Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Mexico $x Social conditions'

The sudden and steady increase in the involvement of women in the Mexican labour force beginning in the 1980s, signifies a major shift in gender roles and activities. It is a little studied outcome of Mexico's combination of economic crisis (which served to increase the supply of female labour) and subsequent adoption of neoliberal economic policies (which stimulated the demand for female labour). In fact, what is not known, are the implications of this employment for the Mexican women themselves. The dissertation moves beyond the existing literature on the gendered consequences of employment and economic development, by bringing in the citizenship literature to help define women's status. Specifically, the dissertation proposes a way of determining these consequences by examining three dimensions of women's status, two of which refer to women's roles and capabilities in the public sphere---political and economic---and one which refers to women's status in the private sphere---the household. By disaggregating the status variable, the dissertation highlights the significant improvements in women's status while identifying the remaining obstacles to gender equality. The dissertation develops a number of measures of women's multidimensional status, and assesses the differences between employed and non-employed women using data obtained from a survey of women in Mexico City. In the economic sphere, the findings indicate that employment improves women's status by enhancing women's independence. Employment provides women with the economic resources that enable them to lessen their dependence on men. At the same time, women continue to face inequality in the labour market, signifying the continuing subordination of women. In terms of women's household status, the findings show that women retain the primary responsibility for childcare, and for the maintenance of the home. This inequality is significant, and serves to limit further improvements in

The study is a comparative analysis of the development of two networks of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Jalisco and their contribution to the strengthening of the political capacities of NGOs. A new view of civil society is introduced that emphasizes its multiple functions and forms the basis for disaggregating capacity into three dimensions: defensive, propositional and infrastructural. A political process approach draws from social movement theory for understanding the emergence and activities of NGO networks.
The development of NGOs in Mexico from the 1960s through the 1990s is analyzed as the result of mobilization in response to political opportunities arising from transformations to the political and social policy regimes of the Mexican state. The study compares the national pattern with the experience of two regional NGO networks: Foro de Organismos Civiles de Oaxaca (FOCO) and Foro de Organismos Civiles de Jalisco (FOCIV). Each network emerged in response to state-level defensive and propositional opportunities.
Comparative historical case studies and a latitudinal analysis of linkage development reveal the contribution of these two networks to capacity-building. Increased communication between member organizations was an positive result of the network activities. However, neither network strengthened linkages of NGOs with popular movements, political parties, or the state. The study confirms earlier research findings that these types of networks contribute to the development of pluralism in civil society, but reveals the defence of NGO autonomy to be a barrier to greater linkage development.
The focus on autonomy can distance NGOs from other important political actors and their struggles, hinder coordination with other actors, and thus reduce the political effectiveness of the networks. The two cases also illustrate the important role of third-order NGOs to the development of the sector as a whole, and suggest that linkages tend to be stronger in networks where third-order NGOs promote network development.

The liberal debate on egalitarian distributive justice was originally developed with affluent occidental countries in mind. We might ask whether the liberal egalitarian distributive question has a different answer when we consider countries with a different social justice answer should in principle better interpret a political conception of social justice for a poor society, and within this general distributive principle provide specific theoretical distributive criteria for the design of poverty alleviation programmes. I claim, as a possible answer to this theoretical question that egalitarianism could be better served by using a mixed distributive. I maintain that in extreme scarcity situations egalitarians should rather appeal to a moral pluralist view where many factors matter when we compare various feasible distributions, not only equality. This “hybrid” distributive view, which I have called Progressive Sufficiency would not give ultimate importance to equality; it would give priority to the worse off over the better off individuals only under some circumstances and would consider that several morally relevant thresholds should be clarified. Another problem relates to the type of goods upon we should focus when dealing with interpersonal comparisons. Three types are commonly distinguished: welfare, resources and capability. Progressive sufficiency for instance would recommend thresholds in advantage with the first one described in absolute terms and the second and third described in progressive increases of benefits, taking as the measure of benefits the average held by the proportion of the population within thresholds. Thus we could conclude that both analysis either of the distributive criterion and the currency of the distribution naturally fit together in a general prioritarian argument with graded steps of benefits. My case study is Mexico and some of its recent poverty alleviation programmes (1992-2000). In terms of developing countries, the Mexican case is interesting because most of its institutions and policies have being inspired by liberal ideas that have succeeded in creating a moderately strong economy, but have failed in the fair distribution of scarce resources.

