The purpose of this research article is to answer why Central Americans in the caravans of 2017 and 2018 seek asylum in the United States and not in Mexico. In order to understand this pattern, we will review the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1984 Cartagena Declaration which provide the legal basis of refugee policy in the region, including commitments to peace, democratization, regional security, economic co-operation and the protection of refugees & asylum seekers in Latin America. However, it is essential to recognize that people do not make decisions based solely on international law. The voices of refugees can be found in news outlets’ interviews because the caravans received a surge of media coverage. Their statements indicate that this choice is a combination of gang/ drug violence, socio-economic opportunities, and family reunification that informs their decision to choose the United States. These motivations are not new. Central Americans have been coming to the U.S. for decades beginning with the civil wars in the region of the mid-20th century and the U.S. military, economic, and political interventions. This history created communities of immigrants that the current refugees are coming to join. Critics of the 2017- 18 caravans of refugees fail to consider the human priorities of familial and community connections created by the long history of migration of Central Americans to the U.S.

Climate change is divisive among Americans. Among scientists, there is virtually a consensus affirming climate change; the political scene, however, has been polarized, and polarization appears only to be growing. Though different segments of the population may understand the issue at varying levels of detail, the majority of these understandings must stand consistently for America to take decisive action on the matter, whatever action that may be. To address polarization, this research frames the issue as a national conflict in two parts: 1) a relational problem among America's constituencies, which sets the stage for 2) problems of communicating climate change information, which is difficult given gaps and complexity of information, amidst misinformation. Together, these two components explain the standstill of climate change initiatives. This research sets outs to address the question: “to what extent have opposing climate change views become polarized and dialogue been disabled, and how do internal and/or external narratives influence individual perspectives?” Possible research methods include: a quantitative analysis measuring political polarization, and qualitative close readings of two texts, each representative of the polarized constituents. Predicted results: 1) America has become increasingly polarized, so much so that it significantly interferes with academia, policy, and daily life, and 2) Narratives among Americans, on all sides of the conflict, are complex combinations generated by individuals, the media, and the forces that shape the media itself. Far from ordinary, these conflict-conditioned narratives perpetuate and escalate conflict, while also further disabling intergroup communication. The implications of this research entail how the current political impasse can be overcome, which thereby enables climate change initiatives to proceed uninhibited.

 The United States’ participation in “othering” is nothing new. Government policies for centuries, including executive orders, have long targeted minority populations living in or seeking refuge within the U.S. These populations are often the scapegoats in politically turbulent times and are treated as such in order to not deal with greater issues. During World War II, Japanese Americans—including citizens and legal residents—were sent to internment camps not knowing when they would return home. This was the “solution” to war hysteria post-Pearl Harbor. Similarly, current immigrants from non-European populations are targeted by ICE and taken away from their families with no promise of return. Although the rationale is complex, this rhetoric often revolves around jobs and criminality despite any significant statistical back-up. My presentation seeks to compare these two situations: what is currently happening with Latin American and Southeast Asian immigrants in the U.S. to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII. These families, whether nearly 80 years ago or today, have and are being systematically stripped of their livelihood and humanity for the sake of political scapegoating. Through intensive archival research—including collecting historical photographs, first-person accounts, and government propaganda of and against those incarcerated in the Japanese Internment Camps and current U.S. detention centers—, I examine the similarities in these families’ plights, the situations’ causes, and their inevitable long-term impacts. Through this analysis, I seek to interrogate the broader structure of U.S. immigration policies and our place in these events as global citizens. It is only through such analysis that we can began to understand the cyclical nature of rhetoric and trauma and have a chance to stop it.

