Search

There has been a change in international politics since the 2008 financial crisis, thanks to a greater spread of economic resources and military capabilities. For many, it is a radical transformation that could spell the end of US hegemony in Latin America. This paper examines the proposition, beginning with a review of the concept of hegemony, which rather than being viewed as a structural characteristic is conceived of here as a "nuanced hegemony", in other words a network of asymmetric and hierarchical relations. We can observe not just one transformation then, but the emergence of a hemispheric context that could be described as "differentiated hegemony". The United States still occupies a central position, but its foreign policy is marked by subregional fragmentation and the externalisation of electoral priorities. The paper explores the effects at subregional level, focusing on the opportunities and challenges it presents to Latin American countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to trace U.S. imaginaries, representations, and uses made during the cycle of Latin America's centennial celebrations by a number of men of culture, diplomacy, and regional politics who played prominent roles in discussions about how the countries in the subcontinent should position themselves and act toward one another and toward the United States. By analyzing the multiple references and uses of symbols, signs, and other attributes of the Northern nation that circulated between 1910 and 1926 in a series of speeches, conferences, essays, articles, and books -largely unnoticed by the historiography on the subject-, it will be possible to observe how different images of such country were constructed and disseminated in order to promote and legitimize certain political-ideological searches and bets. Contrary to readings that have reduced the Latin American map at the time to the tension between Pan-Americanism and anti-imperialism, this article ultimately aims to make this image more complex by repositioning other uses and meanings around the United States at a particular moment of the continent's history, in which its imperialist expansion encountered a systematic search by Latin American countries to reassert their interests, positions, and national identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper frames the history of the Second Empire in Mexico within the international context, studying the influence of the situation and the European conflicts of the time, the diplomacy developed by Maximilian and the role of the United States before the French Intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse a corpus of 137 texts published between 1888 and 1899. These texts are included in one of the most successful Spanish-language newspapers published in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century: Las Novedades (New York, 1876-1918). In the analysis I will determine the linguistic ideologies and the discursive strategies used for the promotion of Hispanism and Spanish language in a sociopolitical context in which the Spanish hegemony was losing all its power at an international level. Thus, the ideologies found are divided in two different categories: the linguistic ideologies that give the language a cultural value and the linguistic ideologies that make reference to the economic and commercial value of the language. The results obtained from this analysis will contribute to understand the role of Spanish language in the United States. Furthermore, this paper presents an unpublished corpus of clear historiographic interest that contributes to clarify the panorama of Hispanism in a country like the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ostensibly, Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential elections should have placed United States international policy back on a familiar path. However, despite the prevalence of a highly traditional vision of US foreign policy, the Biden administration has maintained significant continuities with the previous administration, as reflected in the policy towards China and the withdrawal from Afghanistan. In part, this is due to the constraints produced by the deep divisions that exist at domestic level. This paper aims to unravel the fundamental elements of Biden's foreign policy, focusing on possible ideological and doctrinal elements, strategic priorities, and any continuities and changes relative to his predecessor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines secondary sanctions as part of the triangular relations between the United States, the European Union and Cuba. The analysis - built on Dittmer's (1981) strategic triangle theory and Womack's (2016) studies of asymmetric relationships - questions the evaluation of sanctions carried out by the US Departments of State, Commerce and the Treasury, noting that, by prioritising the impact on the target's economy, the evaluation ignores other fundamental effects of the sanctions in terms of triangular relations with allies and alternative powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delves into an analysis of illegality in migration, from a migrant perspective. To do this, established and assimilated historical practices in selected groups of Mexican migrants were analyzed according to immigration status and settlement area. The argument presented here is that illegality has a functional character for the reproduction of the migrant trajectory. This is demonstrated using a comparative analysis of the way migrants' decisions allow them to integrate their trajectories into two contexts which show unequal development. Such integration determines its functionality independently of the existence of restrictive migration policies in nation-state contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Official Development Assistance (ODA) received a new boost at the start of the 21st century, but this did not translate into a meaningful decrease in poverty and inequality on the periphery. In Latin America, under the leadership of governments called progressive or post-neoliberal, significant advances were observed to this effect, with the Movement for Socialism (MAS) in Bolivia paradigmatic in terms of socioeconomic development and the political and cultural inclusion achieved. Beginning with a critique of US ODA to Latin America, and considering the case of Bolivia, this paper seeks to open up potential ways of underpinning a theoretical line in the political praxis of development that maintains a positive sense of this notion, and which is at the same time able to break with the neoliberal perspective and dispute the scepticism of post-structuralist radicalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a cultural institution, the press plays a fundamental role in documenting and forging the public image of migrants. This paper analyzes two thematic axes in the post 9/11 narrative of the New York Times on migration. The image that was created during the year following the terrorist attacks presents on the one hand the Mexican migrant as a potential terrorist and on the other hand migration as a global problem. It is fundamental to problematize the rhetoric about contemporary migration by inserting it in the ideological roots that defined that moment and in the historical framework of the Mexico-United States relationship. The media rhetoric post 9/11 contributed to the emergence of a new international agenda by globalizing this representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The studies on the American democracy promotion policy towards Francoist Spain have been many years relegated once taken for granted the propagandistic nature of the American public discourse. However, in order to assess what were Washington’s real aims and determinants in its relations with Franco and his regime, in the first part of this article we briefly examine the changes operated in American geostrategic conceptions from the 30s onwards. In the second part, in what constitutes the core of this paper, a more detailed focus is put on the examination of the Spanish case from the documentation on Spain between the years 1945-1973 preserved in the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at College Park, Md. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the migration processes and labor incorporation of two professional groups of Mexicans in the United States: engineers and nurses. Certification standards, the ability of migrants to act as agents, and the involvement of various actors in the migratory process are analyzed in order to understand how differentiated labor paths are built within and between each occupational group in the US labor market Other structural factors that helped to understand the processes studied were the motivations to migrate, family and professions networks, and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The threat of transnational organized crime is a major concern in the international arena. This article, based on qualitative interviews with 133 migrant smugglers operating in the border between Mexico and the United States, aims to examine if migrant smuggling networks operating in Mexico carry terrorist to the United States. This paper concludes that although half of the respondents thought that the terrorists could reach the United States using migrant smuggling networks, none had direct knowledge about the passage of terrorists through the border between Mexico and the United States. Moreover, the data collected indicate that it is unlikely that Mexican migrant smugglers could stablish alliances with terrorist groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to determine the effect of labor income prior to migration on the income obtained by migrants in the destination economy, in the case of temporary Mexican migrants in the United States. The data used comes from the Emif Norte survey conducted between 1999 and 2009. High relative and absolute mobility is observed. Hourly income is multiplied by a factor of four in the destination economy, while the effect of a 10 % increase in labor income in Mexico results in less than a 1 % increase in labor income in the United States. The results show that labor income in Mexico has little predictive power for the job performance of Mexican migrants in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides a vision of economic cycle chief features, and the characteristics of current pattern of accumulation in the USA, established at the beginning of last century 90's, as of the analysis of the financial and economic crisis by the end of 2007. It assumes its most recent antecedents in economic relations and capitalist economy policies prevailing tendencies since the end of the 1970's, 1980's, and 1990's, which created the distinctive political, regulatory and institutional conditions of current North American imperialist economy, chiefly based on external financing through deregulated global capital markets. The paper also presents the chief functioning mechanisms of USA economy within this scope, as well as it goes briefly over the possibilities of its reconfiguration and establishment of a new international economic order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1910 and 1915 the American Museum of Natural History carried out several expeditions in Colombian territory. Taking into account recent studies on U.S. cultural imperialism and science and imperialism, this paper analyzes the collections of birds from these expeditions to explore the role of North American imperialism in science, as well as the role of North American science in the expansion of the United States in the first decades of the twentieth century. The paper illustrates how theories of race and migration shaped the way in which North American naturalists appropriated and comprehended Colombian nature. Likewise, the paper explores the perspective of Colombian naturalists towards the expeditions, concluding that, far from being mere puppets of North American interests, Colombians used the relationship with U.S. naturalists to pursue their own agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes two questions: where does United States public administration is going and which would be the best way to build its path toward the future. The author begins discussing through a historical point of view, where it is clear that there are important intellectual confusions. These are not only due to the relatively short existence of the discipline in United States, but also in deeper cultural traditions of such country. Next, the author tries to draw the conceptual boundaries of the discipline and discusses which are its special fields, scientific techniques, methodology, and emergent categories. Last but not least, the paper proposes a particular perspective regarding the direction that the United States administrative science might take given the lack of a concept of the State (beginning with its constitutional design) which might be taken as a fact for this country, continuing to affecting the United States perspective on public administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses aspects of the U.S. and Brazilian foreign policy. Some events relate actions linked to the political realism school and others embraced in the interdependence and globalization views. This paper explores the historical environment where the United States and Brazil followed different paradigmatic political approaches to gain access to the hemispheric market. Defence policies evolved gradually from realism into interdependence and gradually into the globalization approach. This last view gained momentum in American, while Brazil encouraged other IR views like militarisms and the sphere of influence to gain pre-eminence in the neighbour trading countries, favouring market access to multinational corporations and increasing direct foreign investment within the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the contradiction at the heart of Italian and Spanish immigration policies between the calls for integration on the one hand, and the marginalization associated with temporary and contingent immigration status on the other. I argue that this tension is structural and reflects an underlying contradiction in the political economy of these post-Fordist societies. In the second half of this paper, I examine this same tension in U.S. immigration policy, and explore the ways the current proposals for reform would bring U.S. immigration policy closer to that of Spain and Italy. I note that while the tension between immigrant marginalization and integration has always characterized U.S. policy, the contradiction has intensified as immigrants are an increasingly visible component of the U.S. workforce, complicating attempts at meaningful reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents some statistical data on the Hispanic population in the United States and its growth, caused by a sustained immigrant influx. The paper develops the following points: 1) the importance and relevance of the Hispanic population in the United States; 2) the role of Mexican and Central American migration as the main sources of manual labor for the American economy; 3) the