In Latin America, women's ability to participate in the paid workforce on equal terms as men is constrained by many cultural and political obstacles, and this reinforces women's unequal citizenship status. Even though unions have rarely supported women's rights historically, and are currently losing political power in the neoliberal economic context, I argue that union women have a crucial role to play in the social struggle to expand women's labor rights. Building on theories about the social construction of citizenship, I develop an original theoretical framework suggesting that civil society acts on three levels to expand citizenship rights: the individual level (working with individuals to make them more rights-conscious), within social institutions (working to ensure that policies within social institutions actually reflect the rights of individuals), and at the level of the state, where civil society contributes to the construction of new citizenship discourses.
The framework is then applied to the Mexican case. Examining the rise of working class feminism in the context of the debt crisis and transition to economic liberalism in the 1980s, and the subsequent democratic transition in 2000, I show how these contexts led union women to participate in civil associations active at each of these three levels of citizenship construction. More specifically, this participation has been important in raising awareness of women's labor rights among women workers, challenging patriarchal union structures, and bringing the issue of women's labor rights into the debate over reform of Mexico's Federal Labor Law. I ultimately conclude that in the absence of support from a broad women's labor movement, the chances that women's labor rights will be supported by the Mexican government and Mexican unions will be low.

This cross-cultural inquiry focuses on the involvement of mothers in their children's education and the ways in which motherhood impacts the personal identities of mothers. The Second-wave feminism started thirty years ago and questioned the role and position of mothers in society. The objective of this movement was to free women from the exclusive responsibility of childcare. However, three decades later women are still the primary caregivers for their children. The study involves 36 middle-class mothers, 12 each from Canada, India and Mexico. Irrespective of their cultural backgrounds, these mothers participated actively in the domestic work related to childcare and in their children's schoolwork. Participants in this study expressed their views about intensive mothering and how they sought their personal identities from the work of mothering. The majority regarded motherhood as a unique and rewarding role, and wished to continue mothering despite the frustrations and stresses they experienced. The findings concerning the childcare strategies of mothers from Canada, India and Mexico highlight some cultural differences. These cultural differences also had an impact on how these mothers perceived their roles and identities.

This thesis looks at how Mexico’s new democratic regime led by President Vicente Fox (2000–2006) faced past state crimes perpetrated during the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI’s) seventy-year authoritarian rule (1929–2000). To test the new regime’s democratic viability, Fox’s administration had to settle accounts with the PRI for the abuses the party had perpetrated in the past, but without upsetting it in order to preserve the stability of the new regime. The PRI was still a powerful political force and could challenge Fox’s efforts to democratise the country. Hence, this thesis offers an explanation of the factors that facilitated the emergence of Mexico’s ‘transitional justice’ process without putting at risk Fox’s relationship with the PRI elite. This thesis is framed by a cluster of literature on transitional justice which follows a social-constructivist approach and it is supported by exhaustive documentary research, which I carried out for six years in public and private archives. This thesis argues that Fox established a Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) as he sought to conduct ‘transitional justice’ through the existing structures of power: laws and institutions (e.g., the General Attorney’s Office) administered by members of the previous regime. So, Fox opted to face past abuses but left the task in the hands of the institutions whose members had carried out the crimes or did nothing to prevent them. The PRI rapidly accepted the establishment of the SPO because the most relevant prosecutorial strategy to come to terms with the PRI was arranged by the PRI’s own elite during the authoritarian era – prosecutorial strategy that led to impunity. In this process, the language of human rights played a decisive role as it framed the SPO’s investigations into the past: it determined the kind of violations that qualified for enquiry and, hence, the type of victims who were counted in the process, which perpetrators would be subject to prosecution, and the authorities that would intervene. Categories of human rights violations (e.g. genocide or forced disappearance) were constructed and manipulated in such a way as to grant a de facto amnesty to perpetrators. Fox was able to preserve the stability of the new regime as his prosecutorial strategies never really threatened the PRI elite.

