their lives between and across borders by asking the following questions: 1) How do young transnational Mexican women form and reform identities when moving across borders? (2) How have they learned to navigate these transformations and adapt or readapt to U.S or Mexican society? and (3) What role has culture, tradition, community, machismo and the borderlands played in their process of self-identifying? Building on theories of transnationalism, identity and Chicana-feminism, this proposed research explores the themes of immigration, gender, globalization and community through the employment of qualitative methods including semi-structured interviews, participant observation and life histories, such as testimonios, with six women on both sides of the US-Mexico border. Although this is an exploratory study it will serve to better inform our perceptions of undocumented people in the United States who lead their lives across borders.

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In 1996, a scandal involving members of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus triggered the United States Senate to launch an investigation. In the scandal, Asian American campaign contributors were accused of funneling foreign Chinese funds in an attempt to hijack U.S. politics. The Senate investigation concluded that several Asian Americans were committing espionage by colluding with the Chinese government as political spies. This research asks how the U.S. Senate concluded that these Asian American contributors were spies. My findings suggest that the Senate’s conclusion rested not on sound inculpatory evidence but a historic racial logic of Asian Americans as politically suspect. I argue that the “model minority” stereotype centrally informed the Senate’s racial logic of Asian Americans in their investigation. In particular, the model minority stereotype celebrates the industrious work ethic of Asians while condemning political participation as a dangerous behavior. My research thus explores the informative role of the model minority stereotype in the U.S. Senate’s investigation of the 1996 CAPAC’s scandal. My findings imply that the model minority stereotype ideologically disenfranchises Asian Americans within the American polity. In effect, Asian Americans are disproportionally scrutinized in the political arena through a racial logic that casts them as foreign, suspicious, and disloyal to the polity.

Traditional political participation is at an unprecedented low among American youth. But while youth voter turnout is suffering, alternative forms of political participation are on the rise—namely, political consumerism, the intentional buying or abstention from buying specific products for political, social, or ethical purposes. This research seeks to understand the motivating factors behind the youth shift toward political consumerism as a means of representation. Three possible explanations were tested: First, youth choose political consumerism because they receive immediate material benefits from the products and services they buy, a feature absent from traditional participation. Second, youth choose political consumerism because of convenience; they have too many other pressing priorities to engage in more time-consuming forms of participation like voting or writing to officials. Third, youth choose political consumerism because they prefer corporate actors over political actors to enact change because the latter has failed them. In order to test these explanations, I conducted a public opinion survey, interviews with leaders in consumer advocacy, and research on the evolution of youth political participation and consumerism. The analysis finds that the second hypothesis has the most explanatory power. Youth recognize that corporate actors have significant influence on political outcomes, but usually opt for convenience when it comes to making politically-informed consumer decisions. If sufficient information about the political context of products and services is given to youth, it affects their decision-making process. A surge in political consumerism among youth can be consequently be explained by a surge in available information due to the Internet and social media platforms. The results of this research demonstrate the importance of information framing in the digital age, efforts by companies to appeal to young consumers on a political level, and the relationship between political knowledge and participation.

This research project explores disenfranchisement in America. Today, citizens living in unincorporated US territories (Guam, Northern Marianas Islands, US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and American Samoa) are considered “second-class Americans,” having all other fundamental rights as mainland Americans do except federal voting rights. To help understand this phenomenon, this project examines the circumstances under which the political elite had extended suffrage or had established additional protection for minority voters since the early 1900s. Since then, women, African-Americans, 18-year olds, and citizens living in US territories have used different movement techniques and strategies to achieve suffrage, such as establishing conventions, organizing violent and nonviolent protests, and committing to quid pro quo services like serving the country in times of war. This closes in on a theory where political will—defined as the mobilization of mass movements to gain the right to vote—helps explain why Congress votes to extend suffrage to previous disenfranchised groups. This variable is operationalized by counting the number of organized events and the number of people in the group lobbying for suffrage during the year prior to a congressional vote on the floor. I hypothesized that the greater amount of political will present in a year, the more bills will be introduced in Congress. The time frame of data used in this project is from 1910-2015. This presentation can serve as a guide to explain when suffrage extension happens, and what disenfranchised groups did to get what they wanted from big government.

