This study explores how a teen center within a local police department in California impacts the lives of local Latinx youth. Through a mixed methods approach of surveys, focus groups, and interviews, the study explores Mexican American youth, the most populous Latinx youth in the United States who are uniquely challenged by varying immigration statuses, mental health, and academic barriers. Theoretically, the study draws out intersections unique to the Latinx youth experiences growing up in America and engages in inter-disciplinary debates about inequities in health and education and policing practices. These intersections and debates are addressed through in-depth qualitative analysis of three participant groups: current youth participants of the teen center’s Youth Leadership Council (YLC), alumni of the YLC, and adult decision makers of the program. Pre- and post-surveys and focus groups are conducted with the youth participants over the span of a full year, while they take part in the teen center program, capturing how the teen center directly impacts their academic achievements, feelings of belonging, mental health, and attitudes towards law enforcement, over time. Interviews with alumni and key decision makers of the teen center further reveal broader patters in how the YLC program positively impacts the lives of Latinx youth and the challenges it faces when federal immigration enforcement complicates local policy relations with local communities.

National mandates to decrease suspension numbers have prompted school districts across the country to turn to a practice known as restorative justice as an alternative to removing students through suspension or referral to law enforcement for problematic behavior. This ethnographic case study examines school-based restorative justice programs as potentially disruptive social movements in dismantling the school-to-prison-pipeline through participatory analysis of one school’s implementation of Discipline that Restores.

Findings go beyond suspension numbers to discuss the promise inherent in the program’s validation of student lived experience using a disruptive framework within the greater context of the politics of care and the school-to-prison-pipeline. Findings analyze the intersection of race, power, and identity with the experience of care in defining community to illustrate some of the prominent structural impediments that continue to work to cap the program’s disruptive potential. This study argues that restorative justice, through the experience of care, has the potential to act as a disruptive force, but wrestles with the enormity of the larger structural investments required for authentic transformative and disruptive change to occur.

As the restorative justice movement gains steam, on-going critical analysis against a disruptive framework becomes necessary to ensure the future success of restorative discipline in disrupting the school-to-prison-pipeline.

The purpose of this research is to explore Latina/o students' involvement at Arizona State University West and how it affects their sense of belonging, and thereby, their retention. I operationalize a "sense of belonging" as being able to express and feel comfortable with one's ethnic identity in the context of a higher education institution (Hurtado, 1997). I operationalize student involvement by the extent to which an individual student is devoted to their academic experience, invests time studying on campus, participates in student organizations, and interacts with faculty and their peers (Astin, 1984). I draw from Astin's theory of student involvement and Hurtado's sense of belonging as a base for this inquiry because they are critical components to understanding retention among the Latino/a community at Arizona State University West.

I wrote creative non-fiction to enrich and expand the existing narratives of Mexican immigrant experiences by preserving oral histories and thus, influence a broader cultural understanding. As a first-generation Mexican-American writer, I believe there is a pressing need to explore the stories of my people, particularly those of my father. I also acknowledge the master narratives that work to influence and consequently oppress my own voice as a writer. The master narrative values white experiences and voices in narrative writing while devaluing work from non-white authors. Thus, it became critical for me to reclaim my true voice as a writer and consequently, disrupt this harmful master narrative. Through this project, I reclaimed my voice as a writer, the one that pays homage to my cultural roots by writing my father's stories authentically. I integrated my heritage language Spanish and English in the writing of these stories. As the daughter of immigrants, this is an important way of representing my identity through my writing. Additionally, the importance of this work is greatly exemplified by the unity that springs forth among Mexican immigrants and children of those immigrants when experiences like these are shared and released into the world. At present, the Mexican immigrant community faces social and political discrimination in the form of misrepresentation, anti-immigrant rhetoric, and racism. Therefore, there is a palpable need for more accurate representation to combat these issues. Written storytelling provides a valuable glimpse into my father's experience as a Mexican immigrant and is a valuable tool to challenge harmful master narratives.

Immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers. Three words describing the same group of people. Individuals seeking a better, safer life.

Western media is focused right now, in 2016, on the humanitarian crisis from the Middle East to the European Union; just like two years ago it was centered on the huge numbers of unaccompanied minors immigrating into the United States from Central America. Media changes its focus but problems do not end with a change of headlines.

Unaccompanied minors are the most vulnerable population looking for asylum. This study looks at two different immigration flows of unaccompanied minors: one from the Middle East going to the European Union; and the other one from Central America to the United States.

This research finds similarities and differences between these two flows of migrant children related to the reasons why they leave their countries of origin, their experiences during the trip to the destination countries, the asylum process, the legal status of these children and how these minors are perceived by societies in the destination countries. Using a human rights law framework, this thesis will explore the continuum of violations of human rights that these children endure on their journey from their origin countries to their destination states.

Through interviews with former and current direct providers of unaccompanied minors seeking asylum, previous scholarly work, documentaries and news articles on the subject, it will make clear that these two flows of children fleeing to different destinations have much more in common than what may be initially perceived.

This emergent, exploratory and inductive qualitative research will bring light to asylum law and question why the social responsibility to protect children seems to skip the most vulnerable ones: unaccompanied minors seeking asylum.

Oral history methodologies are used to conduct fifteen interviews with Martha Akesi Ndaarko Sennie-Tumi over the course of three months. Research responded to the following questions: How do African women defy master narratives? When do African women defy master narratives and move from the margins to the center? What roles do African women take on to defy master narratives and why? To what extent does the concept of malezile (women who stand firm) address human rights? Twelve stories of defiance (three of which are folktales) are analyzed for recurring themes, concepts and motifs. Research showed that African women defy master narratives when the system worked to their detriment through the Nana Esi archetype. The stories also showed that women adopt nontraditional roles during defiance by using whatever means available to them at the time of defiance.

Established in 1983 by the College Board, the National Hispanic Recognition Program annually recognizes approximately 3,300 Hispanic students who scored the highest on the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT). These top-performing high school students are recruited by U.S. universities as National Hispanic Scholars with the offer of scholarships. Few studies have been conducted in the past 20 years about National Hispanic Scholars; and none have investigated the role of the scholars' parents in their children's academic success. The purpose of this study was to address the gap in the literature by providing a comprehensive view of the scholar-parent relationship across low-income and high-income categories. The focus was on exploring differences and similarities, according to income, between the scholar-parent relationships and the scholars' negotiation of scholarship achievement and their first-year university experience. The research question was "What are the experiences of low-income and high-income National Hispanic Scholars and the experiences of their parents from the students' childhood academic achievement through their early collegiate maturation?" Topical life history was the research methodology utilized to explore the students' academic progression. Eighteen interviews were conducted, including nine student-parent pairs. The students were asked to include the parent they felt was most influential in their decision to go to college; all students chose their mother. Interviews were conducted utilizing an interview protocol; however, participants were given opportunities to fully explain their responses. Drawing from the recorded and transcribed interviews, the researcher developed narratives for each scholar and analyzed data according to existing literature. Five thematic data categories--academic progression, racial identity, scholarship award, early collegiate maturation process, and matriarchal/ child relationship progression--were further analyzed between and across income groups. The study's major finding was that parents intentionally placed the scholars in schools or facilitated strategic circumstances that would ensure their children's academic success. Parental navigation of their children's academic activities--termed "positioning"--was present in the scholars' lives from their earliest years, and findings indicate the activity contributed to the students' becoming recipients of the National Hispanic Scholars award.