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Start date: 2020Subject: search.filters.subject.441016 Urban sociology and community studies

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    Shifting gears : exploring the mobility stories of Latin American women in Auckland : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Resource and Environmental Planning at Massey University, Aotearoa New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2025) Rodriguez Mora, Anamaria
    Increasing immigration presents Aotearoa New Zealand with both challenges and opportunities for its transport system. While Aotearoa’s cities aspire to encourage the use of low-carbon transport modes (walking, cycling and public transport), a key challenge to this transition is the ongoing 'reverse mode shifts' (RMS); where immigrant women shift from using low-carbon transport in their respective countries to private cars after migrating. Given the sharp growth of immigrants in Auckland, understanding this phenomenon is key to plan for the future of its transport system. This thesis explores the factors that encourage or discourage Latin American women in Auckland to RMS after migration, and proposes ways to discourage immigrant women from embracing driving after migration. This research uses the ’new mobilities paradigm’(NMP) as a theoretical framework, to understand the mobility challenges immigrant women face daily, and identify key ways of progressing sustainability and equity planning outcomes. Specifically, the research applies Tim Cresswell’s (2010) framework, which is informed by the NMP, to explore how social and power dynamics play a part in the emergence of new patterns of (im)mobility, leading Latin American to RMS after migration. The thesis takes a qualitative research approach, combining two sources of data. First, the thesis involves a critical review of the planning framework by reviewing documents relevant to transport planning in Auckland. Second, over twenty Latin American women residing in Auckland were interviewed to capture their (im)mobility experiences through stories. The findings revealed that Latin American women are encouraged to embrace driving as a way to address inequalities linked to Auckland’s transport system. Driving is a means for them to offset economic, socio-cultural and physical obstacles in the city. The research shows driving is not necessarily a choice in a car-dependent city like Auckland, as many would not choose to drive If they had alternative and sustainable options. Key factors influencing their RMS included motherhood (i.e. having a baby), needing to work in a sprawled city and desires to feel free, independent and equal. However, perceptions of fear, anxiety and stress when driving discouraged several participants from driving as main commuting mode. Although some of them found ways to either manage or accept these barriers, the perceptions of fear, anxiety and stress remain present for most, suggesting Latin American women end up sacrificing their mobilities experiences to fulfil other needs. The research concludes that the RMS of immigrant women in Auckland are strongly influenced by to transport planning approaches adopted in the city. These approaches prioritise economic growth and individual market choice over sustainability and equity-needs-approaches which ultimately promoted forced car ownership and usage. The research recommends prioritising transport planning approaches that understands human as experiential and emotional beings, moving away from approaches centred on rational philosophies. This research sits between social science and applied planning and have advance theoretical and practical knowledge that emphasis the needs of alternative approaches in transport planning to address the mobility challenges of immigrant women.
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    A study of the socio-political, caste and class factors in waste picking in Bangladesh : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Work at Massey University, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2023-12-01) Khan, Sajedul Islam
    This project investigates the lived experiences of women tokai (waste pickers) of Dhaka City, Bangladesh. In particular this project seeks to understand their experiences of the South Asian Muslim caste system, cultural stigma, the male-dominated waste labour market, the division of labour, power relationships and gender influences of contemporary waste management. The aim of this project is to investigate the ways that power and waste picking rights unevenly display in urban settings by exploring the lived experiences of tokai communities. It explores the continuing influence of the male marriage privilege system (the rights of males to enter into multiple marriages) that maintains oppression and social uncertainties among tokai. This project also considers how both occupational health risks and tokai resilience contribute to advocacy, and to the way they organize their work. It also proposes a sustainable social policy at this critical moment of change in Bangladeshi urban waste governance. Finally, the project explores social and policy constraints on the self-efficacy of the tokai, and government strategies to address their structurally disadvantaged position within the society. To explore these issues, the thesis takes the position that informal waste picking is regarded as either a garbage citizenship right (from social justice point of view), or a way structural inequality is imposed on marginalised communities. This project uses an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) with a social constructionist theory drawing on online semi-structured interviews (n=21) with tokai, and with