Search

This paper examines the transnational travel and competition of two feminist concepts: femicidio and feminicidio. The former is Spanish translation of the term "femicide," defined by Diana Russell as "the killing of females by males because they are female." Feminicidio is an adaptation of "femicide" that Mexican feminist scholars developed in their analyses of the killings of women in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Feminicidio introduces a focus on the complicity of the state in the killing of women by sustaining structural gender and class inequalities at the root of this violence and tolerating its impunity. Feminicidio also became a frame of a transnational feminist movement that began in Mexico, although the use of femicidio versus feminicidio has been hotly debated among feminist activists and scholars. The paper aims to (1) trace the transfer and transformation of "femicide" from its origins in the American academia to Latin America in relation to transnational feminist activism; (2) analyze the relationship between differently positioned feminist experts and their interventions in the UN and regional human rights systems; (3) examine the (potential) impact of the adoption of these competing concepts on feminist policy on violence against women in different national settings. The paper expands the literature on the transnational diffusion of ideas and institutions by examining how the politics behind the production of feminist knowledge shape the processes through which meaning is contested and negotiated as it is transferred to and from different organizational domains in multiple directions and across different scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formation of international borders of modern nation-states is a processual endeavor, involving the interaction of multiple nation-states by way of treaties, purchases, incorporation, and/or the effects of war. What is less understood is the role of nationalism in the formation of international borders. This paper explores the formation of the Mexico - U.S. international border during the Mexican American War and the role of U.S. nationalism in justifying and legitimating the actions of the state. National political elites, the press, and soldiers are examined and the types of nationalism they expressed. Primary and secondary sources are used for identifying dominant cultural narratives and symbols used by U.S. nationalists. In tracing expressions of American nationalism over time in relation to the border and Mexico, this paper identifies the role and significance of race with popular expressions of U.S. nationalism, and contributes to the understanding of white nationalism in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on and refines James Scott's argument about legibility (1998) by providing an in-depth, comparative analysis of how Brazil and Mexico rendered poor individuals visible in order to implement poverty-alleviation programs. In the mid-1990s, these two states implemented the same policy (conditional cash transfer programs, or CCTs), facing very similar political, organizational, and information challenges; yet they adopted different solutions for governing their respective CCT programs. Specifically, Brazil and Mexico implemented their CCTs by means of distinct governance structures, and they developed distinct information systems to see and monitor poor individuals. Looking comparatively at projects intended to make poverty visible and governable, I argue that the differences and consequences of these legibility projects depended on the symbolic strategies of political legitimation of state action, but had the unanticipated effect of rendering the state itself visible and thus subject to intense scrutiny. My findings are based on the analysis of a rich set of empirical data, including official documents, academic papers, media articles, and 90 in-depth interviews with top government actors and poverty experts in Brazil and Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on teacher unions is full of implicit assumptions about what reforms improve education. The tendency is to see teachers unions as actors that defend their own self-interest, not proponents of new educational initiatives. However, as my ethnographic research in Brazil and Mexico shows, teachers unions are not unitary actors, but rather, complex organizations with internal factions that embody different theories of social change. In Brazil, the debates within teachers unions are about how to build mass-based political parties, which fight in the interest of working-class groups, and how to transform schools into institutions that raise critical consciousness. In Mexico, the rise of the democratic teachers movement was a rejection of political parties, and an attempt to build the autonomy and capacity of schools for selfgovernance. In this paper, I explore the reasons for these distinct teacher union strategies in Brazil and Mexico, and the implications of these strategies for educational change. I argue that the goals, visions, and values of teachers unions shift, depending on the national politicalinstitutional context and the ideological orientations of the actors who gain power within the unions at particular historical moments. In other words, while I analyze how historical factors influence and shape teachers unions' histories, actions, and theories of social change, I also examine the agency of teachers themselves. In particular, I analyze the role of oppositional union leaders: who they are, why they begin organizing, what they are reacting against, and to what ends. I also explore the implications of these different political strategies and internal disputes for educational change. The findings in this paper illustrate that teachers unions are dynamic social forces directly shaped (and limited) by both their national context and the internal activism of their members--not static interest groups as many scholars claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While scholarship on wage discrimination has confirmed that 'racism' is persistent, recent insights indicate that 'colorism' - the idea that some skin tones are favored while others are disfavored - is able to explain why dark-skinned people have lower incomes than people with a lighter skin complexion. In this paper, theoretical arguments are discussed and are subjected to an empirical test: differential investment in human capital, i.e. education; variation in occupational status, i.e. being employed in indoor vs outdoor jobs; and concentration in richer vs poorer regions. The focus on this paper is Mexico, known as a country where race and ethnicity generally are not salient categories for social stratification, but skin tone is. We study the National Survey on Discrimination in Mexico, collected in 2010 and representative for all households. The advantage of this survey is that it has asked respondents to indicate their skin color. Based on regression analyses and matching techniques, we show that there is an effect of skin tone on income that cannot completely be explained by differences in education, occupational status or regional concentration. Important, we have no indications that darker skin tones are penalized; rather, the two lightest skin tones are privileged, giving evidence to 'colorism', yet, not in the direction that is widely assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an ethnographic examination of the Programa de la Frontera Sur (PFS). I study the ways in which the Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM)-National Institute of Migration--implements and enforce the PFS against Central American migrants. I consider the program's efforts to identify, screen, and remove migrants before they reach the U.S.