International education and the post-9/11 syndrome: A study of international educators in selected Miami-area colleges

This dissertation investigated the relationship between the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the internationalization agenda of U.S. colleges and universities. The construct, post-9/11 syndrome, is used metaphorically to delineate the apparent state of panic and disequilibrium that followed the incident. Three research questions were investigated, with two universities in the Miami-area of South Florida, one private and the other public, as qualitative case studies. The questions are: (a) How are international student advisors and administrators across two types of institutions dealing with the post-9/11 syndrome? (b) What, if any, are the differences in international education after 9/11? (c) What have been the institutional priorities in relation to international education before and after 9/11? Data-gathering methods included interviews with international student/study abroad advisors and administrators with at least 8 years of experience in the function(s) at their institutions, document and institutional data analysis. The interviews were based on the three-part scheme developed by Schuman (1982): context of experience, details of experience and reflection on the meaning of experiences. Taped interviews, researcher insights, and member checks of transcripts constituted an audit trail for this study. Key findings included a progressive decline in Fall to Fall enrollment of international students at UM by 13.05% in the 5 years after 9/11, and by 6.15% at FIU in the seven post-9/11 years. In both institutions, there was an upsurge in interest in study abroad during the same period but less than 5% of enrolled students ventured abroad annually. I summarized the themes associated with the post-9/11 environment of international education as perceived by my participants at both institutions as 3Ms, 3Ts, and 1D: Menace of Anxiety and Fear, Menace of Insularity and Insecurity, Menace of Over-Regulation and Bigotry, Trajectory of Opportunity, Trajectory of Contradictions, Trajectory of Illusion, Fatalism and Futility, and Dominance of Technology. Based on these findings, I recommended an integrated Internationalization At Home Plus Collaborative Outreach (IAHPCO) approach to internationalization that is based on a post-9/11 recalibration of national security and international education as complementary rather than diametrically opposed concepts.

Through the prisms of gender and power: Agency in international courtship between Colombian women and American men

Since 1999 Colombia has experienced dramatic increases in emigration, particularly the emigration of women towards the U.S. as fiancées of U.S. citizens or residents. Parallel to this trend is the increased number of websites facilitating these Colombian-American matches. This dissertation investigates the agency of Colombian women and American men who pursue romantic courtship through the services of International Marriage Brokers (IMBs) from the “Gendered Geographies of Power” (GGP) framework of analysis. It examines how both groups’ social locations, their positioning in multiple axes of differentiation including gender, nationality and social class, affects how and why they exert their agency across and within different geographic scales. Most importantly, it investigates the role the imagination plays (imagination work) in both men and women’s agency, an aspect of the GGP framework that has been under-researched and theorized to date. The research also finds that this imagination work is promoted and cultivated in deeply gendered ways by IMBs seeking to profit off this transnational courtship. ^ Employing data collected via interviews and content analysis of IMBs’ websites, the dissertation analyzes comparatively the expectations each group (women, men and IMBs) bring to their imagination work and experiences of the courtship marketplace. A central question posed and answered in the dissertation is “What do women and men courting each other in cyberspace seek and do they find it?” The dissertation finds that the men seek “traditional” women and the women seek “liberated” less “macho” men. Ironically, the men find Colombian women who are among the most “liberated” women in their homeland but who downplay this aspect of themselves in order to strategically find a more modern man and migrate abroad where they expect to find greater personal and professional opportunities.^

Disciplining democracy: United Nations peacekeeping, international security and democratization in the post -Cold War era

After the end of the Cold War, democratization and good governance became the organizing concepts for activities of the United Nations, regional organizations and states in the fields of peace, development and security. How can this increasing interest in democratization and its connection with international security be explained? This dissertation applies the theoretical tools developed by Michel Foucault in his discussions of disciplinarity and government to the analysis of the United Nations debate on democracy in the 1990s, and of two United Nations pro-democracy peacekeeping operations and their aftermath: the United Nations interventions in Haiti and Croatia. It probes “how” certain techniques of power came into being and describes their effects, using as data the texts that elaborate the United Nations understanding of democracy and the texts that constitute peacekeeping. ^ In the face of the proliferation of unpredictable threats in the last decades of the twentieth century a new form of international power emerged. Order in the international arena increasingly was maintained through activities aimed at reducing risk and increasing predictability through the normalization of “rogue” states. The dissertation shows that in the context of these activities, which included but were not limited to UN peacekeeping, normality was identified with democracy, non-democratic regimes with international threats, and democratization with international security. “Good governance” doctrines translated the political debate on democracy into the technical language of functioning state institutions. International organizations adopted good governance as the framework that made democratization a universal task within the reach of their expertise. In Haiti, the United Nations engaged in efforts to transform punishment institutions (the judiciary, police and the prison) into disciplined and disciplinary machines. In Croatia, agreements signed in the context of peacekeeping established in detail the rules of functioning of administrations and the monitoring mechanisms for their implementation. However, in Haiti, the institutions promoted were not sustainable. And in Croatia reforms are stalled by lack of consensus. ^ This dissertation puts efforts to bring about democracy through peacekeeping in the context of a specific modality of power and suggests caution in engaging in universal normalizing endeavors. ^

Through the Prisms of Gender and Power: Agency in International Courtship between Colombian Women and American Men

Since 1999 Colombia has experienced dramatic increases in emigration, particularly the emigration of women towards the U.S. as fiancées of U.S. citizens or residents. Parallel to this trend is the increased number of websites facilitating these Colombian-American matches. This dissertation investigates the agency of Colombian women and American men who pursue romantic courtship through the services of International Marriage Brokers (IMBs) from the “Gendered Geographies of Power” (GGP) framework of analysis. It examines how both groups’ social locations, their positioning in multiple axes of differentiation including gender, nationality and social class, affects how and why they exert their agency across and within different geographic scales. Most importantly, it investigates the role the imagination plays (imagination work) in both men and women’s agency, an aspect of the GGP framework that has been under-researched and theorized to date. The research also finds that this imagination work is promoted and cultivated in deeply gendered ways by IMBs seeking to profit off this transnational courtship. Employing data collected via interviews and content analysis of IMBs’ websites, the dissertation analyzes comparatively the expectations each group (women, men and IMBs) bring to their imagination work and experiences of the courtship marketplace. A central question posed and answered in the dissertation is “What do women and men courting each other in cyberspace seek and do they find it?” The dissertation finds that the men seek “traditional” women and the women seek “liberated” less “macho” men. Ironically, the men find Colombian women who are among the most “liberated” women in their homeland but who downplay this aspect of themselves in order to strategically find a more modern man and migrate abroad where they expect to find greater personal and professional opportunities.

International tourism and socio-economic development in the Caribbean : are they compatible?

Plagued with poverty, the countries of the Caribbean have grappled for years with numerous development models. As in many Third World countries, tourism has been used as an economic development strategy. Criticisms of the tourism industry have frequently been severe. So much that during the formation of the Caribbean Basin Initiative, the tourism industry was intentionally avoided and other industries favored. One of the most critical questions asked of tourism is whether or not the economic gains of the industry are worth the detrimental social, political and environmental effects on the host country. It is the objective of this thesis to examine the relationship between international tourism and socio-economic development in the Caribbean, and to determine whether or not the deficiencies of the industry prevent it from being a beneficial development tool.