In response to the growing visibility of trans communities, some countries, suchas Spain, have implemented policies designed to benefit trans individuals and grant them rights and access to medical and legal services. As such, my dissertation research centered on trans communities residing in Valencia, Spain, with a comparative focus on migrant and non-migrant trans individuals to understand how policy changes and their implementations impacted these communities’ lives. I especially looked at the effects it was having on migrant trans individuals’ experiences, as their stories are typically overlooked and under-researched. My research explored the experiences and identities of 33 trans individuals who live in Valencia, Spain, and some surrounding areas. I used a multi-method and comparative approach and analysis to understand the lives of 19 trans individuals born in Spain and 14 individuals who migrated from Latin America, Russia, Ukraine, and Belgium. Relying on intersectional qualitative methodologies, semi- structured interviews, a photovoice project, archival research, and over 100 hours of participant observation, my research documents a critical historical moment for trans communities. Situated in a historical period between 2000 till today, I show how various trans communities have endured the Franco dictatorship and the various sociopolitical challenges, including the most recent regional and national election in Spain. This research focuses on non-migrant and migrant trans individuals’ sense of belonging and incorporation into Spain’s public and private spheres. The dissertation sheds light on the immigration experience of trans individuals fleeing their countries of origin, mostly from Latin America, to escape gender discrimination in hopes of finding a safe place to live in Spain. It also shows the critical role that social relations and support systems play in their ii overall well-being. Finally, this work focuses on how trans individuals describe their gender identity, why they have embraced their identity(ies), and how they assert and display them in different spaces.

In the United States, some 94 million people (29% of the US population) live in areas immediately adjacent to a coast. The global phenomenon of climate-induced environmental change is largely framed as a one-way cause-and-effect relationship, where individuals, communities, and populations inhabiting at-risk locations are either forced to relocate or do so of their own accord. Yet residents of such at-risk areas are increasingly actively choosing to remain, even as risk intensifies. Using a mixed-methods approach, this dissertation examines environmental perceptions, the internalization of risk, the influence of information sources, and how individuals residing in coastal locations process their migration decisions. Established migration and hazard frameworks and theory are poorly positioned to understand the environments’ role in migration decisions. From these perspectives, environmental factors are near exclusively framed as negative affective biophysical push factors. Migration frameworks also fail to adequately incorporate reasons for non-migration. This dissertation directly addresses both these gaps in understanding. This research utilizes data from across the Gulf Coast, with a focus on fieldwork from Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, and a dataset of 123 surveys and 63 interviews across a diverse group of coastal residents. Residents perceive of their environment in much more robust terms than just the biophysical. A majority of terms incorporated social and cultural aspects of environment, and environmental meaning was expressed across a continuum of proximal (most important/close) to more distal (less important/distant) scales. Little support is found for the traditional idea that economic or natural-environmental factors are more influential in decisions to migrate away from ones’ home. In predicting migration intention, socially and environmentally derived variables improved migration model performance. This dissertation demonstrates that internalization of risk by coastal residents is not a straightforward relationship, but rather one mediated by; social-environmental factors, personal experience, sense of place, and trust, which in turn influences intention to migrate, move locally, or remain in place. Residents perceive of their environment far more broadly than current risk-management planning allows. Results provide coastal residents, as well as community leaders and emergency managers who perceive environment differently, new tools for productive engagement and future policy development within coastal landscapes.

