Sociology Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2804
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Item TRANSMIGRANCY EXPERIENCES OF EASTERN AND CENTRAL EUROPEAN AU PAIRS IN THE WASHINGTON D.C., METROPOLITAN AREA(2013) Celik, Nihal; Korzeniewicz, Roberto P; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation explores transmigrancy experiences of au pairs by examining the processes of building and maintaining transnational mobilities among this population. These processes involve these women's motivations for becoming au pairs in the United States, settlement plans and strategies prior and subsequent to migration, and long-term incorporation patterns in the home and host countries. I employ intersectionality and transnational feminist frameworks of analysis in order to contextualize and scrutinize multidimensionality of women's transmigrancy experiences at multiple levels. At the individual level, I look at the extent of transmigrant women's agency in seeking their initial and long-term settlement plans. At the intermediate level, I examine the extent of their social networks in shaping their settlement and incorporation goals by analyzing formation, types, and sustenance of these networks at the local and transnational levels. At the structural level, I investigate the structural contexts their agency is embedded in, and how their transmigrancy experiences and practices relate to structural power relations of gender, social class, marital status, nationality, and immigration status. The findings of this research draw on a three-year-long feminist ethnographic study of transmigrant women who originated from Eastern and Central European post-communist countries, entered the United States through au pair programs and were residing in the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Area. I show that these women were primarily motivated to partake in au pair programs for non-economic goals such as cultural exchange, and planned short-term settlement. However, in the long-term, they sought to sustain double affiliation in their home countries and the United States for negotiating oppressive economic, cultural, and social structures intensified with post-communist transition in their home countries. In doing so, they managed to maintain a legal immigration status and ultimately planned to obtain permanent residency rights in the United States. The empirical findings of the dissertation challenge overgeneralized assumptions on transmigrants' agency, social networks, settlement, and incorporation patterns in transnationalism scholarships. It also contributes a nuanced understanding of the dynamics and complexities of building and maintaining transnational mobilities among an under-researched population; namely, au pair transmigrants.Item Formalizing the Informal: A Network Analysis of an Insurgency(2006-06-27) Reed, Brian; Segal, David R.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This research project applies Social Network Analysis to Saddam Hussein's network and demonstrates how network analysis techniques uncovered a web of family and tribal linkages that resulted in the ousted dictator's capture. I use Simmel's approach to affiliations and interactions among consensual actors as the frame in which to view why and how warfare operates the way it does in the present context of an insurgency, and what difference it makes for states (and non-states) that war is waged in this particular manner. This project adds to the emerging sociology of war that is not primarily concerned with why wars start or why some states wage war against others, but rather with how wars work once opponents are engaged. I used two mapping networks and six associated sub-networks - trust (immediate family, extended family, close friendships, bodyguards) and strategy and goals (money and resources, insurgent operations) - to identify the structural and relational characteristics of the network. Network concepts allowed me to highlight the structure of the previously unobserved associations by focusing on the pre-existing relationships and ties that bind together such a group. By focusing on the roles, organizational positions, and those actors who are prominent and/or influential, I was able to get a sense of how the associations were structured and how the group functioned, how members were influenced and power was exerted, and how resources were exchanged. I found that insurgent members co-opted pre-existing ties to facilitate their operations. Roles are defined according to these pre-existing ties - primarily familial ties, but also those linked by previous political, tribal, or organizational association. Key individuals are connected to one another, thus forming a domain for each that gives them a high status in terms of prestige and influence. Those that are not part of this core group and who sit on the periphery of these critical task relationships extend the network and allow it to operate at a far greater distance. In short, social network analysis allowed me to formalize the informality of the insurgent network by visualizing the structure of one that we did not readily observe.