This thesis documents and investigates the evolution of poverty and inequality in Mexico between 1992 and 2008. It applies best practice techniques and in doing so, aims to reconcile the differences that emerge between studies that use the same data. It also investigates and identifies some of the underlying processes and factors driving high levels of poverty and inequality; mapping these on to periods of crisis, reform and recovery and also to changes in the underlying population characteristics (e.g. education). The thesis adopts a microeconomic approach that uses household survey micro-data, available for every other year since 1992 and representative at a national and rural/urban level. This research aims to answer the following questions: 1) How sensitive are poverty and inequality measures in Mexico to the use of different methodologies. 2) How have poverty and income inequality evolved between 1992 and 2008, specifically, is it possible to arrive at robust results regarding the changes observed in poverty and income inequality in the period of study? And 3) what are the underlying processes behind the levels and trends in income inequality? Using sensitivity analysis we show that in the Mexican case, poverty and inequality measures are highly sensitive to some methodological choices (e.g. economies of scale) but less sensitive to others such as the choice of poverty line. We obtain robust results regarding the evolution of poverty and income distribution in Mexico between 1992-2008, which show that periods of crisis have had a very negative impact on the majority of the population. Finally, our results suggest that education is the most important factor driving the levels and changes of inequality in Mexico, accounting for 20 percent of the total inequality observed. Moreover, it seems that changes in the returns, rather than the distribution of education, appear to be behind these changes.

This research is an exploration of the applicability of a methodology to the study of decision making on migration in Mexican households. This thesis shows the importance of using multiple respondents in order to examine the role of women in decision making within Mexican households that have migrated. Women's roles in the processes of decision making and migration are varied, but individuals in all households studied indicated that migration is a family, rather than individual, decision. Gender differences appeared in responses to many questions, emphasizing men's and women's different priorities. The most striking differences emerged between spouses in the same household, and the results show the inaccurate picture that can develop if one household member is used to represent all members.

This research examines the trajectories that young men and women in Mexico experienced during their transition to adulthood in the 1980s and 1990s. The study, particularly, considers two groups of significant markers of adulthood: social transitions (leaving education, entry into the labour force, parental home leaving), and family formation transitions (first sex, first partnership, and first birth). The thesis investigates the ways that these transitions were experienced among Mexican youth: first, by establishing the main interactions between social transitions and family formation transitions to adulthood; and second, by providing evidence of the main trajectories followed by young men and women in their passage to adulthood from a life course perspective. Applying Event History techniques to retrospective data from the 2000 Mexican National Youth Survey, results show that young men and women experienced different patterns of trajectories in their transit to adulthood marked by a strong gender component. While young men showed a lag between the experience of social and family formation transitions characterized by work-oriented trajectories, young women often experienced almost simultaneous occurrence of social and family formation transitions leading to predominantly family-oriented trajectories to adulthood. Differences between urban and rural respondents were also found to be significant. Another conclusion of the study is that many young people found great difficulty in obtaining their first job after leaving education, leading to high unemployment. Despite the lack of employment opportunities for Mexican young people, family formation transitions were not substantially postponed until later ages unlike many developed nations. The findings also confirm the importance of education on the experience of transitions to adulthood. The study shows the need to restructure the Mexican educational system to enable young people to work and study simultaneously, without having to leave education immediately after entering the labour force. These findings highlight the need to strengthen and reinforce current education policies to stimulate labour force participation of young women.

