Stankiewicz, Damien, 1980-2025-01-232025-01-232024-12http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12613/10939This dissertation examines how Dominicans of Haitian descent navigate their political situation from two perspectives: by becoming aware of their precarious legal status in Dominican Republic, and in how they obtain their legal documents or papeles with the assistance of third parties like the NGOs (Valdez 2014, Barlett et al 2011). I argue that the cyclical human rights violations, othering, and discriminatory experiences that Dominicans of Haitian descent have experienced in the past 15 years have exacerbated an eroded notion of the state and created a sense of Black Fatigue (Winters 2020) among the community. Primarily, as it pertains to the state being able to guarantee basic rights and providing an irreconcilable experience of citizenship for youth who were rendered stateless in their own country, and a defined experience of Black Fatigue that permeates their interactions both with non-governmental organizations and the state. I employ the framework of structural violence from Paul Farmer to contextualize how Black Fatigue has emerged among this community and discuss the ways in which Dominicans of Haitian descent have been disenfranchised as an extension of the abuses against Haitian immigrants in the country, and how this has extended to their understanding and experience of citizenship being born Dominicans and then rendered stateless. I examine the "sticky citizenship" process through which they were rendered foreigners in their own country by the Dominican government, and how they have thought and reevaluated their belonging through constructing narratives around their process of obtaining citizenship over the past five years. I used a mixed methods approach in which I collected data between 2015 and 2019, over 20 months (about one and a half years) total of fieldwork. During the academic year of 2018-2019 I lived in Santo Domingo, and most of the interviews and all the focus groups were conducted in that timeframe. I transcribed all the focus groups (over 25 hours of recordings, both in video and audio) and the interviews (totaling more than 30 hours over video and audio) and identified themes and threads among NGO representatives, Dominicans of Haitian descent, and the larger groups. Ultimately, my work poses that obtaining documents is far from solving the issues of this population which has come of age during a trying time, but that the issues of racism and discrimination that are at the core of the statelessness dispute could be better addressed through the work of some of the organizations and turned into sustainable development and empowerment for this community in the future.171 pagesengIN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available.http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/Caribbean studiesCitizenshipDominican RepublicDominicans of Haitian descentLawRacializationStatelessnessText159372025-01-21BricePacheco_temple_0225E_15937.pdf