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Remittances - the money that migrants send home to their families, a transnational phenomenon par excellence - have grown at extraordinary rates in the last two decades. Because of their development potential they have gained considerable attention by scholars and policymakers recently. Whereas up to now many studies have focused on the use of remittances and their impact on poverty and inequality, the potential contributions of remittances to the financial development of receiving countries is an emerging research field. Remittances can be a gateway to the financial sector for hitherto excluded individuals and households, though, especially when they are accompanied by specific governance initiatives. The paper presents an overview of such initiatives capitalizing on remittances for financial development from Mexico, one of the largest receiving countries in the world with significant sums of remittances from the United States. As a first step for a future analysis of factors of success, the initiatives are presented focusing on their different actor constellations, i.e. on the varying forms, in which state, market, and civil society actors from the remittance sending and receiving countries cooperate in these new forms of transnational governance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberal trade policies between the United States and Mexico of the last ten years produced a domino effect within the "ma(i)ze of globalization," that began with a reduction in support for farmers and the removal of laws that regulated prices of corn. These changes resulted in a series of interconnected problems, including restrictions on Mexican farmers' ability to sell maize. I explore how the negative effects of free trade, especially the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has increased poverty, thus resulting in increased migration, searches for alternative job opportunities, and changes in gendered divisions of labor. In this paper, I stop at different points in the ma(i)ze of globalization to illustrate how globalization and free trade have affected the lives of women in Oaxaca, Mexico, resulted in increased immigration and changed gender divisions of labor. My analysis draws on a nine-month ethnographic study in Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Mexico City and 50 interviews with corn farmers, tortilla makers, women, and members of environmental, indigenous, and farmers' rights organizations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pursuit of greater security in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 has sharpened the debate in the United States about policy issues related to the southwest border. Matters of trade, immigration and physical security collide as never before with transnational threats to security continuing to pose significant challenges to policymakers on both sides of the border. Even as the United States is making substantial investments in a Secure Border Initiative, public opinion is conflicted on immigration reform and the imperative for facilitated trade is powerful. These dynamics raise a host of questions about what the term “secure border” means now and can mean in the future. This paper explores the current state of governance along the U.S./Mexico border and considers the factors that will influence the future state of border control on the Southwest Border. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Admiration and resentment of America are deeply rooted in the political traditions of the United States' nearest neighbors. As in other parts of the world, resentment has been on the rise in recent years. This paper distinguishes in its first part between critical opinion, skepticism, and prejudice on the one hand, and different types of anti-Americanism on the other. In the paper's next two parts, these general categories are confronted with data from Canada and Mexico and the dramatically different historical trajectories in the evolution of anti-Americanism in these two countries. In the fourth and final section, the paper seeks to identify commonalities, if any, in these radically different political settings. The expected finding is that even in close proximity to the United States, we find a plurality of different types of anti-Americanisms, a condition that characterizes world politics more generally. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the process of identity formation of the Minutemen, a self-proclaimed "border enforcement" organization that patrols the U.S.-Mexico border and organizes for stricter enforcement of US immigration laws. In performing the border and thus the role of the citizen soldier, the Minutemen both draw on and reproduce meanings that are fundamental to American identity and particularly white masculinity within this country. Moreover, the emergence of the Minuteman Project can be seen as a function of the intersection of several processes. These include: racial ambiguities within a post-Civil Rights Era, economic insecurity resulting from globalization processes, and a glamorization of the American military in media coverage of the War on Terror. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the rhetoric and symbolism employed by President Bush during the Bush/Fox era of U.S. Mexico relations and endeavors to situate his engagement in an historical context by comparing it to his predecessors in the post World War II era. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article elaborates upon the vast wage gap between the United States and Mexico asserting that solely economic explanations, i.e. New Economic Geography or the Theory of Comparative Advantage, trying to explain the low wage level in Mexico are not exhaustive. We show that Mexico is rather limited in undertaking economic policy measures to improve its international competitiveness due to its high dependence on the United States - the main trading partner. While an economic analysis can describe this situation and the recent developments, it regularly falls short of identifying the socio-economic and structural causes of the phenomenon. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate politico-economic and societal structures within the Mexican economy, state, and civil society. We argue that the main cause for the low wages is the existence of a state class able to generate rents. This state class uses a surplus, through which it has access due to the conjuncture of holding an office, to deliver loyalty and maintain its own privileged position. It does so by binding parts of society – especially the rural poor – clientelistically, what keeps them from political participation. These underprivileged, marginalised agricultural workers often migrate to industrial centres and offer their workforce accepting low wages. Redundant workers thus limit the bargaining power of the labour force. These circumstances, the incorporated labour unions and foreign – mostly US-American – maquila businesses interested in low labour costs had not only been very effective in keeping Mexican wages on a low level, they also successfully fragmented the working class. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]