Since 1904, when the first voter-sponsored bill appeared on the ballot in Oregon, the frequency of initiatives and referenda has greatly increased, most especially over the last 40 years. While there were only 98 bills voted on nation-wide between 1960 and 1969, over 370 initiatives made it onto state ballots between 2000 and 2009. My research examines several underlying causes of this rising frequency in order to help understand trends in the increasing use of direct democracy. Previous work has focused on the increased participation by moneyed interest groups who use paid petitioners to circulate legislation; however, I am proposing a new, original theory which connects political alienation and dissatisfaction of representative democracy to increased participation in direct democracy. I have built an original dataset which will combine measures of polarization within government, public trust in Congress, and the number of initiatives and referenda throughout the multiple states in which they appear. With this dataset, I ran multivariate regressions to analyze statistical significance in the relationships between these variables. I expect to find that as political polarization in Congress increases, people will lose faith in traditional modes of representative democracy. I further hypothesize that as trust in government decreases, people are more likely to turn to modes of direct democracy to instill change in government, therefore increasing participation in the initiative and referendum process. If my hypothesis is correct, my research would serve as a tool for political scientists to use to predict the rise or fall in the political activity of voters, the implications of which could influence timing of legislation, outreach efforts, and a number of other participation-related issues.

This project addresses the relationship between vulnerability and climate change induced human population displacement. Anthropogenic climate change is increasingly altering the way people live. A significant consequence of the effects of climate change is human displacement due to climate effects such as hurricanes, sea level rise, and drought. People displaced by the effects of climate change suffer from a legal protection gap. Increasing global attention is being addressed at closing this gap. My research explores the relationship between vulnerability and climate change induced displacement by analyzing case studies of hurricane induced displacement in the U.S. Gulf Coast, cyclone induced displacement in Bangladesh, and drought induced displacement in Somalia. Analysis of these case studies demonstrates that there is a relationship between socioeconomically vulnerable populations and displaced populations. Both in developed and developing countries, environmental displacement affects vulnerable populations disproportionately. Policy aimed at closing the legal protection gap for environmentally displaced persons should address the socioeconomic inequalities that make marginalized groups more vulnerable to climate change.

A myriad of health disparities exist among Somali refugee and immigrant children living in the United States. Child undernutrition is a prominent issue in the community that affects children at a critical point of development and can lead to negative health outcomes later in life. Recent data estimates that the percentage of underweight children in the United States is 0.5%, the rate of underweight children in Somalia is 23%, and the rate of underweight Somali refugee children living in America is as high as 22%. Field data for the Somali refugee and immigrant population was collected from October 2015 – February 2016 at the Refugee Women’s Alliance (ReWA) in South Seattle in a job readiness program. The data was used to assess possible barriers in accessing healthy food, as well as barriers in accessing services meant to combat nutritional disparities. Data was then juxtaposed with qualitative data and statistics on the social determinants of health, as well as the nutritional status and food insecurity levels, of Somali refugee and immigrant children living in Lewiston, Maine. The research shows that Somali refugee and immigrant children of King County are affected by the same social and structural barriers that led to the poor nutritional status of refugee children living in Lewiston, Maine. Furthermore, the purpose of this research is to find what factors contribute to the substandard nutritional status of Somali refugee and immigrant children in hopes to reduce the clear level of inequality present in King County.

Consistently, young adults (ages 18-24), hereafter referred to as "youth" are slow to get involved in the governance process. Rates of engagement in the political and governance process are consistently lower among those with intersections of marginality (e.g. race, gender, level of education, etc.). Two components which impact a young person's activism and connection to civic and political engagement are political education and socialization. How a person is introduced to the political process and how their interactions with their community had helped to instill, or failed to instill, notions of democratic citizenry. The way a person is taught to engage with the political process has significant implications for an engaged citizenry, and there are educational and social systems which work to promote or discourage such democratic involvement, among marginalized groups. This research provides statistical comparisons which allow for quantitative analysis of participation rates among diverse youth, and addtionally provides a qualitative examination of constructions of citizenship, socialization and education, which might discourage participation in traditional democracy for youth and other marginalized groups. Variations in how educational institutions teach about youth political engagement impact how involved they become in their own governance. Pedagogy and constructions of citizenship play a major role in not only whether youth engage, but how they engage in the political process. While shifts in socialization may not be achievable through public policy solutions, implications of this research could offer alternatives and solutions to the problem of youth political participation, to both existing educational institutions and policymakers, when considering youth engagement in the governance process.