-Mexico Border. An externalization of migration [and border] control model is employed to provide a theoretical framework for understanding the significance of extraterritorial state-driven initiatives driven by national security concerns. In this model, third countries through collaborative agreements and financial assistance act as the outsourced enforcers of migration and border control. In the Mexican case, we use the approach to understand the ways Mexico engages U.S. political activism to preclude Central Americans mobility through an interdiction program like the PFS. This article uses visual and ethnographic data gathered during summers 2015- 2018 in southern, central, and northern regions of Mexico where border migration law is enforced. The paper found that Mexican migration officers make significant efforts to not only identify and interdict migrants in transit across Mexico, but also to emulate U.S. Border Patrol tactics to remove undocumented migrants. The U.S. sponsored Programa de la Frontera Sur has enabled INM officers to screen, sift, and remove migrants without the due process protection they need from maltreatment and extortion by state officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the preceding decade, political organizations of different evangelical denominations have emerged as a veritable force in Latin America. Whether forming openly evangelical parties, or encouraging individual pastors to use their church's organizational infrastructure to run from within nonexclusively religious parties, whether as formal evangelical social movement organizations seeking to take over existing party apparatuses, or assemblies and confederation of Christian churches creating alliances with parties during certain elections, the increased efforts to secure state power are clear. What explains this rise? In this paper we develop the question and indicate its scientific and political stakes; and we also begin to formulate an answer to the question through a preliminary comparative analysis of the fortunes of evangelical political organizations in Mexico, where the phenomenon is a fledgling one, and Brazil, where evangelical organizations have been a powerful political force on the national scene for years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks two research questions. First, what are the variables that shape attitudes towards immigration and immigrants? Second, why did voters from a congressional district in the border region with Mexico support anti-immigrant messaging in the 2016 and 2018 elections? The research tests the group threat, social identity, and contact theory hypotheses using data from the General Social Survey and the American Community Survey for California's 42nd Congressional District. Two interesting findings emerge from the analysis. Americans as a whole have become more embracing of immigrants even as government policy has hardened. Social identity and party affiliation continue are accurate predictors of attitudes toward immigration and immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we use ten years of survey data collected in Mexico and the United States by the Mexican Migration Project to examine the relationship between integration experiences in the United States and migrant health. We use detailed information on experiences in on the last U.S. trip to define six integration domains that are especially well suited for describing the range of integration experiences of returned, long-term and settled Mexican migrants. These integration domains are linguistic, social, family, employment, financial, and assets. First, we compare the health of male household heads with and with-out U.S. migration experience on six health outcomes (worse health, emotional conditions, heart conditions, hypertension, diabetes, and obesity), and estimate random intercept logistic regression models with five different alternative specifications of U.S. migration experience. Then, we focus only on household heads with U.S. migration experience and estimate the effects of the six integration domains on the same six health outcomes. Our results confirm findings by other studies that U.S. migration experience is associated with a decline in health status and higher rates of return among those with poorer heath. They also indicate that employment and family integration, both of which are strongly associated with a commitment to settlement in the United States, are associated with poorer health. We argue that long-term and settled migrants switch their point of reference from the place of origin to the place of destination. Because Mexican migrants tend to occupy the lowest rungs of the occupational ladder and work in jobs that make it difficult to accumulate assets and establish financial stability, the commitment to make a go-of-it in the United States under places a strain on migrants which leads to worse health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the conditions of international migration and settlement has focused on two factors --economic and ethnic. At the macro level, both the world systems theory and the global city perspective posit global economic hierarchy between developed countries and developing countries and the movement of capital investment and the movement of immigrants--both professional and labor--are in the opposite direction. At the meso level, established ethnic communities or ethnic enclaves in the gateway cities, such as Los Angeles, Miami, and New York City, have been important contributing factors of international migration and settlement patterns. Based on ethnographic research on the development of Korean immigrant community in the U.S.-Mexico border region, this paper proposes a capital-labor integrated model of international migration. The North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) facilitated Korean multinational corporations' (MNCs) investments in the area, which brought Korean professional migrants to the region, along with capital. Gradually, Korean immigrant community developed in the U.S.-border region, especially those in and around Korean maquiladoras, develop what I call transborder ethnic economy where Korean immigrants' transborder economic activities are closely tied to co-ethnic networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of what makes anti-Latinx, anti-immigrant (and anti-immigration) discourse and actions racist is continuously batted around between progressives and conservatives. In fact, even self-proclaimed progressives sometimes flinch or hesitate when asked to explain why those opposing immigration and Latinx communities are racist. What makes immigration and the treatment of Latinx communities issues of racism needs to be clarified as a methodological tool before we can obtain social justice not just for these communities, but in general. Thus, identifying racism in the antiimmigrant discourse (which is invariably anti-Latinx) is the focus of this article and a crucial tool for social justice. Data for this paper draws from a 20-year longitudinal ethnographic study on the U.S. Anti-Immigrant Movement which almost exclusively targets Mexico, Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, and Chicanxs, but which lacks a critical assessment of all other groups as well. More than fifty formal long interviews were conducted with leading anti-immigrant activists as well as key pro-immigrant activists between 1999-2018. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines what it means to return to Mexico for Mexican women living in the Dallas metropolitan area without papers. While the fear and distress caused by the possibility of being deported are common features of life among undocumented immigrants, not all undocumented immigrants experience the same kind of anxiety and apprehension about the possibility of returning home. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 43 undocumented Mexican women, I examine the factors that shape the women's subjective concerns about returning to Mexico and how they use narratives of hope and uncertainty to articulate two main concerns: providing educational opportunities to their children and protecting their children from violence. I pay particular attention to how Mexican women articulate their aspirational longings and how these are shaped by the condition of illegality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For most of the 20th century, dual citizenship was widely prohibited. Since the 1990's, however, many countries changed their laws to permit dual and multiple nationality. The rise of dual citizenship created new opportunities for individuals outside the West who discovered that their migration history, family roots or ethnic identity made them eligible for a second citizenship from a European Union country or the United States. Millions of people in Eastern Europe and Latin America acquired such dual citizenship without necessarily intending to emigrate. In this paper, I compare two cases of dual citizenship: Hungarian (EU) citizenship in Serbia which is acquired on the basis of ethnic origin, and U.S. citizenship in Mexico which is acquired through birth in U.S. territory. Many applicants use opportunistic strategies and manipulate their ethnicity or birthplace in order to gain citizenship: Serbs study the Hungarian language, while Mexicans travel to the U.S. to give birth ("birth tourism"). Drawing on material from interviews conducted in 2014-2015, the paper focuses on "opportunistic" applicants in each case and compares their citizenship acquisition strategies, the moral risks involved and the destigmatizing discourses that emerge in response. Applicants in Serbia, who were concerned about being seen as "sellouts," justified their decision to seek dual citizenship by arguing that Serbia could not provide them with a European quality of life. Meanwhile, middle-class Mexicans who practiced birth tourism feared being seen as "parasites" and justified their bid for dual citizenship by pointing to the money they had spent in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will serve as a critical review of what has been written on Mexicans and what is missing from its analysis. More specifically this paper will focus on those who have professional careers and are not employed in low-skilled occupations. By citing the general demographics of Mexicans and concentrating the bulk of the paper on in-depth analysis on Mexican professionals, this paper will show why it is important to begin to study this group. Some of my research questions are 1) What are the demographic characteristics of these groups that distinguishes them from other Latinos 2) How will this growing professional population affect how other Latinos are perceived in society and 3) Are there any gender differences between Mexican women and men who are professionals? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore processes of identity formation in a community of transnational Mexican migrants. We analyze a Pre-Hispanic secular dance ritual unique to the people of one municipio in southern Puebla that is practiced in both the Mexican and U.S. contexts. We see the dance as a metaphor for the transnational community that exists between these distant locales, and we see it as an important cultural vehicle and strategy for consolidating identity and membership as well. We make the argument that, with its introduction to transnational migrant communities in the United States, we are witnessing a new era in the history of this living ritual. The cultural processes of identity formation embodied in the dance are open, fluid, and contested as the ritual is constantly being reinterpreted. We find evidence of this in disagreements over meaning, interpretation and performance. Our analysis is based on ethnographic research we have been conducting in this transnational community over the past three years. We have generated data through participant-observation, formal and informal interviews, and visual sociological methods. In this paper we weave together these various, and sometimes quite divergent, narratives and apply a sociological interpretive frame to them in an effort to better understand the construction of transnational identity through this public dance ritual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the character and degree of domestic empowerment claimed by low-income women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Power relations at the household level constitute both a difficult and a necessary venue for change to advance women's participation in processes of democratization. A central question this paper addresses is: What are the factors that enhance women's claims to power in three domestic arenas: as economic actors in their households, in complementary or "traditional" household gender relations, and in challenges to masculine domination at home? The conceptual discussion considers various understandings of "empowerment" and ideas about the relationship between women's work in the paid labor market and their power in the household. Analysis of survey data reveals negative consequences for women working in the forefront of Mexico's export-led development project. Women's incorporation into a feminized labor market, which severely limits their capacity to bargain over the terms and conditions of work and uses feminine subordination to control workers in the work place, dampens their empowerment relative to other working women. Moreover, a key strategy for women subverting the gender regime appears to be using resources to "exit" masculine dominated households rather than to bargain harder or voice their own interests, leaving masculinity and gender norms intact despite altered material relations in households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Globalization, Biodiversity, and Resistance in Mexico: A Twenty-First Century Perspective of the World This paper develops global outcome scenarios and provides analytical support for them based on a case study of Mexico. Neoliberal economics, political science, and sociology offer various theoretical perspectives of globalization and its outcomes; with general agreement in certain areas and distinct differences in others. There is general agreement that globalization itself is an observable phenomenon. However, its comparative impacts on the environment, culture, income inequality, poverty, and other important socioeconomic indicators are often debated. Thus, a review of these theoretical accounts of globalization and its outcomes is central to this paper, with particular emphasis on the role of States, international institutions, transnational capital, economic convergence, and political ideology. The analytical narrative of Mexico presents a sociological perspective of the historical relationship between globalization and the disparity in wealth between traditional industrialized States and States that pursue policies of international economic integration. An empirical research design is proposed to analyze outcomes of globalization in Mexico. The case study of Mexico reveals a seventy-five year history of land redistribution and subsequent shift toward privatization from the 1970?s to the 1990?s. This analysis of Mexico provides a clear context for comprehending global trends in the historical process of world economic integration. Mexico is well situated for this analysis because of its critical significance as a partner in the North American Free Trade Agreement, and its recent proposal to converge economies in Central America and Southern Mexico, Plan Puebla-Panama. From this analysis emerge several distinct global outcome scenarios and certain implications for transnational public policy. These implications for policy are then discussed, and questions for further comparative transnational analysis of globalization are raised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Everyday along the United States-Mexico border, women living in Mexico report to work as maids, nannies, and caretakers of the elderly for American families. Unlike domestic workers in other regions of the U.S., these women are not long-term migrants, but instead migrate across international bridges on a daily basis, simultaneously inhabiting the domestic spaces of their employers in America and of their families in Mexico. Based on in-depth interviews with twelve domestic workers who migrate across the Texas-Mexico border on a regular basis, this paper examines how short-term migration challenges traditional notions of citizenship and how these notions closely intersect with