The topic of undocumented immigration is becoming an increasingly prevalent concern in the United States in light of the presidential election. This increase in discussion surrounding migration can be attributed to many factors, namely political discourse, such as presidential debates and legislation. Political discourse and the laws that govern our society play a significant role in creating simple categories of “good” and “bad” immigrants. These identifications are especially evident in the way education is used as a tool to criminalize individuals. The use of such labels in education contributes to social discourse that further reinforces what a “good” or “bad” immigrant is. Through both policy and societal attitudes, these labels create negative repercussions for immigrants who are undocumented and use positive reinforcement to reward those who are documented. Through my project, I argue that legislation reinforces stereotypes about “good” and “bad” immigrants in the education system. I will specifically reference the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), which are both immigration policies that offer certain undocumented immigrants a temporary status to remain in the United States. Along with intended research on legislation and societal attitudes regarding undocumented immigration, I will conduct oral interviews of up to fifteen individuals in order to assess the impacts these framings have had in the lived realities of my interviewees. Through this research I hope to demonstrate the diverse ways in which such labels create a negative lived reality for those who come to the United States as undocumented immigrants. My findings will play a role in determining how exclusionary discourse translates to negative reality and how inclusive language is essential to a diverse and successful community.

The coercion of free labor under slavery, exploitation of labor in the post-slavery debt peonage system, and the exclusion of African Americans from most of the formal sector prior to the Civil Rights era not only shaped the form and tenor of their labor experiences, but also their definitions and experiences of womanhood and manhood. We examine intra (within) and inter (between) gender constructions among Black men and women from slavery through the Great Migration. Previous scholars show that African Americans must respond to gender ideals created and imposed by whites. However, the insulated hypothesis suggests that they do so by creating notions of womanhood and manhood in relation to other Blacks. Less is known about how Black men and women construct gender ideals within and across gender groups. Using oral narratives from slavery, Jim Crow, and Great Migration eras, we trace the ways in which their gendered experiences change with the changing racial landscape. We show that Black women’s definitions of womanhood blended their role as laborers and as primarily responsible for the domestic sphere, a pattern that persisted over time. In contrast, after slavery, Black men were more likely to situate Black womanhood within a domestic context where agency is derived from their ability to provide reproductive “care” towards the maintenance of a cohesive family dynamic. Black men defined manhood as tied to labor and family, including facing significant barriers to maintaining a nuclear family. Post-emancipation, Black women construct Black manhood primarily in relation to their paid labor, and only superficial involvement in domestic labor. Still, their economic contributions lead to Black manhood occupying a dominant role within broader family decision-making. Ultimately, we argue that attention to both inter- and intra-gender constructions are necessary to understanding how Black women and men construct and resist gender identities.

This study analyzes the correlation of speeches by members of Congress who were supported by the Tea Party political movement with changes in mainstream conservative political discourse. The rhetoric of these politicians after the Tea Party’s ascendance in the 2010 congressional elections was compared to the rhetoric used by John McCain, the Republican nominee in 2008, and Donald Trump, the Republican nominee in 2016 and current President, to understand the correlation with other changes in conservative discourse. This discourse shift was studied using speech analysis to code for instances of negative discourse and establish a comparison between these election years while also noting rhetorical shifts evident among mainstream conservative politicians. The sources were five speeches delivered by John McCain during his 2008 campaign along with five speeches delivered by Donald Trump during his 2016 campaign with these five speeches being the campaign announcement speech, a speech on immigration, a speech on foreign policy, a speech to the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee Conference, and the speech after claiming the Republican nomination, along with two speeches by Sarah Palin between 2008 and 2010 and five speeches from Tea Partiers (Michele Bachmann, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul) to test for a correlation between the Tea Party's ascendance in 2010 and increasing normalization of harmful discourse. Rhetorical strategies coded as harmful discourse were fear-inducing language, political myths, dog-whistle rhetoric, conspiratorial accusations, and personal insults.