Students from wealthy backgrounds have long dominated elite universities in the United States. Still, in recent decades, institutions like Princeton have expanded financial aid to make college more accessible for low-income and first-generation college students. While these initiatives increase socioeconomic diversity, disparities in students' experiences persist, particularly in terms of social fit, access to resources, and institutional support. Existing research highlights the challenges low-income students face at elite institutions. Still, little attention has been given to the role of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in shaping these students’ pathways to and through college. This study examines how Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) influence the experiences of low-income students at Princeton. Drawing on survey data from 55 undergraduates and semi-structured interviews with 25 of these students, this research explores their backgrounds, motivations, and challenges in navigating university life. These findings reveal that while Princeton provides financial support, it does not capture students’ struggles with resource navigation, social belonging, and emotional well-being, highlighting gaps in our understanding of adverse childhood experiences in the context of resilience. This study highlights two areas for growth: universities must extend their efforts beyond providing financial access to students to achieve true inclusivity. While acknowledging that early-life adversity continues to have lasting implications in adulthood, the ACE scale does not account for other childhood adversity that underlies their experiences.

This thesis examines the ongoing influence of parental divorce during early years on how parent-child relationships develop as these children grow up and attend college. Most of the studies spotlight the immediate consequences of separation. However, this research delves deeper into how these dynamics shift after custody arrangements end and students step into autonomy. Drawing on twelve in-depth interviews with college students from divorced families, this study highlights four main themes: freedom from household alternation, uneven parental involvement, emotional stress during school breaks, and efforts to rebuild or redefine relationships in adulthood. Through qualitative analysis, the research shows how students reflect on their family past, set boundaries, and redefine love and support on their terms. This study explores how young adults manage parent–child relationships after divorce, highlighting resilience, growing independence, and shifts in self-awareness. It is beneficial to understand the long-term impact of divorce on identity and family connection.

Bolivia, with its enormous lithium reserves, has been earmarked as a potential global player in the lithium market, as the escalating demand for lithium worldwide has followed the renewables transition. However, despite this natural wealth and not much of a budding political momentum under Evo Morales' administration, Bolivia remains dismally absent from the global lithium market. This thesis posits that Bolivia's delayed entry to the "lithium race" does not stem solely from technical barriers or nationalist economic policies, but deeper structural, institutional, and socio-political failures that lie within the country's peripheral position in the global economy. The study-theoretically informed by world-systems theory, dependency theory, as well as the concept of embedded autonomy, critically examines how under Morales' government the lithium industrialization stirred historic Indigenous aspirations for sovereignty while replicating patterns of dependency and exclusion that have been experienced by communities in history. Based on eighteen semi-structured interviews with Indigenous leaders, local residents and municipal officials in the region surrounding the Salar de Uyuni, this research foregrounds the day-to-day existences and views of those most directly affected by lithium extraction. Early optimism toward a state-led model of lithium industrialization gradually disappeared into disillusionment when Indigenous communities began to realize that the same standard extractivist practice was being reproduced, along with environmental degradation, no local benefits, and decisions made without free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC). This thesis combines historical analysis, sociological theory, and qualitative fieldwork to argue that meaningful lithium industrialization in Bolivia will need not only technical and financial resources but also a fundamental new thinking about models for resource governance. This study thus contributes to broader debates on post-extractivism, Indigenous resistance, and alternative pathways for development in peripheral states navigating global capitalist pressures.

While dominant narratives in queer studies often emphasize a linear progress from coming out, visibility, to pride, this thesis examines how Korean and Korean American gay men negotiate queer life through temporal rhythms shaped by silence, deferral, and affective calibration. Through 34 in-depth interviews and ethnographic research conducted in Jong-no and Itaewon in Seoul, South Korea and San Francisco in California, U.S., this thesis introduces a framework called temporal space to analyze how queer subjectivity is formed through intersecting spatial and temporal conditions. Comparing the experiences of Korean gay men and Korean American gay men, this study finds that queer life is not universally articulated through rupture or disclosure. Instead, Korean gay men often navigate familial and social expectations through recursive forms of silence shaped by Confucian ethics and institutional repression, while Korean American gay men confront racialized visibility and diaspora-specific moral frameworks within family, religion, and queer spaces. Across both groups, queerness is found not to be a static identity but a choreographed negotiation of time, space, and social relations. Therefore, this project proposes temporal space as a methodological and theoretical intervention into queer studies, critical race theory, and human geography, foregrounding temporality as central to understanding how queer life unfolds under constraint. In doing so, this thesis highlights alternative queer world-making practices that resist dominant timelines and generate meaning in conditions of ambiguity, ambivalence, and care.