socioeconomic status. The concept of citizenship will be understood as a flexible concept, changing in relation to increased transnationalism, the influx of skilled and unskilled workers crossing borders, and the opening of global markets. Mexican women working in the U.S. and living in Mexico offer a unique perspective on how social class status plays a key role in daily migration and the formation of citizenship. Interviews with these women show that this type of migration is reserved for a select population of Mexican border residents whose short stay in the U.S. is both legal and illegal. This paper describes this migratory process and the relationship between citizenship and class in the lives of domestic workers who must confront and traverse cultural and physical boundaries on a daily basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to answer what effect does migration have on conditioning the extent, shape, and nature of Mexican immigrant women-based networks. Taking advantage of unique data set that link comparable samples of Mexican women undertaken in sending and receiving communities, this paper examines the effect of migration and women?s socio-demographic attributes on predicting networks structural characteristics such as network size, kinship composition and social interactions. Descriptive results show that immigrant women were more socially and physically isolated compared to women sampled in Mexico. Immigrant women had smaller networks, were more spatially dispersed, and visited less frequently compared to women?s networks in the Mexican sample. While socio-demographic factors appear to be important in predicting network structural characteristics, these factors did not seem to explain differences across samples. That is, the estimated effects of these socio-demographic factors within sample are quite similar across both US and Mexico samples, suggesting that migration status might play a significant role in determining differences in women?s networks across samples. The next analytical step is to examine if group differences (across both samples) in women?s networks can be attributed to migration status. I plan to further the analyses by decomposing the difference in network types and test whether this difference can be attributed to migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE DISCOURSE FRAMES IN THE MEXICA MOVEMENT Aquiles Chihu Amparán This paper is aimed at analyzing the Mexica Movement through its discourse and collective imaginary, both represented by a set of utopias, myths, symbols and beliefs that revitalize the Mesoamerican culture and past on a continuous basis. The methodology used is Frame Analysis. In this paper, by means of the text analysis of the Mexica Movement, five different types of frames are used: the ones for the identity-field definition of the protagonist, those for the identity-field definition of the antagonist, the ones for the audience-field definition and the diagnostic and prognostic frames. The master frame in this paper is that of the revitalization of the Anáhuac culture that is vindicated in Mexico by the Conchero groups and the Confederated Movement for the Restoration of the Anáhuac Culture, and most recently by the Mexica Movement in the United States of America. In terms of their discourse strategy such groups resort to this frame that promotes the Anáhuac identity, the unity of the race and culture of the descendants of the original inhabitants of Anáhuac, a region that used to cover Mexico, Central America and the western and southern areas of the United States of America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the industrial relations regime created by General Motors and their suppliers, and its contribution to the system of lean production practiced in the automakers newest greenfield site in Silao, Mexico. In particular, it examines the strategies by which the firms link human resource policies to their production processes to achieve low turnover, facilitating the identification of the firms as pursuing either low or high turnover strategies. In so doing, GM?s wire harness supplier is exposed as pursuing human resource policies that appear counterproductive to its own efficiency, but are logical within the context of the industrial relations needs of the supply chain as a whole, lending credence to the claim that the plants are practicing a form of inter-firm lean production reaggragating the parts of the production process that General Motors previously shed in its drive toward leaner production. The paper is based on plant tours and interviews at each of the plants during a six month period in 2002. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tells the story of the events that produced the death of Miguel Pro, a 36-year old Jesuit priest executed in 1927 in the context of the Cristero War in Revolutionary Mexico. Moreover, it attempts to provide an account about the manner in which this specific death became meaningful for Catholics in the country due to its narrative patterns. In order to do so, I attempt to uncover the socio-historical conditions under which Pro's death became a martyrial narrative; on the other, I explore the modes in which the fate of his bodily remains became contingent upon social and political developments in the country. By tracking down the conditions surrounding the execution of the young priest, I attempt to demonstrate that martyrial narratives are not stories divorced from history but deeply rooted in it and subject to contested versions of the past. This fact informs the ways in which the martyr's body, his physical remains, are treated by martyrologists, and venerated by the faithful. The paper gives an account of the fate of Pro's corpse linking it to both the Western Christian tradition, as well as to the modifications in Church-State relations in Mexico. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decimal metric system of weights and measures was adopted by most Latin American countries in the second half of the twentieth century. The introduction of the metric system, designed and orchestrated by the central states, was part of a larger plan of liberal reforms, aimed to modernize the economy, unify the territory, and to participate more effectively in international trade. However, the actual spread of the new units of measure among the general population was a slow and complicated process. This paper analyzes a peasant revolt against the introduction of the metric system in the Mexican southern state of Oaxaca, when more than one thousand Indians stormed the town of Juquila and killed the local authorities. This rebellion is then compared with a similar event in Brazil, known as the "Quebra-Quilo revolt". The paper frames the actions of the rebels as part of a larger tradition of uprisings against changes in the systems of measurement, and interprets these actions as guided by a "moral economy of measurement". ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares patterns of school enrollment, labor force participation and work intensity among four generational groups of Mexican-origin adolescents with those of 3rd-and-later generation non-Latino white and black adolescents. Consistent with perspectives viewing the school and work orientations of early-generation Mexican-origin youths as influenced by the countervailing pressures of a labor migrant culture on the one hand, and immigrant optimism on the other, I find that school enrollment and labor force participation tend to be more mutually exclusive among these youths, as compared with later-generation Mexicans, whites, and blacks. Early-generation Mexican-origin youth are less likely to pursue school and labor force participation simultaneously. Those not enrolled in school tend to participate in the labor force to a greater extent, and work more intensively than their later-generation counterparts. By contrast, those enrolled in school are likely to participate in the labor force, and work less intensively. In the paper I argue that these findings carry implications for contemporary perspectives of immigrant incorporation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate how family, labor market and the state policies diversely shape working class women's work experiences in Mexico City, Mexico and Istanbul, Turkey. While Mexico and Turkey show similarities in terms of their economic structures and economic policies since the 1980s, working class women have different working experiences. Working class women's diverse work experiences can be understood with a holistic approach taking into consideration the interconnections between multiple institutions. Social institutions such as the family, the work and the state are organized according to the unwritten and written rules of gender ideology. Working class women face different patriarchal practices embedded in these institutions of Mexico as well as Turkey. While labor market dynamics that working class women encounter are similar in Mexico and Turkey, divergences in the family structures and state policies are the main factors behind their women's different work experiences. While the importance of mahrem (privacy) and namus (honor), the strict private/public domain distinction, intensive flow of women's labor towards family members and the lack of women-friendly policies discourage women's labor force participation in Turkey, different definition of masculinity and family structure, intergenerational female support system, women's relatively higher mobility (rural-to-urban and in the urban areas) and certain policies in Mexico are more likely to encourage women to work in Mexico. Analysis and arguments of this paper are based on in-depth interviews I conducted with 40 working class women, both within and outside the labor force in Mexico City, Mexico and Istanbul, Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What happens to state-diaspora relations when migrants and diasporic organizations become an established part of not only the imagined political community of the home country, but of its institutionalized political community as well? This paper examines patterns and contradictions involved in the institutionalization of the relationship between Mexico and its diaspora, with special focus on the migrant vote for president from abroad in 2006. While migrants have made increasing, and increasingly successful, demands for political inclusion, and have succeeded in becoming part of Mexico's imagined political community, steps have also been taken to control and limit the influence of these measures of inclusion. These measures of inclusion include migrant participation in such Mexican state entities as the Instituto de Mexicanos en el Exterior (IME), and in state and local politics, and the granting of particular citizenship rights, especially the right to vote from abroad for President, granted in 2005. Yet some of these measures, especially the right to vote from abroad, has been granted in a way that actually decreased political mobilization and made the right to vote from abroad an empty one in the 2006 election. Concretely, the paper separates the history into three periods by examining the history of the movement to gain the right to vote before Vicente Fox's election; the political mobilization during the first five years of Fox's regime 2000-2006) until the passage of the right to vote in 2005; and then the conduct of and politics surrounding the election for migrants from abroad in 2006. Other measures of inclusion which contributed to the passage of the right to vote are also analyzed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet has been hailed as a promising tool for fostering transnational interactive communication, the creation of a global civil society, and the empowerment of local grassroots actors. This paper aims to provide a nuanced account and assessment of the role of the Internet and other media interfaces in a conflict in which transnational public opinion was widely seen as having generated decisive impact: the case of the Zapatista movement. Rejecting exaggerations and underestimation of the Internet's role, the paper investigates how the relations between heterogeneous components of the movement were established, maintained, mobilized, and modified, dissolved or replaced over time. The dynamic network linked struggles for the public good at local, national, and global levels and fosteredâ?”within specific limitsâ?”the cooperation between otherwise unlikely allies. The multi-method project examines a data set of over 42,000 electronic mails and web-pages, as well as national international newspaper articles, television footage and transcripts, and ethnographic notes from interviews and fieldwork in multiple sites in Mexico, the United States, and Europe over the period 1994-2007. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades research has consistently demonstrated that Mexicans in the United States have low infant mortality rates approximating those of whites. The term "epidemiological paradox" has been used to illustrate the combination of the relatively low socioeconomic position and their unexpected low infant mortality rates. Various explanations have been put forth to explain the Mexican epidemiological paradox. This paper examines one of these explanationsâ?”that the low infant mortality rate of Mexicans is due to a statistical artifact. In particular, the paper examines the degree to which the low infant mortality rate of Mexicans is due to Mexican women coming to the United States to give birth and returning to Mexico after their babies are born. In such cases, if babies die in Mexico, their deaths are not accounted for in the computation of infant mortality rates in the United States. This paper uses data from the 1999 and 2000 Vital Statistics and from the 2000 census to develop a procedure to estimate the number of missing Mexican babies who were born in the United States during the 1999-2000 period and who are unaccounted for at the time of the 2000 decennial census. The findings estimate that there were approximately 68,000 missing Mexican babiesâ?”approximately 11 percent of all Mexican-origin births. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these missing babies for the computation of infant mortality rates and fertility rates among Mexicans in the United States and Mexico. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2006, over a million immigrants and their allies rose up in cities across the United States to denounce the now famous Sensenbrenner bill (HR4437) that introduced controversial measures to criminalize immigration. The historic mass mobilizations exposed an important paradox. Since the 1960s, there has been a growing convergence between criminalization on the one hand and the expansion of rights for immigrants on the other. This paper traces the development of this paradoxical convergence, which I refer to as a rights/crime nexus, over three periods: 1965, 1986, and post-9/11. It argues that the formal recognition of rights for migrants in the post-civil rights era led to a greater intersection between immigration and crime control. Thus, the logic underlying the intersection between rights and criminalization is less about restricting movement and ultimately about policing citizenship and membership within a post-civil rights context. The paper stems from a year and one half of ethnographic research of immigration law enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico Border. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on qualitative research in the Soconusco and border area of Chiapas Mexico, this paper focuses particularly on the role of social networks and gender during the migratory process of women working in the sex and bar industry at this border area. It puts into context and attempts to understand the migratory trajectories of those labour migrants of working age (between 18 and 45 years old) crossing the Guatemalan-Chiapan border who work in this sector. Taking the structuration model as a framework for analysis, it explores the role of the structure-agency dynamic interaction during the migratory process and how some migratory trajectories are local while others trans-Mexican I discuss in this paper how the migratory trajectories of migrants working in this sector develop and to explore what is the role of social networks, taking into consideration that the formation of migratory trajectories and the development of social networks are gendered processes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Amnesty International (AI), approximately 370 girls and women have been murdered in Chihuahua's border city of Juárez (see Amnesty International's report titled "Intolerable Killings" 2003), earning Mexico the reputation of its largest human rights crisis in recent years (Cabrera 2004). Many women's organizations, human rights groups, and authorities have categorized the murders; those displaying patterns of extreme sexual violence characterized by brutality have been placed in one category separate from other murders that are violent but do not fit within the recognizable pattern. Despite such a separation, the violence against women in Juárez, measured by both murders and domestic violence, is part of a larger context of gender inequality that lies in the backdrop of economic restructuring. Since 1993 when the murders began, enraged women activists have pressured local authorities and Chihuahua state for answers, only to find a pattern of faulty investigations and patronizing backlash, as the growing number of murders continued. Seeking redress and gaining no answers from local, state, and federal authorities, women activists gained help from the international community, such as AI, bringing more attention to the murders as well as the nature of domestic violence in Juárez. This paper examines the transnational social movement (TSM) about violence against women in Juárez from the perspective of Juárez' rape crisis center Casa Amiga and it's president Esther Chávez Cano, a well-known feminist within her community and human rights circles. Exploring the ways in which this movement has unfolded as well as the strategies employed at home and within transnational networks, this paper attempts to contribute to the need for TSM literature that addresses these movements from a gender perspective. I argue that while the rights framework articulated by activists, Cano, and AI have made salient the political inequalities between men and women in Juárez; economics remain part of the problem. Furthermore, while the state remains the primary mechanism by which rights are realized, the role of transnational capital lies safely obscured. By not addressing how structural economic inequalities lived through gender is part of the inequality perpetuated in Juárez, transnational activism to stop the violence against women is hampered. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A main finding of this paper is that Dominican and Mexican immigrants incorporate into separate work sectors aided by distinct networks and household structures. Mexicans' access to jobs is contingent upon a wider spread of network links established by earlier cohorts. The expansion of these links as well as the "in-between" racial identity of Mexicans in NYC contributes to the group's increased work integration and work niche expansion. These processes connect newly arrived Mexican women into sectors through spouses/male partners' network links and equally enable them to cross racial and class boundaries within work establishments not easily accessible to Dominicans or other minority groups in NYC. Hence, I argue that as a result, Mexicans are experiencing a more ethnicized immigrant adjustment process in New York City, one which contrasts the more marginalized and isolated, racialized integration which characterizes the experiences of poor and working poor Dominican women in the 1990s. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many countries, networks of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have supported fledgling democracies by building solidarity, facilitating communication, and mobilizing political action. These networks have been particularly effective in pressuring governments to increase political transparency and to reduce corruption. For almost two decades, networks of Mexican NGOs have contributed to a political transition toward democracy. Evidence suggests that this transition has occurred sporadically, leaving Mexico a democracy with authoritarian enclaves. Thus, the presence of this political diversity offers a unique context in which to examine NGO-state relations.Using data from 173 non-profit NGOs in Oaxaca, Mexico, this paper explores interactions among NGOs and the Mexican government. Analyses of the NGO network suggest heavy involvement by government authorities in civil society operations. In fact, the majority of ties reported by NGOs were to various levels of the Mexican government. There are dual implications of this research: first, parameters of civil societies and states may not be as rigid as they are usually assumed to be. Second, while the results suggest that this overlap may present an obstacle to democratization, the presence of NGO-state networks may also offer a unique opportunity for those seeking to support democratization in historically authoritarian settings. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I analyze data from the 2000 Mexican General Population and Housing Census to examine educational attainment and labor force activity among nonmigrant dependents in transnational families. While academic and policy circles have given much attention to the educational and labor market outcomes of Mexican immigrants in the United States, less is known about nonmigrant children with migrant family members. The research that has been done has typically considered their educational aspirations, usually using qualitative methods in single sending communities or municipalities. This study adds to previous work in two ways: (1) the larger, nationally representative data set allows for more geographically generalizable results; and (2) it attends to children's labor force participation rather than focusing exclusively on educational outcomes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often not clear whether "social capital" is used to explain the presence of a social structure or the operation of a social process, or whether the resource at play is tangible or intangible. Although social capital as a theoretical concept may carry considerable potential for explanation and understanding in sociology, it is still in its early stage of formulation and needs to be developed further. This paper examines how the effects of social capital depend on the network structure from which the capital emerges. I argue that, depending on the context in which networks form, social capital is more or less powerful in determining migratory outcomes. I use special network data collected in four communities in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico (two rural villages, a town, and a city) to examine how social context - in this case community size - affects the structure and organization of social networks and the way networks, in turn, operate to produce social capital. My results suggest characteristic interrelationships between social context, social structure, and social capital and that migration theorists, therefore, must pay greater attention to network structure when attempting to understand how social capital is created and diffused and when modeling its effects. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of migration on the well-being of migrants' family members remaining in the country of origin. Previous literature discusses the processes of family separation and adaptation to new roles as being very trying for immigrants in host countries, but very few studies address the effects of migration on non-migrants. The process of migration, however, is a transnational phenomenon that has profound effects on the lives of migrants' family members remaining at home. Members of transnational families remain linked to one another and experience the process of migration on both sides of the border. I use the Mexican Family Life Survey to empirically assess the effects of migration on the emotional well-being of migrants' family members. Results indicate that the migration of close family members, especially spouses and children significantly increases the depressive symptoms and feelings of loneliness reported by family members remaining in Mexico. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a social phenomenon, the disintegration of couples is not easy to be measured. Usually in vital statistics breakups are limited to divorces and only register some kind of information. In this way, we can only know the amount of separations in a certain period of time but we can not easily reconstruct the history of each generation and relate it to other demographic events in the live of the persons. In this paper we analyze the data of the Encuesta Demográfica Retrospectiva in Mexico (EDER) that allows us to analyze all kind of breakups in marital and consensual unions and relate it to other demographic and socioeconomic phenomena. Using this survey we compare the trends of separation in males and females from three generations in Mexico, and through a model of events history analysis we try to identify the main socioeconomic factors that influence the breakup during first unions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do social movements mobilize people to protest such invisible threats as radiation, toxic pollution, or the effects of genetically modified plants? Do these movements depend on scientific expertise, or do they challenge traditional power relations between certified experts and laypeople? The controversy over genetically modified maize (corn) in Mexico and parallel movements in other parts of the world suggest that social movements work to make invisible threats into visible grievances through active involvement with science, on one hand attempting to set the scientific research agenda, on the other hand challenging the unique authority of experts. This paper, based ongoing field research in Mexico City and Oaxaca, Mexico, offers a descriptive analysis of some of the strategies of the movement "in defense of Mexican maize" and explores their implications for sociological theories of social movements, science and the environment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientists have advanced our understanding of how transnational processes and actors promote the international agreements common to today's global era, most advancing a homogenization thesis. But our understanding of the cross-national heterogeneity that underlies many agreements is limited. This paper advances this task by analyzing how Mexico and the United States came to agree on public health policy for their shared border. I trace the development of the U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission, a public international organization, from conception within a transnational "border health" network in the late 1980's, to policy development in the U.S. Congress, to negotiations with Mexican legislators, and finally to bi-national enactment of the Commission agreement in 2000. With identical legislation in both countries, the Commission is an example of complete policy convergence. However, I argue that although the idea for the Commission emerged within an apparently homogeneous transnational network of professionals and organizations, policy development was temporally and conceptually divided along national lines. I use historical comparative methods to elucidate the disjoined policy process and I show how Mexican and U.S. legislators created divergent public problem constructions - stories of harm, cause, and blame - within their national political arenas. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An active area in the study of group mobilizational processes can be linked to new social movement theory. Analysts employing this framework have highlighted the affective connections that motivate individuals to act, while examining the importance of ideology, culture, and symbolic constructions, to group solidarity. Noting that solidaristic behavior can be facilitated by the various cultural elements, this paper examines the importance of cultural appeals within social movements. Cultural appeals through art, history, and myth are explored as tools for creating group solidarity and encouraging collective action. In particular, this study focuses attention to the introduction of symbolic figures and concepts into the broader Mexican-American civil rights movement. Primary and secondary sources of data are both utilized to examine the manner in which Chicano activists employed culture as a resource. Through examining the Mexican-American civil rights movement one becomes aware of the creative efforts used by groups to appeal and mobilize potential constituents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last several decades, an expanding literature has been developed to understand Mexican immigration to the United States. In particular, many scholars have focused not only on the forces encouraging people to migrate, but also the impact that this migration has had on migrants themselves. In this paper, I examine the relationship between immigration and fertility. Specifically, my analysis compares the foreign and the native born population in the United States to determine the effect that nativity status has for the number of children ever born to women of Mexican origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In my research on the U.S.-Mexico border I tried to show how the categories and interpellation, the metaphors and the narratives most people use to address themselves and the "others" on the border have a basically regional logic on the Mexican side and an ethnic/racial one on the American (while national logics work on both sides of the border). However, Mexican Protestant narrative identities go "against the grain" in my sample, because people attuned to those discourses look for other type of nodal points to articulate their identities meaningfully. It is not by chance that precisely those types of narrative identities are the ones that resist the hegemonizing effect of the regional, ethnic, racial and national discourses so widespread on the area. This is so because, from the point of view of some of the most important narrative plots I found on the region, Mexican Protestants are not possible characters in the narratives of people who organize their identities around the plots that state that "in order to be a Mexican you have to be a Catholic." Therefore, Mexican Protestants are "unexpected" characters that do not fit the narratives of most people I have interviewed. This paper tries to address the peculiar ways Mexican Protestants construct a value narrative identity of Mexicans and Protestants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper examines the migration history and setllement experiences of recent Mexican immgrants on the rural Del-Mar-Va peninsula (Delaware, and the eastern shore of hte Chesapeake bay portions of Maryland and Virgina). Their rpesence as settler immigrants has radically expanded in the past decade and hte local area is a new immigrant -receiving area. Thus both immigrants and local communities are in hte process of adjustmetn and transition. Our ethnographic and survey data among immgrants and service providers sketch out the key areas of this process -- including migration history, economic issues, social services, life diffculties, and race relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role of music in the transnational Zapatista movement, 1994-2004. When indigenous peasants rose up in arms in the South-Esstern Mexican state of Chiapas on January 1, 1994 to protest longstanding grievances of discriminiation, repression, and lack of access to land and other resources, their cause was met with wide-spread sympathy and support in different regions of Mexico as well as in scores of other countries. This transnational support was crucial in facilitating the rebels' survival and it took on momentum of its own. The unlikely alliance between Mayan peasants and urban dwellers from the post-industrial world was bridged through a variety