The emergence of higher education opportunities in rural areas of Mexico such as throughout the state of Oaxaca has opened new opportunities for young women's professional development and new individual and community identities. I explore tensions between the collective imaginary of rural Mexico and rural women's emerging sense of independence and self-determination in light of higher education's expanding opportunities. Educational opportunities lead to community formation around commonality of experience in addition to ascribed community relationships and roles. I situate this analysis within the context of the Universidad Tecnológica de los Valles Centrales de Oaxaca (UT), a small university in San Pablo Huixtepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. Through interviews and participant observation, I answer the following questions: (1) How is rural women's identity produced through policy, geography, and social influences? (2) In what ways do college women experience change in terms of family relationships and professional trajectories? and (3) How do changes in rural women's collective identity through professional development contribute to social movements for gender equality? This thesis provides a broader examination of the implications of shifts in family trajectory for belonging and women's identity in Mexico, contributing to larger discussions regarding higher education in rural areas, women's experiences and interactions within institutions, and women's collectives as venues for societal transformation. In conclusion, I offer recommendations for educational policy that supports women's identity development, promotes gender equality, and encourages women's leadership.

This thesis examines incidences of violence in Mexico related to the trade in illegal narcotics from the election of President Felipe Calderón in late 2006 to the election of his successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, in mid-2012. The thesis, which is arranged methodologically as a single case study, begins with an examination of the state of literature on violence, crime and warfare. The theoretical basis is specified by subsequent inquiry into the role of illegal narcotics as a driver of violence, and together, these theoretical chapters form the basis of the hypothesis, that under certain circumstances, the drugs trade can create a market of violence, in which non-political actors are incentivised by their constraints to engage in acts of violence not normally associated with criminals. The next three chapters comprise an empirical examination of the hypothesis – the first on historical inflection points in Mexican history and the US/Mexican relationship along with the geographic and historical challenges, as illustrated by the border region around Ciudad Juarez and the violence in Guatemala, the second on the divergent structures and strategies of selected Mexican drug trafficking organisations as a window into the nature of the overall conflict, and the third on the effects of Mexican and American governmental strategies to control the violence. The thesis concludes that while drug violence in Mexico does have the overall shape of a market of violence, developments toward the end of the period studied give some hope that the constraints will change and markedly reduce the incentive for violence. Policy ramifications and the overall future of drug violence given the uncertain future of prohibition are considered in the conclusion as well.

This research explores the political factors that affect the allocation of antipoverty funds in Mexican municipalities. Specifically, it analyses whether the adoption of FAISM, a decentralised fiscal fund intended to reduce poverty, did, in fact, help provide better services for the poor or if it was capture by political influence. In this sense, my work addresses a classic question of when and how political institutions can effectively improve the allocation of antipoverty funds. In the last decade, an ambitious decentralisation process was promoted in Mexico as a way to strengthen local governance and hence improve basic service provision. The idea was to limit politician‟s influence on resource allocation and return decision making to the people. By looking at more than 57,000 FAISM projects carried out in 122 municipalities of Estado de Mexico between 1998 and 2006 my work argues that political influence could not be circumvented and clientelism remained as a common political practice to allocate antipoverty funds. My findings demonstrate that the three major political parties relied on FAISM to obtain political benefits through the allocation of private goods. Regarding the effects of democratic institutions, my work demonstrates that greater party competition increases the probability that FAISM was used for public benefit. Similarly, there is a propensity towards greater spending on clientelism during elections. Although these factors influence the allocation of municipal funds, my work does not find concluding evidence to test the impact of fund allocation and poverty reduction. My dissertation makes three important contributions to the literature. Substantively, it qualifies the premise that clientelistic linkages between voters and politicians prevail and shows the conditions under which local politicians strategically allocate antipoverty funds for political gain. A second, methodological, contribution is the use of a more refined measure of social spending at the municipal level by looking at the split between public and private goods. Finally, this dissertation seeks to inform the longstanding debate about the ways in which democratic politics can contribute to effective poverty reduction.