Increasing globalization and the knowledge-based economy creates a higher-than-ever demand for skilled migrant labor. While Global North countries are the traditional destinations for skilled migrants, Global South countries have recently joined the race for such talent. The conventional migration scholarship does not adequately explain this increasing Global-North-to-South skilled migration. This dissertation fills the gap by studying mobility and its underlying factors for skilled U.S. migrants in the Pearl River Delta region of China. Using data from semi-structured interviews and sketch mapping, this dissertation develops a capital-mobility framework and employs intersectionality theory to examine the impacts of skilled U.S. migrants’ capital and intentionality on global and local spatial mobility as well as occupational and social mobility. The first empirical paper highlights skilled U.S. migrants’ cross-border im/mobility and introduces the capital-mobility framework that argues migrants’ im/mobility outcomes are shaped by their aspirations to move, and the accumulation, transferability and convertibility of various forms of capital. While the migrants’ capital was smoothly transferred to China and facilitated their voluntary mobility, the continued accumulation of capital in China could not be fully transferred to the U.S. upon their return, thus causing involuntary immobility. Although they mostly had little intention of staying in China permanently, the COVID-19 accelerated their return. The second empirical chapter shows that one’s accumulation of capital could generate both enabling and limiting effects on their everyday mobility through influencing the capability to move and the demand for local travel. Whether migrants had intention to move around in the local city also affects their everyday im/mobility. The third empirical paper discusses skilled U.S. migrants’ occupational and social mobility and how they are influenced by the intersections of race, gender and citizenship. I coined the term “glass box” to explain the limited professional growth and segregated occupations of skilled U.S. migrants’ occupational mobility in China. Although their social mobility improved after moving to China, it declined after rising racial discrimination and xenophobia during the pandemic. This dissertation sheds light on the aspirations and capabilities for mobility among Global-North-to-South skilled migrants and provides policy recommendations for attracting and retaining skilled international migrants.

It is estimated that 3000 Mauritian immigrants live in the Canadian province of Ontario, yet despite this relatively small number they are culturally distinct in the city of Toronto. Using ethnographic methods, this dissertation examines immigrants’ changing identities, engagement in transnational politics, and transnational relationships with family members still in Mauritius. Mauritian immigrants in Toronto tend to conceptualize of a unified Mauritian community, created out of a sense of pride that Mauritians are doing well economically, as well as through shared cultural practices like speaking the Mauritian kreol language. However, there are also divisions within the diaspora along ethnic and religious lines, mirroring those in Mauritius. Immigrants also identify as Canadian to a degree, even though what it means to be Canadian varies. Mauritian immigrants’ engagement with Canadian governance influences their likelihood of engaging in transnational politics, even though this is further mediated by the context of migration. Those who migrated as adults with a fully established social network are more likely to try and actively engage in transnational politics compared to those who migrated as young adults to pursue higher education. The latter tend to show an aspiration to engage in transnational politics or a complete lack of engagement from the Mauritian state. Finally, family relationships, including transnational family ties, are an important factor in migration decisions, both in choosing to migrate and choosing to return home. The decision to migrate to Canada is not taken simply at the individual level but is made with input from other family members, or for the children’s welfare. Immigrants retain transnational ties to other kin through internet technologies, frequent visits back to Mauritius, and the sending of remittances. Immigrants are ambivalent about returning home because they do not wish to leave behind their children or grandchildren who have an established life in Canada. This dissertation contributes to the immigration literature by showing that there are generational factors in how immigrants identify and engage in transnational relationships. It also provides policy implications both for the Mauritian government and receiving countries concerned with culturally distinct diasporic populations.

This dissertation addresses empirical, applied, and theoretical issues in the place literature through an ethnographic study of the volunteer stewards in the nonprofit McDowell Sonoran Conservancy (Scottsdale, Arizona).

The first phase of study explores Conservancy stewards’ phenomenological place meanings through participant observation, a photovoice protocol (N=18), and life-history interviews (N=53). Findings indicate that being a steward fosters deep, identity-based place meanings within the conservation land (the McDowell Sonoran Preserve) and City of Scottsdale.

The second phase of study measures stewards’ psychometric place attachments to the Preserve and broader community using the Place Attachment Inventory (PAI) survey. New stewards’ (N=29) PAI scores—collected before attending orientation and one year after—demonstrate a rise in Preserve place attachment and place identity in the first year of service. Established stewards’ (N=275) PAI data suggests no correlation between place attachment and volunteer intensity. These findings are complemented by phase I results and suggest that stewards experience a rise in place identity after earning the identity of an environmental steward, regardless of engagement.

The third phase of study experimentally combines the data from established stewards who participated in phase I and II (N=48) to test the hypothesis that those with identity-based place meanings would possess higher place identity scores. Data analysis found no significant differences in place identity scores between those with and without a Predicted High Place Identity. The outcomes of this experiment suggest construct validity issues with the widely used place attachment and place identity constructs.