The teaching profession is very important in educating and transforming the next generation of people. Not only are teachers educating their students, but they are also instilling good morals and values in them, in hopes of setting them up for success in the future. After learning that teachers across the country have been facing job insecurity due to complaints of student’s parents or school boards because of things like decorations, I became curious as to why this was happening. This research paper uses both literature and quantitative data to understand society’s perception of teachers. I used an abundance of literature to understand the regulations in place surrounding what is acceptable for teachers in the classroom, regarding decorations, personal belongings, and personal opinions. It became clear that there are very vague rules for teachers to follow, which allows for teachers to get in trouble a lot more due to different interpretations of these rules. A survey was created to understand people’s perceptions and levels of professionalism of teachers in different scenarios. The survey also helped look deeper into the topic, by having one survey with all female teachers and one with all male teachers. Because the teaching profession is dominated by women, I was curious if that had any impact on the public’s perception of the profession. This research helped demonstrate the harsher judgement placed on minority groups in the workplace and helped understand the perception of professionalism of teachers in the so-called ‘grey area’ of teacher conduct.

The privacy paradox suggests there is a discrepancy between people’s expressed concerns about privacy and their actual actions online. Traditionally, this paradox is supported most significantly by the cost-benefit analysis where the perceived benefits of certain web platforms outweigh the perceived risks to their privacy. Additionally, in sociology, the violation of privacy norms is often understood as the inappropriate flow of information across social contexts, known as the contextual integrity theory. This study aims to challenge this theory and redefine our understanding around the privacy paradox, specifically in algorithmic engagement. Through empirical and qualitative research, this thesis asks: how do individuals across generations navigate privacy concerns in the age of Artificial Intelligence? Specifically, it explores how these algorithms challenge conventional understandings around privacy by obscuring the flow of information and enforcing strong user behaviors, known as interaction rituals. By analyzing 20 interviews (10 subjects ages 18-24 years old and 10 subjects ages 47-53 years old), I work to disprove the traditional theories behind privacy behaviors. Instead, I find that social interactions, particularly market-driven interaction rituals and complex contagions, are normalizing the erosion of personal privacy in algorithms. These findings suggest that individuals interact in networks that socially reinforce constant engagement with digital technology, which makes opting out and privacy-focused behaviors increasingly difficult.

Through surveying a Princeton pilot mentoring program and interviewing current Princeton students and alumni, this thesis examines the interplay between the undergraduate experience and alumni mentorship at Princeton University. While current and recent undergraduates express a strong and widespread desire to receive alumni mentorship, I find that Princeton’s current mentorship programs are inadequate to address students’ ever evolving needs. Thus, this thesis argues that Princeton University, and other institutions, should implement structured and comprehensive mentorship initiatives designed to foster meaningful and sustained relationships. Ultimately, my results suggest that if universities establish a robust alumni mentorship program, they will cultivate a more inclusive campus environment, strengthen alumni engagement with their alma mater, and enhance the trajectory of their students’ lives.

This study examines the experiences of Guatemalan Americans, a steadily growing community shaped by migration history and socio-economic challenges. While media narratives since 2017 have focused on caravans from the Northern Triangle fleeing hardship, this research shifts attention to what happens after arrival. Through surveys conducted with participants from the Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund (LALDEF), the study explores how informal support networks—especially churches and community-based organizations—help build community cohesion and address economic and legal vulnerabilities. By highlighting these networks’ role in fostering resilience and adaptation, the research fills a gap in the literature and contributes to a deeper understanding of immigrant integration in the U.S.

