First I would like to thank the community organizers, school officials, allies, and especially the participant families that shared their experiences with me. Their commitment to creating a more just society formed the backbone of this study. I am indebted to the faculty, staff, and students at Dowling Catholic High School for their unwavering support. Thank you Dr. Jim Dowdle for encouraging me to pursue this degree; you've inspired me become a better teacher. My dissertation committee was simply amazing. I want to specifically thank Katherine Richardson Bruna for her friendship as well as for all our conversations about negotiating our postmodern selves, Beth Herbel-Eisenmann for introducing me to discourse analysis in a way that helped me make sense of the complex interactions I observed at weekly meetings, and to Leslie Rebecca Bloom for never lowering her expectations. Leslie not only taught me about how to conduct good qualitative research, she taught me about what it means to stand for social justice. For that I am eternally grateful. I would not have completed this dissertation without the love and support of my family. Mom and dad, thank you for always believing in me and loving me unconditionally. Perhaps my biggest fan and steadfast supporter is my grandmother, Laura Timm. We made it grandma! I wish Grandpa could have read this, but I know he's with me and proud. Finally, and I saved the best for last, thank you to my wonderful wife and partner Andrea. No one in this world has taught me more about justice, love, peace, and happiness than you. I am a better father and human being because I am fortunate enough to stand beside you. I dedicate this dissertation to my children, Bailey, Sydney, Gracey, and Lilly. The four of you are gold to me. dominant discourse said about the poor: they did not lack personal responsibility, they worked hard, and they desired self-sufficiency. Stories like Chris Gardner's are presented as exemplars, reminding us that if you work hard enough you can make it. Stories like Gardner's, however, are the exception, not the rule. The means are not the exception: there are millions of hard-working people living in poverty doing everything they can to get ahead. The ends, however, are the exception. Working hard does not always, or even usually, bring family sustainability (Hawkins, 2005; Rank, 2001, 2004). While the language of welfare reform legislation and the images immortalized on the big screen lead us to believe that poor people working hard are the exception, but the success of those who do is the rule, I watched two dozen families for three years struggle to provide for their families. Not one family left poverty. Seeing The Pursuit of Happyness influenced the way I approached writing this dissertation. It not only compelled me work harder to clearly articulate the ways families living in poverty defied dominant stereotypes and generalizations, it also helped me re-focus on the unique relationship between COS and the local public school district. Schoolcommunity partnerships...

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IN A RELATIVELY UNKNOWN and underpublicized military operation, German, Italian, and Japanese soldiers came to the United States during the Second World War. Without the help of these Axis prisoners of war (POWs), American farmers and manufacturers might not have met the growing wartime demand for food and supplies. The initial widespread capture of German and Italian soldiers came as a result of the Allies' successful 1942 North Africa campaign against Adolf Hitler's Afrika Korps. 1 The British, not able to accommodate the increasing number of POWs on their soil, called upon the United States to aid in POW internment. Thus, in late 1942 and early 1943 the U.S. government constructed dozens of camps in isolated areas of the South and Southwest. Between April and August 1943, prisoners of war totals in the United States grew from less than 5,000 to more than 130,000. As the number of Axis POWs in the United States increased, the federal government established camps beyond the South and Southwest. The U.S. Army supervised the construction and operation of these facilities. By the end of World War II, the United States interned nearly 400,000 Axis prisoners of war in more than 400 camps across the country. 3 Many American farmers turned instead to enemy prisoners of war. Sanctioned by the 1929 Geneva Prisoner of War Convention, prisoners of specified ranks also ameliorated labor shortages in lumbering, mining, construction, food processing, and other non-governmental work not directly related to the war effort.

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In 1929, the Geneva Prisoner of War Convention allowed enemy prisoners of war to ameliorate considerable labor shortages in specified industries. These areas included agricultural labor, lumbering, mining, construction, food processing, and other non-governmental work not directly related to the war effort. The decision to employ Axis 2 prisoners served a practical purpose because some areas of the United States experienced severe civilian labor shortages by mid-1943. 2 Prisoner-of-war camps provided civilian employers with desperately needed laborers, prompting the establishment of camps in locations that needed them most. In northern Iowa the Kossuth County town of Algona and the Page County town of Clarinda in southwest Iowa experienced the construction of such camps. Building prisoner-of-war camps near Algona and Clarinda placed the citizens of these communities in an uneasy position. Faced with an acute shortage of laborers, these Iowans turned to enemies for help. Camp officials deliberately and systematically engineered a relationship between the camps and the local communities that emphasized