Completed doctorates

For trans* and nonbinary people, becoming a parent means facing complex obstacles and discrimination—for example, regarding legal recognition, health care, or their social environment. Jenn Stoll explores how repro-normativity takes shape within the context of different paths to parenthood and how trans* and nonbinary people navigate it. From a perspective critical of cis- and heteronormativity, grounded in intersectionality, and inspired by New Materialism, this analysis offers a nuanced and critical examination of the normative structures of parenthood and explores what is needed to achieve reproductive justice.

To be completed in 2025

Completed in 2025

The aim of this study is tohighlight the complexity of subjectification as a temporary migrant worker in the Canadian agricultural industry,based on an analysis of the everyday experiences offemalemigrantfarmworkers. The focus is ontheoretically exploringthe coexistence of vulnerability and resilience among temporary female agricultural migrant workers, as revealed in the brief sequences above,and, based on empirical research, developing a deeper understanding of the agency of migrants in the field of transnationally organized labor migration.

Completed in 2022

Little is known so far about the relationship between masculinity and nonviolence. To shed light on this phenomenon, Mart Busche focuses on adolescence—as a “critical phase” in the construction of gender, but also as a phase marked by a high frequency of violent situations. Based on interviews with 14- to 16-year-old boys, the study examines how they construct nonviolence. What guides their actions, and how does this relate to constructions of masculinity and other social positions? On the one hand, this reveals how patriarchal relations can be maintained and legitimized even through nonviolent practices, provided they serve to project an image of superiority. On the other hand, it becomes clear how these boys are oriented toward de-escalation, cooperation, and equality.

Completed: 2020

Universities expect internationally oriented degree programmes to make a visible contribution to their internationalization: an increase in competitiveness and strengthening of their international reputation, the acquisition of qualified students, support for international skills and intercultural learning and 'internationalization at home'. Controversial perspectives on the opportunities, added value, problems and challenges of international degree programs can also be observed. Perceptions of course directors, lecturers and course coordinators in international degree programs are examined from the perspective of diversity management in order to investigate what added value international degree programs (can) offer and what framework conditions support or hinder studying and teaching in international degree programs. A special focus is placed on cultural diversity: How can cultural diversity be used to advantage in international degree programs? The empirical study is based on the example of internationally oriented, English-language Master's degree programs in agricultural sciences.

Completed: 2018

This book sheds light on the role that migrant union members and their transnational connections play in unions' cross-border work.
By bringing together concepts from (international labor) solidarity theory and transnational migration research, it shows that migrants organized in labor unions and their manifold cross-border ties and networks, transnational ways of belonging, and the social remittances and cultural knowledge they bring, can help overcome some major obstacles to international labor solidarity.
Based on exploratory empirical research in two very different US labor unions with large migrant memberships - the United Service Workers West (USWW) local of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in California and United Steelworkers (USW) District 7 in Illinois and Indiana -, the book shows that migrants and their transnational connections can: (1) promote international solidarity where it did not exist before; (2) contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of unionism and solidarity that includes political and social justice goals, including abroad; and (3) promote a practical solidarity work including the rank and file, and thereby the development of a sense of togetherness of workers across borders.

Completed: 2018

"What does migration mean for the people who stay in their places of origin? The study reconstructs social worlds of migration from the perspective of the places of origin in southern Mexico. It is based on an ethnographic study that was conducted collaboratively with the inhabitants of indigenous village communities in the southern Mexican region of La Selva Lacandona and evaluated qualitatively. Based on decolonial, gender-theoretical and transnational approaches, it shows that for indigenous village communities, migration is not so much an escape from the conditions of poverty and marginalization, but rather an opportunity to maintain communal life in their place of origin."

Completed: 2018

"In this ethnographic, sociological study, Olaf Tietje draws on current critical migration and trade union research to show how migrant agricultural workers interrupt processes of subalternization and open up spaces of agency. To this end, he develops an actor-oriented perspective that focuses on the everyday lives of workers and combines this with an archaeological reconstruction of socio-historical conditions and neo-colonial continuities in Spain. Using the Andalusian province of Almería as a crystallization point, it focuses on the field of tension of industrialized, globally oriented agriculture."

Completed: 2017

A transnational-biographical perspective shows coping patterns and subjective perceptions of the agency of migrant women of Turkish origin with depressive symptoms.

Public media and professional debates paint a picture of migrant women as a risk group. This book examines the health behavior of migrant women of Turkish origin with depressive symptoms from a transnational perspective. It shows transnational-biographical orientations, differentiated perceptions of one's own and others' agency as well as effects on the use of formal and informal support. The transdisciplinary, multilingual and trauma-sensitive methodological approach contributes to debates on transnational agency and diversity-conscious social work.

Completed: 2016

"Pinar Tuzcu explores rapper Lady Bitch Ray's performance and particularly her use of the term Kanackin. She combines issues of pop feminism and postmigration through speculative methodology and invites us to forget prescriptive definitions by proposing paradoxicality as a source to diversify our concepts of feminism. By means of Situational Analysis, her study works through the contradictory forms of positioning that occurred in group discussions with Turkish-German university students about Lady Bitch Ray's music videos. In this book, Tuzcu argues that these contradictory forms of positioning bear traces of emergent discourses that reach beyond Western-centric descriptions of feminism in Germany."

Completed: 2015