Geography

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Open Access
Walking Potatoes & Wilder-Beasts: An Examination Of The Socio-Ecological Relationship Between Humans And Mammals In Urban Agriculture
(2024-11-07) Buckvold-Beirne, Elle Clare; Podur, Justin
This project explores the positive and negative interactions and conflicts that arise between the people and mammals working, visiting, and living in urban farms and community gardens. This involved an anonymous survey of people that work and grow in the research sites, and the use of trail cameras to capture the mammals that visited the sites. The study examined two urban agricultural sites from August to November 2022, in Toronto, ON: one urban farm and one community garden, both with proximity to urban wildlife habitat. Growers have a complicated, nuanced relationship with the various species living in and benefitting from these miniature agricultural landscapes. Trail cameras at both sites captured numerous species, as well as several individuals who made repeated visits. Conflicts at both sites arose from the eating and spoiling of crops, and damage to infrastructure by wildlife, but some participants felt positively about their interactions with some species.
Open Access
Consciousness and Action among Auto Workers in India: The Maruti Movement, 2007-2017
(2024-11-07) Pati, Charvaak; Das, Raju J.
This dissertation is a study of the dialectical relation between class consciousness and collective action among auto workers in India. Specifically, it examines how the existing state of class consciousness shapes and, in turn, is shaped by class struggle in the context of the militant working class struggle in Maruti Suzuki India Limited (MSIL), India’s largest carmaker. This dialectic of consciousness and action among the Maruti workers is shaped by workers’ working and living conditions, their own political organisations, and interventions by the institutions of the state. There are distinctive political barriers to class consciousness and class struggle such as caste, ethnicity and regional identities. Yet, there are objective economic and political conditions such as low wages and denial of trade union rights which have the potential to weaken these political barriers without undermining the importance of these identities for the working class. This dissertation argues that in the absence of political organisation/s imbued with a political consciousness that underscores the centrality of capitalism and the capitalist state and the limits (both material and discursive) they put on working class struggle and consciousness, it is not possible to scale up place-specific and plant-based militant trade union struggles.
Open Access
Moving, waiting, searching across borders: Gendered geographies of violence, disappearance and contestation in southern Mexico
(2024-11-07) Biorklund Belliveau, Linn Maria Gunilla; Hyndman, Jennifer
Women displaced by violence from Central America are the protagonists of this dissertation. Their intimate stories and acts of survival and care are foregrounded as they move, wait and search in social spaces in southern Mexico. They are mobilized to reconceptualize mainstream academic, political and humanitarian thinking about bordering practices as integral parts of states’ tactics to control people’s movement only. The dissertation delves into migrant and body-territory epistemologies of everyday politics, arts-based contestations and performative acts, revealing and making present the bodies, spatialities, and knowledges that populate a geopolitically manufactured border and migration “crisis” in southern Mexico. The research explores bordering practices at the scale of their everyday implementation on the ground, theorizing how borders and bordering as a violent state-driven apparatus operate, how it is experienced differently, whom it impacts, and how it is negotiated across space and time. The research is situated at the intersection of political geography, critical border studies, refugee studies and transnational feminist approaches. The study and grounded analysis originate from feminist ethnographic and participatory action research with migrant women, feminist and women’s groups, collectives searching for the disappeared and others accompanying border-crossers in 2022-23. The methods applied include life history narratives, in-depth semi-structured interviews, workshops, and the accompaniment of people moving, waiting and searching along migratory routes. This dissertation contributes to debates on bordering practices, gender violence, migrant disappearances, and care, making four unique contributions to the literature. First, the methodological approach fosters novel narratives about borders and the acts of people crossing them despite fears. Second, the research reveals a gendered and intimate geopolitical analysis that highlights women’s experiences and survival strategies and considers their exclusion to move quickly across borders that shape and are shaped by state practices. Third, the research re-conceptualizes the outcomes of bordering practices, exposing the protagonism and spaces of care while underlining the experience of waiting in borderlands, all of which are frequently overlooked and undocumented. Finally, the research reads disappearances as violence towards (feminized) migrant bodies and territories and probes subsequent performative searches by friends and family that defy the salient maternalist and state-centric discourses.