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.

Seattle has a well-established reputation as a progressive haven, and yet significant problems surround certain issues such as racial justice. One of the most striking examples is the current segregation of Seattle public schools; the north end schools are predominately White and the South End schools are predominately Black and Asian. My overall research question is: why is Seattle still unable to integrate its schools in 2016? To explore this question I am researching the mandatory bussing program that the city of Seattle instituted in 1977 that desegregated the schools within two years. This program was fiercely opposed by some community members, predominately White, at the time, and the main anti-bussing organizing group was the Citizens for Voluntary Integration Committee (CiVIC). I am using CiVIC as a case study and asking how it fits into a larger pattern of "Seattle racial backlash," a phenomenon that arises whenever Seattle tries to advance racial justice issues and involves predominately White community members pushing back against changes to the status quo. My qualitative methodology is primarily based on interviews with people that were involved with both sides of the bussing issue. My research thus far suggests that the ultimate downfall of bussing in Seattle was that the plan failed to attack the root of the school segregation problem, which was, and remains, housing segregation.

Though the post-colonial mainstream American diet has changed over time, what seems to remain constant is the emphasis of a protein source (typically meat) at every meal. New trends have emerged which advocate for deviances from this dominant paradigm, such as veganism, a diet that exludes meat, eggs, dairy, and any product or by-product of non-human animals. Some scholars such as ecofeminist and animal rights author/advocate Carol J. Adams have set out to demonstrate how societal expectations of gender roles have shaped the dominant discourse surrounding our diets and those who choose to opt out of these dominant food ways. But no one has yet addressed how the alignment of masculinity with meat is addressed in male-dominated sports, and how the current infiltration of the vegan diet into these realms may be changing the way we look at meat vs. plant-based diets. I seek to investigate what happens when the epitome of muscle and masculinity, male bodybuilders, adopt what is sometimes referred to as a “feminine” vegan diet. I also seek to explore whether marketing or demonstrations of one’s ability to build muscle on a vegan diet help to change people’s perspective of vegans as “weak” or “feminine”, or if these carnophallogocentric ideals rather promote and prolong the ideology of necessity of meat in the diet. Through analysis of mainstream media representation of veganism, online resopnses to well-known bodybuiders "gone vegan", and critical readings of current pro-vegan advocacy works, I seek to discover if it is truly possible to adopt a vegan diet while separating oneself ftom a dominant post-colonial dietary paradigm. I expect to find that gender and diet are intricately linked, and that until our society addresses the underlying ideology which places femininity on a hierarchy below masculinity, veganism will continue to be viewed as feminine, and therefore inferior. 

How do current U.S. Government healthcare policies affect Micronesians? As legal "aliens," indicated in the Compact of Free Association (COFA), what challenges do Micronesians experience while navigating the healthcare system in Washington State? Our research demonstrates that for 30 years Micronesian families migrating to the U.S. in search of beneficial opportunities experience great amount of difficulty when accessing healthcare in Washington State. Current U.S. policies towards migrants from the Freely Associated States perpetuate Dr. Paul Farmer's theory of structural violence by failing to acknowledge the United States Government's role in the healthcare burdens residing in the bodies of COFA citizens, due to U.S. colonialism within the region. Preliminary results indicate that different subgroups have distinct experiences in comparison to others. Methods of research include interviews with Micronesian students and community members, specifically from March 1st, 2016, A Day of Remembrance --solidarity event with the Marshallese community at the Burke Museum on the anniversary of the largest nuclear weapon ever tested by the U.S. Government.

As magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) systems exhibit incredible nonlinearity, computational models have become increasingly common for parsing difficult engineering problems in plasma experiments. The dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) is a principled, data-driven, equation-free approach to extracting coherent temporal-spatial structures from raw data, with particular success in hydrodynamics and fluid-flow problems. We consider the DMD applied to MHD systems in the particular example of spheromak plasmas simulated in the Helicity Injected Torus experiment. We find that the DMD successfully resolves magnetic field structures in simulated magnetic field measurements that closely match expected physical properties. We further find that, under certain constraints, the DMD provides a powerful tool for further validation of simulation to experiment. Given the nonlinearity of magnetohydrodynamic systems, existing mechanisms for feedback controlling plasmas as instabilities occur are limited. Because the dynamic mode decomposition effectively serves as an approximate, linear reduced order model built from experimental and simulated magnetic field measurements on the fly, it offers considerable promise as a predictive feedback controller. This is significant as the detection of and control over plasma instabilities remains a major barrier to the use of spheromaks for fusion energy.

On a global scale, Australia attracts a minimal amount of asylum seekers but has adopted one of the strictest policies in dealing with these individuals. This paper will attempt to explain the two policies Australia has adopted for dealing with different asylum seekers based on arrival methods. It will draw upon historical and current asylum seeker policy documents and statistics published by the Australian government. It will also seek to analyze why Australia has adopted two separate policies for treating these two categories of asylum seekers. It will utilize scholarly articles and journals, as well as news articles to evaluate these two policies and why Australia has chosen to embrace this treatment.

Over the last 10 years, the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States has gradually begun to decline for the first time in decades. While previous research has looked at this change in the rate of undocumented immigrants across the country as a whole, there is very little information on how or why these trends have changed within and across states. Yet, some states are losing more undocumented immigrants than the nation as a whole, and some states still have a growing undocumented immigrant population. Why has the rate of undocumented immigration dropped so much more in particular states since the mid 2000s, when compared to the national rates since the same year? To answer this question, I employ statistical methods and examine the relationship between the number of undocumented immigrants within a state, as well as state immigration legislation. I expect that the number and severity of state laws regulating or deterring undocumented immigrants corresponds with a more significant drop in the number of undocumented immigrants.

This project examines local government effort to combat persistent racial residential segregation. Although U.S. cities today are more diverse than ever, many continue to be characterized by black-white segregation. Because many local governments today do not implement a sufficient variety of policy solutions to address segregation, an important question arises: What might deter local government implementation of these policies? I hypothesize that fragmentation, a result of the fracturing of metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) into many smaller local governments, can explain this inaction. Because metropolitan areas vary regarding their level of fragmentation and therefore the political and economic competitiveness local governments face, local governments in more fragmented MSA’s will prioritize policy issues that will allow them to compete. In order to test my hypothesis, I use statistical methods to analyze local government effort to combat segregation for three U.S. cities, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Atlanta between 2011-2014. I draw on original research identifying key legislation and newspaper articles addressing residential segregation and examine the role of institutional fragmentation in each context, controlling for other factors. This project will offer a new understanding of local governments’ role in addressing a crucial aspect of racial inequality by revealing one reason many local governments do not treat racial residential segregation as an immediate issue to be addressed through public policy.

This research is focused on a high school career and technical education program about translation and interpretation (T & I) for bilingual students. Our research evolved around the question: “How does the T & I program and its service-learning component change students’ language ideologies and understanding of their own skills.” We have used an ethnographic approach in able to answer the research question. We have collected data from student interviews and class visits as well as analyzed teaching methods used in classes. Many students have experienced hardships and oppressions in their local high schools because they are bilingual. By taking the T&I class, students have developed confidence about their language skills and started to treat bilingualism as an asset that will help them in the professional world. Many students have shown significant improvement in vocabularies in their native language and they are more willing to translate for their parents because they have witnessed a space where it is valuable to be bilingual. Students that graduated from this program have decided to either pursue a college degree or choose a career related to translation even though it may not be their original intention before joining the program. We believe that similar program in other schools throughout the country should be implemented in order to help high school students achieve better future.