key informants’ interviews(n=4) in Dhaka City between 2020-2021. Online interviews were conducted due to Covid-19 pandemic and travel restriction, and with help from local NGO workers and a team of volunteers who recruited participants, provided the information sheets to them and obtained voluntary consent from each participant. Prior to recruiting, this project obtained full ethics approval from Massey University, New Zealand. This project argues that current local city government and their waste management rules and regulations continually perpetuate discrimination, oppression, and inequalities among tokai. Key findings of the project highlight the dynamics of power, garbage citizenship rights, violence by intimate partners, job insecurity and discrimination in key services such as education, housing, and access to health care services which are hidden and under-researched, and in marginalized tokai who are supposed to be invisible in the waste management system. Yet the system could not function without them. This project makes an important contribution toward theorising marginalised informal waste picking work by highlighting tokai intersectional insights, perceptions on the benefits and challenges of informal work in a moment of change in the urban space. It creates a framework to enhance decision making and to support radical measures and strategies to create social justice. The thesis develops a framework that aids the understanding of structural inequalities with a view to guiding the development of governmental and public policies related to waste management, and occupational health safety. This project proposes developing appropriate interventions and social benefits (tokai projects-scholarship) to support these communities in urban space and contemporary waste governance. One of the important contributions of this project is identifying the invisible Muslim caste and class hierarchy and male dominated labour force in Bangladesh which have existed since the era of British colonization. Methodologically, it demonstrates how to conduct qualitative research in socio-political, institutional influences and religious conservative society, even in a pandemic environment. Based on the findings of this project, it is clear that Bangladesh need a system that creates better networks and connections between local government and tokai communities in order to recognise the importance of informal waste picking. Theoretically the project makes meaning of the life stories of tokai which provide the foundation for garbage citizenship. It proposes that local government must evolve its behaviours, attitudes, rules, and regulations in order to initiate a suitable social waste policy that provides equal rights, equal protections, and urban services for everyone.
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    "We just have to get them growing their own food" : The cultural politics of community gardens : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2020) Webb, Virginia
    Community gardens remain a popular and persistent response to a range of social ills from food security to social isolation. Scholars often frame gardens as political movements, sites of radical opposition to a globalised, homogenised and hegemonic food system. From this perspective, gardeners are actively cultivating a more environmentally sustainable and socially just way of producing and distributing food and seeking alternative ways of feeding communities. There is no consensus on this perspective, however, and the literature offers a lively debate on the extent to which gardens reinforce or subvert socio-economic structures and inequalities. My research adds to this debate by providing an analysis that shows how community gardens work as sites of identity construction where dominant cultural values are transmitted to select gardeners by those with a sense of governmental belonging. My research is an ethnographic and auto-ethnographic examination of what garden organisers or instigators think they are doing when they do community gardens. I find that garden organisers are trying to shore up a national identity that they perceive as being at risk of being lost. This identity reflects the values of self-reliance, thriftiness, and good neighbourliness that organisers consider themselves to embody and that they believe others lack. It is possible to interpret these values as being symptomatic of processes of neoliberalisation, and the gardens as evidence of the successful depoliticisation of issues of food security and hunger. However, I find that they also reflect deep concern about, and resistance to, these processes. Garden organisers draw on nostalgia for a positively evaluated past world in response to a deficient present world. By invoking the past, gardeners mobilise to overcome what they consider to be the contemporary experience of loss of identity, and absence of community. I joined three community gardens as a volunteer in Palmerston North, Aotearoa New Zealand, to explore the motivations of garden organisers. In each site, I found complex and transversal processes of governance and resistance. I have interpreted these using a theoretical framework assembled from the work of Ghassan Hage on governmental belonging and the politics of hope; Michel Foucault’s work on governmentality and resistance; and Gilles Clément’s work on the agency of plants. I spent intensive time in the gardens, growing garden produce and taking it home to eat. The materiality of the gardens and produce revealed a set of assumptions about the availability of domestic labour and enabled me to build up a detailed picture of the limitations and potential community gardens as sites of alternate ways of doing food and community.