Open Access
Feminist counter-geopolitics: knowledges, practices, and spaces of activism in Iranian diasporas
(2024-11-07) Lashkari, Maryam; Bain, Alison
In the face of growing state authoritarianism, particularly targeting feminist and women’s rights activists in Iran and forcing many to leave the country, the question of whether and how feminist activism outside the country’s national border negotiates and contests political structures of gendered violence and displacement is of growing importance. This dissertation explores how knowledges, practices, and spaces of activism in Iranian diasporas across selected European and Canadian cities create alternatives to state political structures. The present research was conducted between December 2021 and June 2023 and employed different qualitative research methods, including semi-structured interviews with 39 activists, academics, artists, policymakers, and diaspora community members whose work intersects with feminism, women’s rights, and gender-based violence. I draw upon the concept of feminist counter-geopolitics, discussing what knowledges, practices, and spaces constitute them. By focusing on feminist activist experiences as the focal point of analysis, the dissertation questions the lack of attention to activism in diaspora in critical, feminist, and urban geopolitics. I examine how activist knowledge of gender and sexual-based violence changes as they cross national borders and illustrate the challenges and opportunities of translating knowledge in a transnational context. Despite significant obstacles in materializing these knowledges such as economic hardships, political kinships among activists provide important sources of material and emotional support for activists. Furthermore, I show how, despite the dominant logic of Iranian nationalism, transnational solidarities among activists in diasporas resist such exclusionary discourses in the context of the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. I discuss how such knowledges, practices, and spaces illustrate intimate geopolitics that challenge the state-centric understanding of geopolitics, pointing toward emancipatory aspects of feminist counter-geopolitics.
Open Access
Masculinity and Gig Work: A Case Study of Rideshare Workers in Toronto
(2024-11-07) Campo, Maya Selina; Tufts, Steven
This thesis examines shifting masculinities and platform labour, following eleven semi-structured interviews conducted with male Toronto-based Uber and Lyft rideshare workers with dependents (children). Women have commonly done non-standard work, hence the proliferation of non-standard work being contextualized as the ‘feminization of work’ (Zahn, 2019). In contrast, rideshare work is a non-standard form of gig work done predominantly by men, rendering it a relevant form of platform work to examine with its complicated relationship to the historical context of gender and nonstandard work. This thesis argues for a need to organize the worker as a whole, examining how workers’ unpaid social reproductive labour and balancing of rideshare work, and often another form of paid work, impacts the viability of classic organizing methods. I argue that these issues of convoluted boundaries between paid and unpaid work must be incorporated into the potential organizing demands of a rideshare workers’ union and identify areas for further research on organizing rideshare workers accounting for shifting masculinities.
Open Access
Animals and Development: A Case Study of the Canadian International Food Security Research Fund
(2024-07-22) Legault, Danielle Desiree Emily; Hovorka, Alice J.
Food animals such as cattle, chickens, goats, fish and bees are central to Canada’s international development initiatives which are attempting to eradicate global poverty, hunger, and foster sustainable development. Yet, despite the economic and social prevalence of these programs globally, the animals in these projects are often only counted as economic units; their relationships with the people and environment they interact with, and their welfare are left invisible and unaccounted for. This research centres the animals at the heart of Canadian international development interventions. Through a mixed methods approach, this research documents the historic roles of animals in Canadian development interventions, both domestically and globally; the actors, roles and representations of animals through a contemporary case study of the Canadian International Food Security Research Fund (CIFSRF); and looks to the future of animals in development by interrogating the synergies and tensions of the implementation of animal welfare paradigms such as the One Welfare framework. This interdisciplinary research unites animal geographies and development studies to provide scholarly insights on global animal-human relationships, animal welfare, and global well-being to inform future animal-human practices in development.
Open Access
Process- Versus Pattern-Based Measures of Fragmentation: A Simulated Sensitivity Analysis
(2024-07-18) Kerr, Barbara; Remmel, Tarmo
Landscape fragmentation, which has demonstrated links to habitat loss, increased isolation, a loss of connectivity, decreased biodiversity, and reduced connectivity is difficult to quantify. Traditional metrics have been calculated using landscape patterns of composition and configuration. The objective of this study was to examine an alternative process-based approach using the cost of traversing a landscape as a proxy for fragmentation and compare it with the traditional approach. One thousand binary landscapes varying in composition and configuration were simulated, and least-cost path analysis provided the data to calculate the process-based metrics, which were compared with the computed pattern-based metrics. The process-based quantification of landscape fragmentation was more sensitive to landscape fragmentation than a pattern-based quantification. My study provides a methodological foundation for further studies as it is not associated with a specific species or ecological process, and thus can be easily adapted to numerous settings.