This thesis explored a regional comparison of education in post-revolutionary Mexico. It involved a micro-look into the relationship between violence, education, religion, and politics in the states of Durango and Jalisco. Research methods included primary sources and microfilms from the National Archives State Department records related to education from the internal affairs of Mexico from 1930-1939 from collection file M1370. It also utilized G-2 United States Military Intelligence reports as well as records from the British National Archives dealing with church and state relations in Mexico from 1920-1939. Anti - clericalism in the 1920’s led to violent backlash in rural regions of Durango and Jalisco called the Cristero rebellion. A second phase of the Cristero rebellion began in the 1930s, which was aimed at ending state-led revolutionary secular education and preserving the folk Catholic education system. There existed a unique ritualized culture of violence for both states. Violence against state-led revolutionary secular educators was prevalent at the primary and secondary education levels in Durango and Jalisco. Priests served as both religious leaders and rebel activists. At the higher education level there existed a split of the University of Guadalajara but no violence against educators. There existed four competing factions involved in this intellectual battle: communists followed Marx, anarchistic autonomous communists, urban folk modern Catholics, and student groups who sought reunion of the original university. This thesis described how these two states and how they experienced their unique culture of violence during the 1930s. It suggested a new chronology of the Cristero rebellion. This comparison between two regions within the broader context of the country and its experiences during the 1930s allowed for analysis in regards to education, rebellion, religion, and politics.

A group of community members of the ejido X-Maben in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico are currently in the process of developing a community ecotourism enterprise (CEE) to attract both local and foreign tourism to a natural area within their ejido. Most definitions of ecotourism define the natural area of interest as a protected area and include the requirement of integrating local communities into the benefits generated by ecotourism in that particular area. However, few researchers have considered the case of community ecotourism where the natural area is on communal lands and the enterprise itself is fully community-owned. This project analyzes the institutional complexities of planning an ecotourism enterprise within the ejido of X-Maben, includes a stakeholder analysis, and involves a GIS analysis of the placement of nature trails in the ecotourism area. The thesis project also includes examinations of other efforts to establish CEEs elsewhere in Quintana Roo.

Using a mixed methods, interdisciplinary case study approach, this research project explores the benefits, risks, and challenges of male migration for women who reside in San Juan Guelavía, Oaxaca, Mexico. In a unique approach in the field of migration studies, this project considers not only women whose husbands have migrated--absent husbands--but also the impact of male migration on women whose husbands have returned as well as women whose husbands have never left--anchored husbands. Women with returned husbands and even women with anchored husbands feel the threat, worry, and fear that male migration could, at an unknown point in the future, fragment their family. This case study approach looks at how women's work responses are differentiated by husbands' migration status, by age, and by husband's control over women's activities. Women with absent husbands tend be income-producing women as well as women ages 35 to 50 far more than women 35 and under and 50 and over. With motherhood as a cultured priority of rural Mexican women, women's income-producing opportunities are primarily limited to options within the home or in venues that can accommodate their children until the children enter school. Although this case study showed little or no connection between male migration and educational attainment, substantial policy-worthy findings suggest that the lack of value that residents of San Juan Guelavía place on the local public high school curriculum negatively impacts educational attainment of children beyond middle school. Women's traditional and cultural emphasis of marriage for their daughters as well as their reluctance to expose daughters to the negative influences of the city sway the decisions that women make for their daughters.