of media devices, including of music. It is argued that the analysis of music helps to explain the dynamics of these transnational network-linkages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protest event analysis has been concerned more with the relation between mobilization and shifting political opportunities than with the substance of claims. While there is plenty of event analyses of claim making, few of them have done serious analysis of claim making. This paper intends to fill this hole in the literature and presents the analysis of ?claim networks?. Using a database of over three thousand events of popular protests in Mexico between 1964 and 2000, I reexamine an important finding from Sergio Tamayo?s political discourse analysis, namely, transformation of social protests demanding social and economic rights into political protests demanding civil and political rights. By examining how popular groups make claims of different citizenship rights (civil, political, social, etc.), this study discovers that political rights ?crucial for democratization?became predominant claims in the neoliberal period not necessarily in term of frequencies these claims were asserted. Rather, the real importance of political rights lies in that popular groups needed to address political issues even when they were trying to satisfy other issues like social rights, civil rights, or economic and material demands. Mexico?s democratic movements became durable and powerful because these were closely tied to everyday economic and material issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the result of ethnographic research conducted in a sending community in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico. This study calls into question the stereotypical view of Mexican women as passive and traditional. There are several conclusions reached during this study. First, the results reject Menjivar´s (1999) and Levitt?s (1998) arguments. In the community studied, an unfulfilled economic or emotional absence encourages women to challenge the system of practice of Nurangi (participation in the labor force) even in the absence of a migration experience. Second, the analysis shows that contrary to our hypothesis, the physical absence of the male is not a trigger mechanism for women?s participation in the labor force. Third, women from both migrant and non-migrant related groups have increased their human capital. However, migrant and non-migrant related women who participated in market activities not only expanded their human capital but also gained an economic and emotional benefit. Finally, the interviews have also shown that contrary to some literature that views Mexican women as passive and subordinate agents, the women in the Nurangi community are active agents, and what is sometimes perceived as a static gender division of labor is rather a fluid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food is life, and life can be studied and understood through food. Counihan & Van Esterik (1997) Abstract: This paper is a work in progress that examines women?s food narratives collected at the US-Mexico border towns of Laredo, Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas as a sociolinguistic expression of Mexican transnational cultural identity and a longing for ?home.? Transnationalism at the border is complex in that it is simultaneously both locally and nationally situated. The women?s narratives are divided into four overarching themes: transnational identity, reaffirmation of culture, food is memory, and ?stuff you can?t get here.? Each theme reflects different, yet interconnected, aspects of the local border culture and identity, as well as a larger transnational culture and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores north south transnational organizing for economic justice, human rights, indigenous sovereignty, and women’s health and the tensions which emerge between grassroots movements, international actors, and NGOS in the context of Chiapas, Mexico. It identifies security as a multifaceted project with economic, political, social, health, cultural, gendered, and environmental dimensions, all of which are interconnected and embodied in indigenous organizing, accords, and worldview as collective rights and argues that security, in part, is forged through international and local NGO networking but fundamentally through grassroots movements which emphasize social justice, economic solidarity, popular democracy, and people-centered development. Activist, solidarity work informs the analysis of the case of Chiapas, Mexico, where threats to indigenous women’s security are rooted in neoliberal development, systemic racism, and sexism. Such threats manifest themselves in poverty, political exclusion, and militarization. It is perhaps in the arena of women’s health where the lethal intersection of these forces is demonstrated most forcefully. To challenge militarization, globalization, and political exclusion, a vibrant, global, civil society movement has been created, north and south. Personal experience with women’s transnational organizing and alliance building, models for solidarity, and key challenges to forming long term successful and sustainable relationships North and South are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the role that migration plays in the life chances of women of very limited resources living in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, a major maquiladora site in Mexico. Due in part to the growth of the maquiladora industry, the Mexican border region experiences significant levels of migration. The maquiladora industry, which has been disproportionately geared to employment of women, has no doubt attracted female migration to the border (Pedraza 1991). Thus, in this study we are particularly concerned with understanding the dynamics of migration among women?both among women who are associated with the maquiladora industry and those who are not. Based on rich information obtained through life histories of a group of women from different age cohorts, we find that female migration patterns did seem to be consistent with major life events, although the timing of migration was not always optimal. Furthermore, important variations existed for women of different age cohorts. For the older women, schooling was generally cut off prematurely in order to start working or to migrate, while this was less often the case for the younger cohorts. In most cases, however, migration did not improve the lot of these women; and, in fact, the women were often caught in a spiral of reverse mobility that took them from low educational attainment to low-level jobs to even lower level jobs with each shift in their life course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparative analysis of artwork produced in the context of social movements waged by Mexicans and Chicanos (U.S. inhabitants of Mexican origin) during the two decades between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s. Despite the fact that activists in these movements shared many elements of Mexican culture and history, were part of the same generation of radical social movements born in the 1960s, and experienced some significant interchange among movement participants from each side of the U.S.-Mexico border, an examination of movement art reveals significant differences in key elements of the movements? collective identity and expression of political citizenship. Analysis of the artwork also highlights different aesthetic choices made by movement artists, particularly with regard to the deployment of formal elements associated with the ?Mexican School? of art made famous by artists associated with the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century. Variations in the representational strategies developed by movement artists reflect the distinct relationship of movement constituents in Mexico and the U.S. to each nation?s prevailing regimes of accumulation and modes of regulation. The following analysis is based on an examination of 374 pieces of art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]