Open Access
Technologies of Transparency: The Role of Information and Communications Technologies in Promoting Labour Rights in Distant Water Fisheries
(2024-07-18) Ebrahimirad, Amir-Ali; Kelly, Philip
Ethical production networks and supply chains have garnered significant attention in both academia and industry. The ethical supply chain has become a topic of significant debate in the global fishing industry in particular, and especially in distant water fishing (DWF). Monitoring labour rights/abuses presents a challenge in this field, as workers are employed on fishing vessels operating in isolated and remote waters, often outside any effective oversight or regulation. This study aims to investigate the potential of various information and communication technologies (ICTs) in tracking, monitoring, and promoting labour rights in DWF. In pursuing this question, I use the intersection of global production networks (GPN) and labour regimes as a theoretical framework. While GPN theory addresses the institutions, actors and power relations in global production processes, labour regime theory provides a conceptual understanding of how workers are both disciplined and exert agency within global production systems. The study is based on qualitative interviews with stakeholders who are active in both developing and deploying various technologies in relation to migrant labour rights in fisheries, complemented by an extensive review of secondary documentation. The findings indicate that, within this framework, ICTs can be primarily classified into two distinct categories based on their approach to monitoring and observing labour conditions: a) remote monitoring and b) on-board/community-based monitoring and reporting systems. I will argue that the use of such technologies holds significant potential for advancing transparency and accountability in terms of the labour rights and working conditions of fishing crews. In this way, new possibilities for labour agency and the re-regulation of labour regimes in global production are being opened up, while, at the same time, limitations on the application of ICTs still remain.
Open Access
Assessing Long-Term Ecological Changes in Lake Scugog (Southern Ontario, Canada) from ~1700 to 2019 Using Cladocera (Branchipoda, Crustacea) Subfossil Remains as Paleoecological Indicators
(2024-03-16) Jeyarajah, Januja; Korosi, Jennifer
Lake Scugog is a shallow impoundment located in southern Ontario that is encountering several anthropogenic stressors, such as the introduction of invasive species, eutrophication, periodic algal blooms, and climate change. This thesis used a paleolimnological approach to assess the long-term (~200 years) ecological changes in the west and east arms of Lake Scugog using Cladocera (crustacean zooplankton, Class Branchiopoda) remains as bioindicators. Bosmina and C. brevilabris were the dominant cladocerans in Lake Scugog throughout the last several hundred years. Measured Bosmina body sizes were small, indicating high fish planktivory pressure on Bosmina. The changes in subfossil Cladocera and Bosmina in sediments suggest that the stress levels associated with eutrophication, climate change and invasive species have not been large enough to significantly alter predation levels or this part of the zooplankton community in Lake Scugog.
Open Access
Carbon and Mercury Accumulation in Lake Sediments of Rapidly Thawing Discontinuous Permafrost Peatlands (Northwest Territories, Canada)
(2024-03-16) Abulu, Rachael Ehimen; Korosi, Jennifer
This research uses a paleolimnological approach to address gaps in our understanding of lakes as potential sinks for carbon and mercury released from thawing discontinuous permafrost peatlands. Sediment cores were collected from 14 small lakes in the southern Northwest Territories, and core chronologies and sediment accumulation rates established using 210Pb radioisotopes. Most lakes exhibited increases in mercury concentrations independent of organic carbon. Atomic C/N ratios indicated that the proportion of organic carbon from algal sources has also increased. The low sediment focussing factor (< 1.0) observed in the majority of the lakes suggests that small, hydrologically connected shallow lakes act as flow-through systems, which may promote the downstream transport of sediment (and associated carbon and mercury) through sub-arctic watersheds draining thawing permafrost peatlands, rather than acting primarily as carbon and mercury sinks.