Background: While there has been a dramatic increase in the prevalence of diabetes in developing countries, such as Mexico, there is a critical need to better understand how the challenges that arise in shifting the focus from acute care to care for chronic conditions manifest at the level of patient care provision in the health care organization and community, especially in rural resource-poor communities. One step in this direction is the exploration of the potential that social capital may provide in improving our understanding of the relationships that exists among patients, health care providers and the broader community. Objectives: To examine the provision of health care for diabetes, as well as the beliefs, resources and relationships that exist among patients and families, health care teams and community partners that affect treatment for diabetes in a rural resource-poor community in Mexico. Methods: This study incorporated a qualitative action-research approach and data was collected via community asset mapping, surveys, semi-structured interviews and group discussions. Utilizing an action research model, the study procedures were iterative, whereby results from selected data collection techniques were used to inform subsequent iterations of data collection. Community resources were identified with key informant input and via community exploration, to record existing and potential diabetes-related resources. Surveys were administered to health care providers, patients and general community members. Semi-structured interviews and group discussion topics were informed by the Innovative Care for Chronic Conditions Framework as well as by prior data collection procedures such as the surveys and preceding interviews. The interviews and group discussions were conducted with health care providers, diabetic patients, and community leaders. Results: Community asset mapping revealed limited existence of health care resources available to the rural community in Mexico. Three salient themes emerged across health care providers, diabetic patients, and community leaders: (1) Cultural eating behaviors are important drivers in preventing and managing diabetes mellitus; (2) Diabetic patients are currently ill-prepared to adequately manage chronic conditions, such as chronic conditions; (3) Trust is an important facilitator and/or barrier for both patients and health care providers when searching for ways to enhance management of diabetes outside of the health care organization. Conclusion: An evidence-based understanding of the diabetes-related beliefs, current perceived performance of diabetes care provision, the availability of community resources and social capital can be used to leverage the health care in low-income communities where primary health services are limited in their availability and/or capacity. The informed construction of community-derived initiatives and interventions that integrate community resources and improve the social capital within the community can enhance the care for patients with diabetes by offering both alternative and complementary avenues of accessing care that supports long-term disease management.

The intended contribution of this work is to systematically discuss a selection of methodological topics and some of the empirical and technical issues that have been driving the measurement of inequality in Mexico so far. This discussion has two strands: firstly, the general case, and second, the particular case of Mexico. The general case include some philosophical concerns, along with a review of the traditional inequality measurement, the most common operational decisions in empirical calculations, and the recent methodological contribution of development literature that is mostly centered around the capability approach of Sen (1985b). The philosophical part contrasted with other approaches and rejected the Marxist view of economic inequality, which is mostly viewed as an outcome of exploitation. The distributional judgments are compared with more ancient schools of thought in regards to justice. Another methodological issue is such that social inequality, approximated by income inequality, might be considered as an additional functioning that measures the degree of social cohesion in the country, this finding is an implication that comes from the definition of functionings within the capability approach; then, social inequality is a functioning that is different in nature from other measures of destitution, and it is also different from the destitution that is captured by absolute poverty measurement. Our general case includes a review of the most popular ways to measure inequality, such as normative and pragmatic inequality measures that are mentioned with their properties, with their rankings of the distributions provided by the use of stochastic dominance and quantile comparisons, and the construction of statistical models and some graphic representations of income economic inequality; the approach of inequality concerns included in the measurement of relative poverty is rejected for the sake of clarity. Then this general view would guide us to a better understanding of the Mexican literature for the consideration of income distribution. The measurement of destitution provided by governmental offices is necessary to discuss, because there might be some lack of coherence between the design of the measurement and the complex legal system in Mexico. We also consider a set of regulatory concerns that might not be unique to the Mexican law, but may be generalized for developing countries as a whole. Some of the methodological discussions that show how the Mexican research has been influenced by the international literature about human destitution will be good to clarify, looking at the value judgments that have been automatically accepted by the researchers. A sensitivity analysis was performed to the empirical calculation of inequality in Mexico, so the measurement showed to be different in regards to a variety of operational concerns: the recipient unit, the different data from income and consumption-expenditure surveys, various non-responses and underreported biases, the inclusion of a regional price index, among other things. In this work was also covered the reasons why it might be the case that destitution and poverty assessment was studied more deeply than inequality itself, so the possible ambiguity of inequality with poverty measurement is challenged in this work with a variety of theoretical remarks and empirical arguments. The final topic for the particular case of Mexico is to shed light in regards to the context of the capability approach and the use of equivalence scales, because these methodological approaches consider respectively directly and indirectly the assessment of distributional judgments. This discussion is followed by an empirical assessment of inequality measures that is related with a set of functionings and services, where a direct relationship of measures of inequality with other measures of destitution is made clear.