While it is established that volunteers arrive at an organization with a strong sense of place, this study demonstrates empirically how place attachments increase and place meanings deepen further after joining a volunteer organization. Communities and organizations can learn from the Conservancy’s practices that help stewards easily establish and perform a place-based steward identity. Finally, the experimental mixed methods findings suggest a sense of place research program that measures attachment to a place’s meanings rather than attachment to a place. This shift will allow place meaning and place attachment to be studied concurrently, advancing the sense of place construct and broader place theory.

The field of intercultural communication emerged from demonstrated need in the public sector and has roots in cultural anthropology. There is continued need in academic and practitioner domains for improved ways to effectively engage across cultures. To do so, it is necessary to develop approaches that enable a person to take the emic perspective of an intercultural Other. Worldview is a promising concept in several fields, such as anthropology and cross-cultural psychology, but remains undeveloped in the field of intercultural competence. In addition, existing conceptualizations and approaches to identify worldviews are too comprehensive or ambiguous to be useful. The purpose of this project was to propose a novel worldview framework synthesizing existing literature. The resulting construct is constituted by the composite universals, morality, agency, and positionality (MAP). Worldview MAP was applied to intercultural interactions between members of two distinct sociocultural groups working together on a two-week global management project in a multinational organization in Japan. Three research questions focused on identifying intercultural difficulties, worldview assumptions of each party, and relationships between the difficulties and worldviews. Inter-rater reliability was calculated for three morality subdimensions most underdeveloped in the literature. Findings include worldview descriptions for both culture groups across MAP and ways in which worldviews are interconnected with and illuminate three complex intercultural difficulties. Further, five meta-level worldview findings show how implicit worldviews were indirectly revealed in narrative data. Limitations of the study and implications for future work are discussed.

This dissertation research examines the impact of migration on the emotional well-being of temporary, low-wage workers who migrate from the Global South to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Unlike previous research in the UAE, this study’s sample reflects a far broader diversity of nationalities and occupations, and focuses on those earning in the lowest wage bracket. Their experiences revealed the systemic attributes of precarity and the violent structures that perpetuate them.

My research addresses several substantive debates. I found that rather than emigrating for rational reasons—as neoclassical theory of migration posits—the migrants in my study tended to rationalize their reasons for emigrating through processes of cognitive dissonance. Further, where previous scholarship has tended to conflate issues of national, ethnic, and racial discrimination, I disentangle the processes that motivate discriminatory behavior by showing how seemingly innocuous references to “nationality” can be driven by a desire to hide racial prejudices, while at the same time, conflating all as “racism” can reflect a simplistic analysis of the contributing factors. I show how past historical structures of colonialism and slavery are manifest in current forms of structural violence and how this violence is differentially experienced on the basis of nationality, perceived racial differences, and/or ethnicity. Additionally, my research expands theories related to the spatial dimension of discrimination. It examines how zones of marginalization shape the experiences of low-wage migrant workers as they move through or occupy these spaces. Marginalizing zones limit workers’ access to the sociality of the city and its institutional resources, which consequently increase their vulnerability.

Individual well-being is determined by stressful events that one encounters, by personal and external sources of resilience, and by perceptions of oneself and the stressful events. For the migrants in my study, their stressors were chronic, cumulative, and ambiguous, and while they brought with them a sufficient amount of personal resilience, it was often mitigated by non-compliance and lack of enforcement of UAE laws. The result was a state of well-being defined by isolation, fear, and despair.