Open Access
Trans imaging of non-normative homes: the critical geographies of higher education- LGBTQ+ student housing in Delhi and Mumbai, India
(2024-03-16) Arun-Pina, Chan; Bain, Alison L.
“Student housing” rarely discursively figures in the contemporary urban Indian public imagination because of a deeply rooted cis-heteronormative conflation of marriage, housing, and permanence. This dissertation considers what it means for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer (LGBTQ+) postsecondary students to belong in an everyday trans-/homonegative society. Through empirical case studies of on- and off-campus geographies of student housing at North Campus, DU, Delhi and Deonar Campus, TISS, Mumbai, I analyse and visualize the invisibilized lived experiences of Higher Education (HE)-LGBTQ+ students in two of India’s megacities. These two campuses are home to radical student-led gender-based housing activism against the patriarchal and cisnormative codes of student accommodations. Gender, however, cannot be activated in isolation, as it intersects with a range of identity axes such as class, caste, region, religion, and (rarely specified) sexuality. This dissertation is based on two phases of research (August 2020 to April 2021 and June 2022 to October 2022) conducted virtually during the Covid-19 global pandemic. In-depth interactive spatial storytelling with 23 HE-LGBTQ+ students was combined with semi-structured interviews with 12 student housing stakeholders (3 urban planners, 5 brokers, and 4 landowners) and autoethnography. My transdisciplinary training as a geographer-artist-architect was used to develop a “trans imaging” technique to see-through and spatio-visually represent how cis-heteropatriarchy codes normative domestic blueprints in ways that enable queer domicide. I argue that queer-domicidal blueprints exceed the spatial scale of marital family homes shaping student spatialities at university-city edges and student housing and homes in India. This dissertation advocates for unfollowing normative domestic blueprints and learning from HE-LGBTQ+ students’ (un)homings and reimaginings of non-normative home-futures.
Open Access
Invisibilized Providers: The Role of Racialized Diasporas in Refugee Sponsorship
(2024-03-16) Yousuf, Biftu; Hyndman, Jennifer M.
For more than 40 years, civil society groups have volunteered their personal time, energy, and finances to resettle more than 370,000 refugees through Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees (PSR) program. Much of this sponsorship is done and supported by former refugees themselves, who are defined in this research as racialized diaspora sponsors. The PSR program is a public-private partnership between the federal government and Canadian residents, who have joined together to provide protection to refugees in need. Private sponsorships are commonly arranged by local communities, faith-based organizations, or private citizens who have entered into agreements with the federal government. The existing literature underrepresents the crucial role and work of sponsors who are part of racialized diasporas engaged in refugee sponsorship. This dissertation probes the invisibilized sponsorship role of racialized diasporas made up of former refugees and asylum seekers to Canada. Based on testimony from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with sponsors and key informants triangulated with ‘born digital’ material, the research analyzes the motivations, activities, and contributions of Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Oromo diasporas in Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario. A ‘study up’ technique is used to examine the complexities of power at multiple sites and scales. It engages with feminist geopolitics/politics of security to develop analyses of refugee protection that go beyond state-centric perspectives. Sponsorship is reframed as a community initiative driven by individuals affected by displacement. The findings reveal that racialized sponsors who were themselves resettled to Canada undertake most of the heavy lifting in sponsorship circles, but their work is largely invisible. The findings also indicate that key issues, such as naming and monitoring, have implications for the equitable distribution of refugee protection spaces across more racialized geographies in sub-Saharan Africa. Empirically, this dissertation fills an important knowledge gap that passively references the participation of racialized diaspora sponsors. As Canada’s refugee protection efforts continue to garner global attention, this research has important implications for policy transfer and programming as it relates to sustainability, scalability, and diversification over the longue durée. Such findings are vital to Canadian public policy goals and practices of social inclusion and cohesion, and more specifically, to the global implications of Canadian policies and practices concerning refugee protection.