Cuando se presentan años de sequía, los campesinos de temporal son los primeros en resentir pérdidas en sus cosechas obligándoles a buscar nuevas alternativas de sustento para adquirir en el mercado los granos que no pudieron producir para su consumo. La baja pluviosidad de los años 2009-2012 −y la declaratoria de desastre natural en 2011− llevan a formular las siguientes preguntas: ¿cómo los campesinos de temporal percibieron y resolvieron la insuficiente producción del maíz necesario a la alimentación de su familia y de sus animales? ¿Se han modificado los patrones migratorios a raíz de este fenómeno climatológico adverso? Formular esta posible estrategia de adaptación responde a la larga historia migratoria prevaleciente en la región desde varias décadas y al incentivo a migrar que representan las redes migratorias preexistentes. El texto inicia con una revisión de los diferentes tipos de sequía y sus efectos; también examina y discute la complejidad del concepto de migración ambiental: sus dimensiones, aspectos legales y proyecciones numéricas ante la mayor frecuencia de los eventos naturales extremos y el crecimiento demográfico. Los estudios de caso realizados en diversos contextos de sequía permiten identificar, en la decisión de migrar, un mayor peso de las variables políticas, socioeconómicas, culturales y demográficas que de las variables ambientales. Por este motivo, las diferentes dimensiones de contexto del área de estudio son ampliamente descritas en el trabajo. La presente tesis da cuenta del estudio realizado en 11 localidades de la cuenca del río Silao (estado de Guanajuato, México) situadas entre 2400 y 1830 msnm; dichas localidades están interconectadas por el río en un territorio natural y socialmente articulado aunque diverso en cuanto a sus características naturales y sociales. Al abarcar una reducida extensión territorial, el estudio privilegia la observación detallada de una realidad que es acercada desde la interdisciplinariedad. Con ello, las ciencias naturales y sociales, sus datos e instrumentos de investigación propios, permitieron identificar y analizar la relación entre los cambios ambientales –la baja pluviosidad y sus efectos− y las respuestas sociales aportadas por la población. Mediante la aplicación de entrevistas semi estructuradas y visitas a campo, se ha documentado que las transformaciones ambientales que obligan los campesinos de temporal a buscar otras formas de sustento, no resultan de la variabilidad climática natural sino que responden ante todo a modificaciones antrópicas del medio natural. En otras palabras, la reducida capacidad productiva de las tierras sembradas de maíz y de las huertas frutales resulta más del empobrecimiento progresivo del suelo (por el uso de fertilizantes químicos) y de la alteración de la dinámica hidrológica (a consecuencia de la deforestación y de la extracción de arena del río), que de la baja pluviosidad percibida y asumida por los campesinos como una constante inevitable de la agricultura de temporal. El reducido rendimiento agrícola y la consecuente necesidad de diversificar las fuentes de ingresos dan lugar a una creciente sobreexplotación de los recursos naturales (mayor extracción de leña, carbón y humus en la cuenca alta) y motivan la incorporación laboral de las mujeres y de los jóvenes de la cuenca media y baja a las empresas del sector industrial −agro y automotriz− instaladas en áreas cercanas. En cuanto a la eventual respuesta migratoria, las conclusiones del trabajo plantean que la migración interna es considerada como poco atractiva porque los bajos salarios pagados no permiten realizar proyectos personales fuertes como la construcción de vivienda y la compra de camioneta; estas adquisiciones, que llaman la atención en las localidades de la cuenca media y baja, han sido posibilitadas por la intensa migración internacional de estas partes de la cuenca. El estudio concluye que la migración internacional sigue alentada más por los factores estructurales y la fuerte tradición migratoria regional que por los factores ambientales. En conclusión, el fenómeno climático considerado en el estudio de caso no parece haber influido en la reorganización espacial y sectorial de las actividades de sustento de los habitantes de la cuenca ni en una modificación de su dinámica migratoria la cual sigue siendo más económica que ambiental.
In times of recurring drought, the peasants practicing rainfed agriculture are the first to suffer the consequences, and are forced to look for alternative means of acquiring the grains they have not been able to produce for their own consumption. The scarce rains of 2009-2012 – and the 2011 declaration of natural disaster – invite the following questions: · How did rainfed agriculture peasants perceive and resolve the insufficient production of maize needed to sustain their families and farming animals? · Have migratory patterns been modified by these adverse meteorological circumstances? This hypothesis has been put forward due to the long-standing history of migration prevalent in the region, which could favour future migration, facilitated by the existing migrant networks. This work begins with a review of various types of droughts and their implications. It also examines and discusses the complexity of environmental migration: its dimensions, legal aspects and numerical predictions in light of the increasing frequency of extreme natural phenomena and population growth. The case studies that have been undertaken in various drought contexts have identified, in relation to the decision to migrate, the importance of political, socio-economical, cultural and demographical variables, rather than environmental causes. Therefore, these non-environmental factors, which affect the area of study, are described in detail in this paper. This thesis accounts for a study carried out in 11 small rural areas of the Silao Basin (State of Guanajuato, Mexico), located between 1830 and 2400m above sea level. These sites, despite the diversity in their natural and social characteristics, are connected through the river, forming an articulated territory. Given that this study focuses on a small geographical area, this has allowed for detailed observations and has facilitated an interdisciplinary approach. Therefore, the natural and social sciences, with their respective data and research instruments, have helped identify and analyze the relationship between environmental changes – the low rainfall and its consequences – and the social responses brought forward by the population. Semi-structured interviews and fieldwork have revealed that the environmental changes that force rainfed agriculture peasants to seek other means of survival do not result from climatic changes, but rather are the consequences of anthropic changes to the natural environment. In other words, the relatively low production of corn fields and fruit orchards are a consequence of the progressive impoverishment of the soil caused by a continuous use of chemical fertilizers. Likewise, the alteration of the hydraulic dynamic caused by deforestation and the extraction of sand from the river bed are having a greater impact on the crop than the decreasing rainfall that the peasants consider inevitable. As for the eventual migratory response, this paper comes to the conclusion that internal migration is considered less attractive because the low salaries do not allow for the completion of personal projects, such as building a home or acquiring a van, something that international migration is able to provide, as seen in the middle and lower basins. In addition, this study concludes that this international migration is driven to a greater extent by structural factors and the strong tradition of migration, rather than by environmental factors. In sum, the climatic phenomenon considered by this study does not seem to have affected the spatial and sectorial reorganization of the subsistence activities of the rainfed farming communities, nor did it modify the migratory dynamic that remains more economic than environmental.