Universities are often seen as centers for economic growth, but they can also drive housing inequality in surrounding communities. Student demand is frequently linked to rising rents and gentrification, but this overlooks important variations across college towns, market shifts, and COVID-19’s impact. This thesis asks: to what extent do universities and their expanding student population contribute to the nationwide rental housing crisis? Using a fixed effects regression on data from 2012-2022 concerning 1,746 universities, this study examines how proximity to campus and student populations affect rent over time. The results suggest that while being near a campus consistently predicts higher rent, the student presence does not uniformly drive prices – and in the South, is even linked to lower rents. Instead, rents positively correlate with college graduate presence. Thus, universities may influence housing markets not only by attracting students, but by training gentrifiers who transform neighborhoods long after graduation.

My senior thesis research adapts the classic panoptic structure into a modern theoretical form, the “community panopticon,” based on social, economic, and physical capital. I contextualize each of these forms of capital as measurable indexes that alter the degree of Panoptic Perception in each neighborhood and residents’ subsequent responses to it. Quantitatively, I surveyed Chicagoland conducting multivariate and ordered logistic regression, and quadrant segmentation to measure how social, economic, and physical capital perceive panoptic surveillance and measure how residents respond to such. Qualitatively, I conducted semi-structured interviews to provide social and spatial context to the indices. Findings suggest that economic and social capital influence the extent of panoptic perception among Chicagoland residents, and the extent to which those capitals influence how neighborhoods respond. Additionally, qualitative results indicated that residents’ digital activity as social identifiers have indicative influences on the extent to which they feel watched.

In 2022 the United States Supreme Court eliminated the federal protection for abortion access in the landmark decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In the three years since, states have passed protective and restrictive abortion legislation, creating a patchwork of laws across the country. The recent 2024 election and the beginning of Donald Trump’s second presidential term have created new political influences in healthcare, which are ongoing. This study aimed to understand how these political flashpoints have affected contraceptive decision-making and counseling. I interviewed medical professionals working in college health centers to gain valuable insight into how patients in the early stages of their reproductive lives are making contraceptive decisions and how providers are helping to navigate these uncertainties and anxiety-laden decisions. Legislation and politics affect healthcare decisions on the individual level, prompting providers to counsel with such considerations in mind—attempting to balance their patients’ concerns, best healthcare practices, state laws, and uncertainties about the future.

This research explores how W.E.B. Du Bois’s theory of double consciousness takes new shape in the digital age, when identity is no longer seen through the eyes of others, but through the silent sorting of algorithms, feeds, and filtered metrics. Drawing on 25 in-depth interviews with primarily Black participants between the ages of 20 and 28, the study examines how race, class, gender, and geography intersect with platform design to shape experiences of visibility, fragmentation, and performance—particularly on Instagram and LinkedIn. While Du Bois’s double consciousness remains the central frame, the analysis expands to include theories of aesthetic labor, algorithmic bias, and platform capitalism, revealing how the demand to be legible online fractures the self into curated parts. Participants spoke of code-switching between platforms, silencing parts of themselves, withholding images, and crafting alternate accounts—not as acts of disappearance, but as quiet refusals to be flattened. These strategies suggest that resistance online is often not loud, but carefully rooted in a desire to remain whole within systems that reward polish over complexity, coherence over contradiction. By extending Du Bois’s vision into the realm of algorithmic life, this project reveals how the souls of Black folk are now rendered in code, optimized for visibility yet vulnerable to erasure. And yet, within the glitch, within the silence, something else endures: a blueprint for digital survival, a fragmented kind of sovereignty, and a demand not just to be seen, but to be free.