Open Access
Uncertainty and Columbian Immigrants' Encounters with the Foreign Credential Assessment System in London, Ontario
(2024-03-16) Gonzalez Gomez, Michelle; Preston, Valerie
My research examines the experiences of Colombian immigrants, who have settled in London, Ontario, in negotiating professional qualifications and aspirations in Canada, as well as the subsequent impact to their family unit’s spatial integration and their individual identities. The study specifically assesses how educated Colombian immigrants were able to attain the accreditation necessary for employment in their professions and what were their experiences in doing so? Participants’ journeys demonstrate a gap in cultural education in workplace practice and reveal a need to attend to the relationship between local contexts, professional identities, and workplace ethics to ameliorate the issues in accreditation that plague the Ontarian socio-economy. Participants and their families demonstrate diverse capacities to cope with the demands and adverse effects of accreditation. Participants confront challenges with steadfast determination and tenaciously seize every opportunity available to them. The testimonies of participants are of undeniable value to shape the approach to immigration policy and program development. To construct a comprehensive story of credentialing and capture the diverse narratives of Colombian immigrants, participants partook in either or both the focus group and semi-structured interviews, which proved fruitful methods for the sharing of stories. In the end, I successfully gathered 15 participants for 2 focus groups. My study sought to share knowledge among and with participants with an overarching goal of returning some of the autonomy that has been eroded by participants’ credentialing experiences in Canada. Participants generously shared their experiences.
Open Access
Carbon Pools, Dynamics and Budget of the Bruce Peninsula
(2024-03-16) Bao, Kathleen; Bello, Richard L.
The northern Bruce Peninsula is a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve, contains the largest continuous forest in Southern Ontario and is a hotspot for biodiversity. However, there is little research done on the carbon pools, their dynamics and the soil carbon budget. A more comprehensive understanding of the processes regulating the uptake and release of carbon dioxide with the atmosphere is needed. This thesis aims to 1) quantify how much carbon is stored in aboveground biomass, soil, roots, litter, and deadwood pools, 2) understand how the carbon moves between these pools and 3) estimate the annual rate of change of the soil carbon budget. Using a LICOR LI8100, measuring soil respiration at 15-minute intervals over the course of two years, the amount of carbon released by heterotrophic (Rh) and autotrophic (Ra) respiration, was determined for litter and soil separately.
Open Access
Quantifying the Effect of Stressors on Carbon Dioxide Uptake by Vegetation Communities in the Bruce Peninsula
(2023-12-08) Achidago, Lord-Emmanuel; Bello, Richard L.
Climate change poses a potential threat to the CO2 uptake of terrestrial ecosystems, with uncertain implications for vegetation on the Bruce Peninsula. This UNESCO global biosphere reserve boasts some of the oldest Eastern white cedar trees (Thuja occidentalis). In this study, I investigate the response of Bruce Peninsula vegetation to climate change and vegetation cover variations over the past two decades, focusing on the sequestration capacity of different vegetation types. Utilizing Gross Primary Productivity (GPP) data from the Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Global Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) Sunlight Induced Fluorescence (GOSIF) datasets, I identify nine study sites based on land cover type. By examining trends in climate and vegetation growth and assessing the impact of environmental stresses, I aim to estimate the CO2 sequestration potential of these sites. Seasonal comparisons of GPP data with the area's ERA-5 climate data reveal no significant GPP trend. Notably, MODIS GPP exhibits a more pronounced response to environmental stressors, especially during the spring, compared to GOSIF GPP. Coniferous forests in the Bruce Peninsula emerge as the most effective in absorbing CO2.
Open Access
The Impact of Fire on the Reported Presence of Animals in California Deserts Using Open-Source Data
(2023-12-08) Goldgisser, Marina; Lortie, Christopher
Changing fire regimes across southwest North American deserts may impact endangered animal communities endemic to the region. This study examines the impact of fires on the occurrence of endangered animal species (ES) in California desert systems and evaluates ES recovery trends using open-source data—mostly collected through citizen science—retrieved from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Mean annual NDVI was used to evaluate vegetation productivity in fire impacted desert regions. ES occurrence records were fit to generalized linear mixed models and compared pre- and post-fire to evaluate ES response to fire disturbance. ES recovery was evaluated using a incidence-based ChaoSørensen similarity index. Burned regions had higher vegetation productivity than unburned regions in some, but not all, deserts. ES continue to visit burned habitat, even 19 years after a fire. Findings suggest ES resiliency to fire disturbance, likely through habitat-use modification, and support implementing citizen science data in future ecosystem monitoring.