importance of migrants in the regional and national development in the countries of origin; 4) the situation and perspectives of the second generation; 5) the long-term integration of the Latin American immigrant population in the United States. The supporting arguments of recent essays criticizing the presence of the Hispanic population in the United States are examined as being a threat to English dominance and a factor for cultural disintegration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper debates the traditional notions of political transnationalism used in the United States by showing the formation and the activist process followed by the #YoSoy132 movement in New York City. The conclusion drawn is that immigrants organizations in the US have diversified their acting repertories, political perspective and their demands. Therefore, it is necessary to broaden the concept of political transnationalism to a social-political perspective. The latter will allow having a wider theoretical notion to analyze a larger number of immigrants organizations in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to explain the history, sources and variations relating to the grand strategy of United States with regard to international security. In particular, it argues that there is a strategy which defines the interests and values that the US governments must defend, regardless of their ideological positions, which can be principally understood in terms of their beliefs on defensive and offensive realism, as well as exemplary liberalism and crusade liberalism. Rather than being conceived as theoretical or analytical stances, these variations of American realism and liberalism are seen as doctrines which have been developing historically since independence. Given that this grand strategy constitutes an institutional framework which is difficult to avoid, the paper explains, through the use of examples, the way in which the governments under George W. Bush Jr. and Barack H. Obama appropriated this strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vigilantism appeared in the last decades of the nineteenth century in some Western territories of the United States in process of colonization. These movements were consequence of the way such territories were organized, as well as of the absence and/or ineffectiveness of a formal legislation or authorities enforcing the law. Thus, the purpose of vigilantism was to protect the life and property of the settlers, who actually took the law in their own hands with some degree of violence. This paper examines the characteristics of the vigilante movements in order to trace their impact in the process of territorial organization undergone by Western areas of the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the 1990’s the United States adopted a border enforcement strategy to discourage illegal immigrants from attempting to enter the country. However, tougher enforcement did not prevent migrant crossings. This paper, based on a qualitative methodology that includes in depth interviews with eighty migrant smugglers, examines the causes of corruption of U.S. immigration officials and concludes that corruption is a key element in migrant smuggling because it makes it easier to get the migrants across the borders. The complicity of border and immigration officials with smugglers and employers explains why today’s probability of apprehension is lower than half a century ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the time of the 10th anniversary of the opening of the detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, many are wondering about the reasons of its very existence in a country that purports to be the defender of the rule of law and human rights. To answer this question, this paper reviews the development of the regulations (both US and international humanitarian law) that are applied to the detainees. It also examines the violations of basic principles of law that have occurred and continue to occur, such as denial of access to ordinary courts and the right to a trial in case of detention, as well as breaches of the protections and guarantees provided by international humanitarian law. Finally, the author analyses the reasons that have allowed the centre to remain in operation despite President Obama's pledge to close it, which he made early on in his term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the importance of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America which recognizes the right of the people to keep and bear arms, taking into account the newest Case law on this matter and the role that the Gun lobby is performing for guaranteeing the protection of such right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper elucidates the representations of Chile in publications of the American Society of Geographers of the United States between 1859 and 1884, considering how these were affected by the War of the Pacific. In this frame the present investigation uses the notion of scientific imperialism to understand to what extent publications and works associated with the sciences reflected the economic and political interests of the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes how, although the emigration of Chiapas residents to the United States is a recent phenomenon, it has its roots in internal migrations to increasingly distant places. The author traces its development from 1925 to 2003, describing some of the salient characteristics of these migrants: such as the means of transport used to reach the northern border, sources of financing for carrying out the trip, the migratory experience, crossing points, municipalities of origin and places of destination, using data from the Survey on Migration from Mexico's Northern Border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite increasing measures to control and regulate migration flows, irregular migration has grown in the last few years in Spain, Malaysia and the United States. This increase in irregular immigration has mainly been explained in relation to socio-economic factors. However, while these factors explain the presence of migration flows towards these countries, they do not succeed in explaining why an important part of these flows takes place on a non-regular basis. This can only be considered by taking into account the State and its immigration policies. Starting out from this statement, this research paper analyses to what extent, how and why the immigration policies of Spain, Malaysia and the United States produce «illegals«. This means not only analysing how and why immigration policies contribute to the increase in the number of irregular immigrants, but also how and why, by denying their rights and often their existence, they create the figure of the «illegal immigrant». As this research note demonstrates for the Malaysian case, irregular immigration is not despite immigration policies but because of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tries to line out the importance of media policies today through a case study. We pay special attention to media laws for that reason, particularly the rules that limit media ownership. The making of the radio mogul Clear Channel Communications is a case study. This group took advantage of the 1996 Telecommunication Act, which virtually eliminated the radio ownership cap in the United States. This is a clear example of how media laws can draw the limits to media companies, allowing them to concentrate or not, and that way agreeing to or fighting for the decrease in pluralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]