YorkSpace

YorkSpace is York University's Institutional Repository. It supports York University's Senate Policy on Open Access by providing York community members with a place to preserve their research online in an institutional context.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Communities in YorkSpace

Select a community to browse its collections.

Now showing 1 - 63 of 63

Recent Submissions

  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    Urban Refugee Protection and the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda in Ethiopia: Challenges and Missing Links
    (Scalabrini Institute for Human Mobility in Africa & University of the Western Cape, 2025-12-22) Desta, Chalachew G.; Akkaya, Gülcan; Alemu, Samuel T.
    Urban refugees in Ethiopia face persistent challenges despite progressive legal and policy reforms, including the 2019 Refugee Proclamation, the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework, and some alignment with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. This study examined the gaps between policy commitments and lived realities by integrating desk reviews, key informant interviews with government and humanitarian actors, and in-depth interviews with 21 refugees from diverse nationalities in Addis Ababa. Findings reveal partial successes in economic inclusion, education, healthcare, documentation, and social participation, yet structural, administrative, and legal barriers constrain meaningful access to livelihoods, housing, services, and social networks. Social capital mediates refugees’ ability to navigate these challenges, while disparities in documentation, language, and market access exacerbate vulnerability. The study concludes that Ethiopia’s urban refugee protection system exhibits implementation gaps that undermine Sustainable Development Goal-aligned outcomes and emphasizes the need for coordinated, inclusive, and context-sensitive policies that translate formal rights into substantive capabilities and equitable integration opportunities.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    The permanent few or the temporary many? Evaluating refugee integration obstructors through implementation of the Ethiopia and Jordan Job Compacts
    (Oxford Academic, 2026-01-05) Almasri, Shaddin; Nigusie, Alemu Asfaw
    Following the global re-emergence of refugee self-reliance narratives in the wake of the Syria refugee displacement, development aid took on new and experimental meanings in some displacement contexts. Jordan and the EU entered into a ten-year agreement known as the Jordan Compact, an aid agreement that supports trade and job creation for refugees and host communities, in 2016. Later that year, the Ethiopia Jobs Compact was agreed with the EU and other development actors. While inspired by the Jordan Compact, policymaking to support the compact implementation in Ethiopia vastly differed from that of Jordan. More specifically, Jordan immediately implemented policy changes to support the legalization of Syrian refugee employment, while this process was delayed in Ethiopia. In 2019, the Government of Ethiopia passed a progressive Refugee Proclamation, constituting a significant legal change and commitment—a change far more sustainable, from a legal standpoint, than any of those pursued in Jordan. Accordingly, this paper explores the differences in Jobs Compact implementation, the causes behind them, and the impacts these have had on outcomes. Relying on a comparative approach of the refugee governance frameworks in each of these respective contexts, this paper argues that the difference in compact implementation, from the perspective of governance, is rooted in policy and political strategies undertaken to mitigate local integration in Jordan and Ethiopia.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    Canadian Cultural Nationalism in the Time of Digital Platforms: Reframing Proposed Amendments to the Broadcasting Act
    (2023-03-24) Bourcheix-Laporte, Mariane
    Background: Last amended in 1991, the Broadcasting Act has recently been the object of legislative reform projects with the aim of incorporating online broadcasting into the existing legislative and regulatory framework and expanding the diversity representation mandate of the Canadian broadcasting system. Analysis: The article analyzes proposed amendments to the Broadcasting Act iterated in the third and final version of Bill C-10 (2021) and in the current version of Bill C-11 (2022) and develops a critical analysis of their implications vis-à-vis discursive constructions of Canadian cultural nationalism and the model of cultural citizenship that it fosters. Conclusion and implications: Proposed amendments recuperate the cultural nationalist logic that underscores Canadian cultural policy’s efforts to secure cultural sovereignty. In the legislative reform project, this logic manifests through the continued economization of cultural production in the digital era and the perpetuation of a settler colonial vision of cultural citizenship that remains skewed by ethnolinguistic hierarchies.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    From Videotape Exchange Networks to On-Demand Streaming Platforms: The Circulation of Independent Canadian Film and Video in the Digital Era
    (Routledge, 2023-02-28) Bourcheix-Laporte, Mariane
    This chapter discusses the adoption of digital circulation practices by the Canadian independent media arts community. It positions digital modes of media circulation in continuity with the grassroots videotape exchange networks that were developed by community-thirsty media artists and activists in the late 1960s and 1970s. The chapter explores how the Canadian independent media arts network has historically operated, and continues to operate, in parallel to commercial media production and distribution networks. Video had a magnetic importance. Ramon Lobato defines distribution as: “the movement of media through space and time”. This is a broad definition, but it usefully emphasizes the circulation of media, without tying it to a specific technology or medium. Today, Canada boasts hundreds of media arts centres, festivals, and collectives that support the production, exhibition, and distribution of media artworks in mediums ranging from analogue film and digital video, to sound art and new media, to augmented and virtual reality.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access ,
    Women leaving heterosexuality a mid-life : transformations in self and relations
    (2001-12) Armstrong, M. Sharon; Toukmanian, Shake
    The purpose of this study was to investigate women's experience of leaving heterosexuality at mid-life. Nine lesbian (or gay) identified women, ranging in age from 41 to 55, who had been previously married and who had previously identified as heterosexual participated in the study. During interviews of approximately 2 hours in length, participants were asked to describe their experience of transformation from a heterosexual to a non-heterosexual identity and the impact that this change had on their daily life and relationships. The interviews were transcribed by the researcher and a grounded analysis was conducted utilising QSR NVivo 1.2.142, a software programme designed to facilitate qualitative analyses. The grounded analysis was carried out according to the procedures and principles of grounded theory and methodical hermeneutics. Taking a participant-researcher perspective, the researcher added data from her own experience as a mid-life lesbian to later phases of the analysis. The resulting theoretical representation is a hierarchical category structure consisting of four levels. Twenty-nine first-order categories, which were grounded in the transcript data, were grouped together to form the following second-order categories: "Socialization," "Marriage," "Lesbian Awakenings," "Self-transformations," "Coming Out," "Breaking New Ground," "Leaving the Marriage," and "Shifting Motherhood." These higher order categories were subsequently grouped into three meaningful third-order categories: "Heterosexual Life," "Leaving Heterosexuality--The Experience of Transformation," and "Leaving Heterosexuality--Relational Transformations." The categories "Heterosexual Life" and "Leaving Heterosexuality" reflect the before-and-after quality of the overall experience of leaving heterosexuality at mid-life, while the two aspects of leaving heterosexuality, "The Experience of Transformation" and "Relational Transformations," reflect changes in self and identity versus changes in roles and relations. The core category that evolved as the overall organising representation of the data was one of transformation, which I labelled "Women Leaving Heterosexuality at Mid-life: Transformations in Self and Relations". The findings of this analysis are discussed in terms of the following: the social construction of identity; the experience of transformation at mid-life, including the labels we use for sexual orientation and women's capacity for intimacy and intimacy needs; coming out as a mature woman, including the loss of heterosexual privilege and coming out to family members; and the redefinition of family.