Open Access
Exploring Activist Perspectives on Indigenous-settler Solidarity in Toronto's Food Sovereignty Movement
(2023-12-08) Seidman-Wright, Taliya; Rotz, Sarah
In Canada, Indigenous and ally scholars have called upon food movements to reimagine approaches to food system change in ways that confront settler colonialism and support Indigenous struggles for land and sovereignty. Engaging with critical Indigenous and food sovereignty scholarship, this project explores how nine settler food activists in Toronto are responding to these calls. Findings suggest that some Toronto food activists are actively working to build solidarity with Indigenous peoples by (un)learning and building relationships. However, few organizations seem to be prioritizing Indigenous initiatives or conversations around settler colonialism in their public media, implying that participants’ efforts may be in the minority among Toronto food organizations. Ultimately, settler food sovereignty movements must do more to reckon with the coloniality of food movement work, relinquish settler claims to define food systems on stolen lands, and push for structural changes towards permanent redistribution of power and land to Indigenous peoples.
Open Access
Constellations of Elsewheres: Queer and Trans* Youth Lives in Suburban Toronto
(2023-12-08) Sharp, Benjamin WIley; Bain, Alison L.
Loneliness, isolation, and suicide are endemic among queer and transgender youth, especially for those who live in the suburbs, where queer and trans* social infrastructure is scarce. This thesis explores how queer and trans* youth negotiate the cisheteronormative social infrastructure of suburban Toronto, how their everyday practices of dwelling shift the possibilities that this infrastructure affords, and how they build grassroots social infrastructure in Toronto’s suburban elsewheres. To explore these everyday practices, this research employs go-along interviews, participatory photography, and participant observation to sketch a constellation of suburban elsewheres where queer and trans* youth make their lives across the urban region. Finally, this thesis argues that queer and trans* youth build grassroots forms of social infrastructure across the urban-suburban region that enable them to survive and thrive amid the precarious landscapes of Toronto and its suburbs.
Open Access
Disinformation, Exclusion, and its Politics: Canadian Right-Wing Extremist Community within a Digital Landscape
(2023-12-08) Costanzo-Vignale, Christian; Gilbert, Liette
Research on right-wing extremism has historically been overwhelmingly focused on the movement’s preoccupations in the United States and Europe. Scholarly literature on Canadian groups and their beliefs has been sparse, with few studies mapping the extent of their activities. Right-wing extremism has captured journalistic attention in recent years as lone-wolf right-wing extremists radicalized on the Internet take up arms against racialized groups they see as anathema to their White supremacist groups’ survival. This research examines right-wing extremist conceptions of out-groups (the ‘Other’) and resulting political demands to contain this imagined threat through a case-study approach of Stormfront Canada. I conducted a thematic analysis of publicly available digital communications exchanged between community members between January 1st and December 31st, 2021. Major themes identified for forum threads were anti-hate initiatives, politics, crime, and health within the COVID-19 context, while for forum replies these were disinformation, offensive speech, and politics. I also quantified the extent of this community’s activity and found that most content shared to the website is posted by less than six active members. This thesis argues that discursive constructions of the Other depend on exclusionary belief systems predicated on support for White hegemony, and that political demands expressed by community members to contain the perceived threat posed by the continued existence of racial out-groups are shaped by an adherence to the Great Replacement superconspiracy.
Open Access
Paper Money, Paper Homes: How the Financialization of Housing Ruined Housing Policy
(2023-12-08) Giblon, Melissa Ruth; Kipfer, Stefan Andreas
There is a global housing affordability crisis; the cost of housing has skyrocketed at rates that far outpace real wages. Using a Marxist lens, I look at the dynamics of commodification and financialization in a capitalist land market. My thesis argues that the existence of a profit motive undermines the potential for affordability to be prioritized. Financialization specifically has entrenched and intensified this process of ‘housing-for-investment’ over ‘housing-for-shelter’. My thesis explores modern political solutions to this crisis, performing a comparative analysis of inclusionary zoning by-laws introduced in Toronto and New York City. This analysis dissects how capitalist-oriented housing affordability policies are structurally bound to the same dynamics of profit-over-people; thus, they can never produce affordable housing. Alternatively, I propose a series of non-reformist reforms and radical political approaches to decommodify housing and remove its tender from the private market altogether.