Systematic discrimination has had long term effects on the African American community, limiting the ability of this demographic to receive affordable housing, high education, and positions within the workforce that provide substantial wages. In the workplace specifically, cultural biases and homophilic networks decrease access to positions for African Americans, even when these workers are qualified for the position. Through the analysis of in-depth qualitative interviews held amongst six professional players and five MLB executives, this thesis investigates these racial preferences in the context of professional baseball, exploring the factors that have led to decreased participation of African Americans in the MLB. Factors such as early exposure to the sport, financial support, and barriers to accessible baseball all play large roles in forming the small supply of Black players seen today. In addition, organizational preferences and the surplus of talent coming from Latin American countries, have influenced the markets of players that professional teams invest in. Furthermore, this paper explores the experiences of Black players, bringing to light the struggles that come with playing a sport dominated by white contemporaries. By investigating these topics and understanding the social mechanisms that have limited Black participation in baseball, this paper brings awareness to the challenges that this demographic faces and current initiatives aimed at reintegrating black athletes into baseball.

This thesis examines stakeholder perceptions of artificial intelligence in film and television through a mixed-methods approach. The core analysis employs a MaxDiff utility measurement with 611 general audience members and 48 entertainment professionals to quantify acceptance patterns across 19 distinct AI use cases. Additionally, a question wording effect experiment reveals that describing technology as "AI" versus "software that scans automatically" results in a statistically significant difference of 12.77 percentage points, highlighting how terminology influences perception independent of functionality. When combined with interview insights, these findings reveal consistent psychological boundaries: non-creative assistance applications receive broad acceptance while creative autonomous applications face strong resistance, a tension between enhancing versus replacing human creativity. AI implementations that maintain human guidance dramatically outrank their autonomous counterparts across all demographics. Demographic analysis reveals age as the strongest indicator of AI acceptance, with younger respondents showing greater openness to creative applications while older participants demonstrate stronger acceptance of non-creative tools but heightened resistance to creative uses. Surprisingly, media consumption habits (self-identified viewer type) show minimal influence on acceptance patterns, suggesting that AI perceptions are rooted in deeper values rather than entertainment engagement levels. Industry professionals demonstrate more nuanced distinctions than general audiences, showing stronger protection of core creative domains while expressing greater appreciation for technical assistance. These findings offer practical guidance for implementation strategies that respect domain-specific boundaries while leveraging AI capabilities in ways that preserve human creative direction.

This research paper investigates the impact of “amenity migration” on the local populations in rural mountain towns during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as potential barriers to healthcare that arise when the infrastructure of these communities is strained by a large and sudden population boom. It aims to explore the distinct perspectives, challenges, and adaptations of local residents and healthcare providers by employing interviews as the primary method. The study delves into motivations to live in the mountains, housing limitations, remote work, community dynamics, and balance between full-time and part-time residents during the pandemic. Furthermore, this study takes an analytical approach to theories of social ambivalence as a means to understand the complex and contradictory emotions local populations may experience towards amenity migrants. The social determinants of health play a significant role in analyzing the needs of these communities as they continue to undergo change because of these in-migrants. This paper contributes to the existing literature by filling gaps in understanding the nuanced responses of locals, healthcare workers, ski patrollers, and mountain rescuers to the pandemic in rural settings, offering insights into their distinct coping strategies, perceptions, and contributions to community well-being. This paper aims to identify the existence of “amenity migrants'' in rural mountain towns proposed by previous literature, understand their impact on local populations during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how the health landscape has been altered in the equitable distribution of healthcare. In bringing attention to this phenomenon, I aim to further inform policies and interventions that will support the diverse needs of both the locals and amenity migrants in the areas faced with the challenges posed by the pandemic.

As technology is now regularly used in classroom environments, identifying its benefits and drawbacks has grown more important. Although research has studied its impact on young adults, it has not yet shown how a college setting can change social media’s influence. This study, based on interviews with twenty current Princeton students, aims to clarify the correlation between social media usage habits and the overall emotional responses that they can evoke. It finds that though students have an overall positive view of social media, which they use for communicating and networking, they cannot avoid its common side effects, such as lower quality relationships and skewed priorities. These factors, among others, are responsible for the presence and severity of their emotional responses.