This dissertation examines cultural understandings and lived realities of entrepreneurship across South Africa’s economic landscape, comparing the experiences of Cape Town’s Black entrepreneurs in under-resourced townships to those of White entrepreneurs in the wealthy, high finance business district. Based on 13 months of participant observation and interviews with 60 entrepreneurs, I find major differences between these groups of entrepreneurs, which I explain in three independent analyses that together form this dissertation. The first analysis examines the entrepreneurial motivations of Black entrepreneurs in Khayelitsha, Cape Town’s largest township. This analysis gives insight into expressed cultural values of entrepreneurship beyond a priori neoliberal analytical frameworks. The second analysis compares the material resources that Black entrepreneurs in Khayelitsha and White entrepreneurs in downtown Cape Town require for their businesses, and the mechanisms through which they secure these resources. This analysis demonstrates how historical structures of economic inequality affect entrepreneurial strategies. The third analysis assesses the non-material obstacles and challenges that both Black entrepreneurs in Khayelitsha and White entrepreneurs in wealthy areas of downtown Cape Town face in initiating their business ventures. This analysis highlights the importance of cultural capital to entrepreneurship and explains how non-material obstacles differ for entrepreneurs in different positions of societal power. Taken together, my findings contribute to two long-established lines of anthropological scholarship on entrepreneurship: (1) the moral values and understandings of entrepreneurship, and (2) the strategies and practices of entrepreneurship. I demonstrate the need to expand anthropological understandings of entrepreneurship to better theorize diverse economies, localized understandings and values of entrepreneurship, and the relationship of entrepreneurship to notions of economic justice. Yet, through comparative analysis I also demonstrate that diverse and localized values of entrepreneurship must be considered within the context of societal power structures; such context allows scholars to assess if and how diverse entrepreneurial values have the potential to make broad-scale social and/or cultural change. As such, I argue for the importance of putting these two streams of anthropological research into conversation with one another in order to gain a more holistic understanding of the relationship between the cultural meanings and the practices of entrepreneurship.

This dissertation research examines the impact of migration on the emotional well-being of temporary, low-wage workers who migrate from the Global South to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Unlike previous research in the UAE, this study’s sample reflects a far broader diversity of nationalities and occupations, and focuses on those earning in the lowest wage bracket. Their experiences revealed the systemic attributes of precarity and the violent structures that perpetuate them.

My research addresses several substantive debates. I found that rather than emigrating for rational reasons—as neoclassical theory of migration posits—the migrants in my study tended to rationalize their reasons for emigrating through processes of cognitive dissonance. Further, where previous scholarship has tended to conflate issues of national, ethnic, and racial discrimination, I disentangle the processes that motivate discriminatory behavior by showing how seemingly innocuous references to “nationality” can be driven by a desire to hide racial prejudices, while at the same time, conflating all as “racism” can reflect a simplistic analysis of the contributing factors. I show how past historical structures of colonialism and slavery are manifest in current forms of structural violence and how this violence is differentially experienced on the basis of nationality, perceived racial differences, and/or ethnicity. Additionally, my research expands theories related to the spatial dimension of discrimination. It examines how zones of marginalization shape the experiences of low-wage migrant workers as they move through or occupy these spaces. Marginalizing zones limit workers’ access to the sociality of the city and its institutional resources, which consequently increase their vulnerability.

Individual well-being is determined by stressful events that one encounters, by personal and external sources of resilience, and by perceptions of oneself and the stressful events. For the migrants in my study, their stressors were chronic, cumulative, and ambiguous, and while they brought with them a sufficient amount of personal resilience, it was often mitigated by non-compliance and lack of enforcement of UAE laws. The result was a state of well-being defined by isolation, fear, and despair.

Under-representation of women doctors in medical work force despite their overwhelming majority in medical schools is an intriguing social issue for Pakistan raising important questions related to evolving gender relations in Pakistani society. Previous research on the broader issue of under-representation of women in science has focused primarily on the structural barriers to women’s advancement. It does not account for the underlying subtle (and changing) gendered power relations that permeate everyday life and which can constrain (or enable) the choices of women. It also does not address how women are not simply constructed as subjects within intersecting power relations, but actively construct meaning in relation to them. It raises interesting questions about the cultural shaping of subjectivities, identities and agency of women within the web of power relations in a society such as Pakistan.

To analyze the underlying dynamics of this issue, this dissertation empirically examines the individual, institutional and social factors which enable or affect the career choices of Pakistani women doctors. Based on the ethnographic data obtained from in-depth, person centered, open ended interviews with sixty women doctors and their families, as well as policy makers and the stake holders in medical education and health administration in Lahore, Pakistan this dissertation seeks to address the complex issues of empowerment and agency in the context of Pakistani women, both in individual and collective sense.

Participation in medical education is ostensibly an empowering act, but dissecting the social relations in which this decision takes place reveals that becoming a doctor actually enmeshes women further in the disciplinary relations within their families and society. Similarly, the medical workplaces of Pakistan are marked by entrenched gendered hierarchies constraining women’s access to resources and their progression through medical career. Finally, the political implications of defining work in medicine, and devaluing care in capitalist economies is explored.