Pollution caused by large corporations is the primary reason for environmental degradation and the prison industrial complex is no exception. The purpose of this study is to contextualize the carceral system and its relationship to climate change from a critical ecofeminist perspective. Critical ecofeminism contends that the patriarchal nature of capitalism forces women to generate forms of resistance against essentialist systems--which attributes to their broader understanding of environmental degradation and the oppression of marginalized identities. Using the Fact Sheet Archive on Women in State Legislatures (1997-2016) which reports the percentage of women-identified legislators and governors in the US, this study will explore whether or not the independent effect of mass incarceration emissions decreases when more women are represented in legislative bodies. This work is meant to contribute to growing bodies of knowledge concerning critical environment justice studies, racial capitalism, and other intersectional frameworks.

The focus of this study is to examine the motivation behind organizing conservative and counter-conservative events and the meaning students attribute to their involvement. Furthermore, the study also addresses the extent to which such coordination is related to group influence. In other words, how do participant relations within and outside of their organization shape their decision to organize political events on campus? This study explores how students understand and interpret their actions. Data for this study will be collected by conducting structured interviews with 10 participants (n = 10). The intended population is college students from a Southern California college campus. Half the participants will identify or have identified with a conservative campus organization while the other half with a counter-conservative organization at the time of a campus political event. Convenience and snowball sampling will be used to recruit participants. This methodology follows what sociologist Max Weber (1914) referred to as,“Sociology is a science concerning itself with the interpretive understanding of social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences.” An interpretive understanding of the meaning and drive behind the formation of these political events is crucial to developing an explanation for what triggers social action. By studying the dynamics by which the group members interact and interpret one another, we can understand the role of in-group cohesion and out-group bias in politically-related communication. My study aims to contribute to the following 1) increase our knowledge of the motivations and meanings college students place on organizing events with controversial speakers, as well as protesting them, 2) how students weigh the consequences of their actions, especially as it relates to social relations (stigma or approval), campus climate, safety and property damage, and economic costs (e.g. security, police, taxes).

This research paper seeks to identify and explain external and internal factors, including international conflict, ecclesiastical norms, and the actions, styles, and reputations of popes in their life times, in the elections of popes in the Roman Catholic Church from 1846 to 2013.Using historical context is important in identifying the international, social, and political climate that the conclaves were held in. Analyzing the papacies of the individual popes is another important aspect of this research. One pontificate begins when another ends. It would therefore be unproductive to disregard the successes and shortcomings of the popes after their elections. The conclaves over the last 160 years have been influenced by a changing world and a changing church. By looking at the key figures within the conclaves and international events in the world we can identify what the cardinals were attempting to accomplish with their choices. The unification of Italy, Two World Wars, The Second Vatican Council, social ideology, internal scandal and tradition, and globalization all influenced the outcomes of this ancient process to varying degrees since 1846.

Hybrid landscapes are the colonial, regulated plots of land (like reservations), that Native peoples have adapted to ultimately create new senses of Indian self-hood, through their ability to survive and thrive, despite the colonial process that displaces them to those regulated lands. The vanishing Indian narrative is one example of the colonial violence enacted through those regulated spaces as Western institutions and discourses confine Native peoples to notions of the past and primitivity, to ultimately claim that they have vanished in the wake of modernity. And while Western museums have helped perpetuate the vanishing Indian narrative, tribal museums have combated this harmful narrative. Museums, as institutions that present knowledge to the general public, are sites that can present counter-narratives and tribal communities can use these spaces to present proper representations of themselves. One such tribal museum is the site of my research project. The Suquamish Museum is located on the Port Madison Indian Reservation and opened in 1983. This research is interested in how this museum has made, and continues to make, a difference for the Suquamish community and particularly analyzes the Museum’s relationship to the reservation. Over several months I have spent time in the Museum and researched the Museum’s history through its grants, reports, programs, and exhibits. I argue that, as an institution that has continued to adapt to the community’s needs, the Suquamish Museum has facilitated the construction and continued development of the reservation as a hybrid landscape through owned representation as a means of confronting the vanishing Indian narrative, thus perpetuating Native agency and sovereignty. This research is important because looking at the Suquamish tribe as its own entity, with their own representations, addresses the colonial violence that treats all Indigenous peoples as homogenous, unadaptable peoples from the “past,” ultimately highlighting their agency as place-makers.