Suchergebnisse

Mexican development policy is guided by the country's dual function as both a recipient and a provider of international cooperation. Over the past 17 years, the country has taken several initiatives to promote gender equality nationally, and today gender equality norms cut across Mexican priorities in foreign policy and South-South cooperation activities. Paradoxically, the gains achieved at policy formulating tables have been accompanied by a rise in gender-based violence. To approach this paradox, this article engages with gender equality norms to show how they have been introduced, developed and transformed in the context of a national security crisis and extreme violence directed at women. The analysis points to the important role of Mexican feminists and anti-feminicide activists in the promotion of gender equality norms, as well as to the existence of a political landscape in which structural inequality persists and such norms remain highly contested.

AbstractIn this paper, I explore the nexus between migration, development and security in South–North migration through an analysis of certain discursive constructions in current migration policy debates; in particular, the migration–development nexus that attempts to make migration work for development in the global South, and the migration–security nexus that legitimizes stricter border controls and migration management in the global North. Shifting geopolitical concerns have changed the balance between the two nexuses over time, but by and large policy debates have been driven by the interests of Northern governments, whereby "development" has been reduced to an instrument of migration policy and "security" to an issue of keeping unwanted and potentially dangerous migratory flows out. The security situation of journeying migrants may make it to the policy debating tables of international organizations and forums, but has thus far not radically changed migration policy. I suggest analysing the nexus constructions through an analytical lens capable of encompassing both migrants and their border‐spanning social networks, on the one hand, and migration policies and state responses aimed at controlling human mobility, on the other. The starting point for this analytical endeavour is the intersection between the migration industry, understood as the broad array of both legal and clandestine actors linked to the facilitation of international migration, and the growing markets for migration management both at the inter‐state level and in the increased use of private and commercial agents for control purposes.

A basic assumption in migration studies is that a search for better livelihood conditions is the main cause for migratory movements. Nevertheless, few studies take in-depth research into specific livelihoods and the contexts in which they unfold as their point of departure. Such an approach would focus on the ways in which making a livelihood links up with larger-scale patterns of population movement, the range and variation in mobility that such movements involve, the social institutions, networks and migration industry actors facilitating and sustaining mobile livelihoods, and the shifting physical/environmental and geopolitical contexts in which migration occurs. Over the last decade, migrants have become seen as vital agents of development by international financial institutions, various United Nations organizations and home country governments, who in their efforts to 'capitalize' on migrants' remittances have contributed to establishing the image of the migrant super hero, who through hard work in foreign lands contribute to sustain their families, communities and nations. Nevertheless, the recent international financial crisis and raising anti-immigrant sentiments have led to a criminalization of mobile livelihood strategies and subsequent mass deportations of undocumented migrants. Using Central America and the well-developed local notion of the migrant superhero as point of departure, this working paper asks three critical questions: The first is whether poverty or insecurity best explains contemporary migration flows in the region? The second question takes issue with how remittances play into on the one hand local social security nets, and, on the other hand, increasing national and regional insecurity. The final question concerns the status decline of former migrant heroes who through the act of deportation become 'trash' in the public imagery. This question indicates that resource concepts such as availability, access and quality need to take social status into account.

Sallie Westwood and Annie Phizacklea Trans‐nationalism and the politics of belongingMichael Peter Smith Transnational urbanism: locating globalizationLudger Pries (ed.) New transnational social spaces: international migration and transnational companies in the early twenty‐first century