Existing literature on penal farm labor is dominated by the prison-industrial complex (PIC), which argues that private companies profit from penal labor and incarceration more broadly. At the Louisiana State Penitentiary, better known as Angola Prison, incarcerated men perform fieldwork. In this thesis, I ask: how does penal farm labor shape the material, corporeal, and emotional conditions of men who are serving time at Angola? What was the utility of penal farm labor for the state of Louisiana from the 1980s until the 2010s? I conducted interviews with 26 formerly incarcerated men who described their violent experiences with fieldwork at Angola. I argue that fieldwork is a disciplinary mechanism that helped the state of Louisiana manage its political economic crisis beginning in the 1980s. The PIC fails to explain Angola’s farm economy because the food produced at Angola stays within the state prison system. My proposed framework of carceral reproduction fills in the gap left by the PIC. Carceral reproduction captures how Angola’s closed, circular farm economy reduced the Louisiana state prison system’s operating costs. In doing so, penal farm labor at Angola offered a solution to the political conundrum of how to run a prison system when the state lacked the money to do so.

The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) is a substantial initiative that has had a tremendous impact on the housing market throughout the United States. The tax credit was created due to the privatization of the affordable housing industry. With this privatization, the United States government created the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) with the intent of subsidizing private owners/operators who work to create affordable housing. This program has been a tremendous success overall, but this study looks at the disparity of LIHTC in rural versus urban areas, specifically in Texas. Privatization often leads to profit maximization, and this profit maximization can hinder rural affordable housing development and preservation. Through a comparative analysis of two rural cities and two urban cities, this study shows that the rural cities have a disproportionately lower amount of LIHTC-funded housing units per capita. This disparity is then understood through the 2025 Texas Qualified Allocation Plan, and how several factors of the plan, such as amenity-based scoring and rents calculated based on Area Median Income, inadvertently favor urban cities. Looking at this disparity and the causes involved, Karl Polanyi’s concepts of “embeddedness” and “double movement” and Viviana Zelizer's concept of “relational work” provide a useful framework to understand how policy and profit maximization have mixed to create the spatial disparity. This study recommends policy changes that can even out the incentives for the private sector to operate in rural cities to help close the LIHTC disparity in rural versus urban cities.

While migration to more economically developed countries may be desirable for migrants settled outside their home countries (Bijwaard and Wahba 2023; Della Puppa, Montagna, and Kofman 2021; Mas Giralt 2017; Paul and Yeoh 2021), many migrants ultimately do not migrate, either by choice or due to constraints on their mobility. This thesis challenges the mobility bias in migration studies, particularly in the case of secondary migration. There are many reasons why people who have migrated to countries generally classified as belonging to the “global south” may be unwilling or unable to leave. In this thesis, I use the aspiration-capability framework proposed by Kerilyn Schewel (2020) to analyze three different forms of immobility among migrants. Analyzing thirty (30) semi-structured interviews with Haitian migrants in São Paulo, Brazil, I find that factors beyond individual economic maximization shape migrant immobility. More importantly, I show that immobility involves a complex interplay of pull, push, repel and retain factors, as well as specific capability profiles which together produce specific mobility outcomes. Thus, immobility should not be viewed as the default but rather as the result of elaborate decision-making processes.

The purpose of this research is to understand how social networks among Princeton University seniors influence job search strategies and employment outcomes across different socioeconomic backgrounds, and the role of informal connections. Specifically, I used different journals, articles, and novels that helped my understanding on the topic and influenced my conclusion. On top of that, I used statistics across different sources that gave me the evidence I needed in order to come to a conclusion. The sources and statistics were a huge help in allowing me to learn more about the topic of social networks and how informal connections come into play. Also, I was able to analyze over fifteen different Princeton seniors across different socioeconomic backgrounds through interviews in order to get real life experiences. The interviews were a crucial part in my research because they showed how Princeton seniors create social networks at Princeton, the impact of one’s socioeconomic background and informal connections, and the influence that social networks have in job search strategies and employment outcomes. Through all of this, I was able to find out that social networks influence Princeton seniors' job search strategies and employment outcomes by giving advice in the job search, connecting Princeton seniors with their network, job referrals, and job opportunities. The results suggest that social networks DO influence Princeton University seniors’ job search strategies and employment outcomes.