En s’appuyant sur la production de l’espace d’Henri Lefebvre (1974) et sur le concept d’expérience, nous avons relié les mondes subjectif et objectif, rendant possible l’exploration des conditions spatiales de possibilités de formation de sujets collectifs. Ainsi, étudier la dimension territoriale des expériences signifie entreprendre la spatialisation des relations de pouvoir existantes entre étudiants et institutions universitaires, dans lesquelles s’entremêlent des rapports de domination et/ou de conflit et/ou d’émancipation.La recherche a été menée sur deux terrains choisis pour leurs caractéristiques qui supposent des expériences radicalement opposées. L'UTCGG est une petite université qui forme des étudiants d’origines indigènes et paysannes, et dont l'objectif est d’impulser le développement économique d'une région rurale économiquement défavorisée. Quant aux étudiants de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l’UNAM, ils suivent des formations en sciences humaines dans l'une des institutions les plus prestigieuses d'Amérique latine. Située dans la mégalopole mexicaine, cette faculté a connu et continue d’être le théâtre et l'épicentre d'un fort activisme étudiant.Nous avons mis au jour deux séries d'expériences territoriales caractérisées par des relations spécifiques entre les origines sociales des étudiants, les contenus idéologiques des formations universitaires, et des apprentissages différenciés de l'espace. Les principaux résultats permettent d'établir que les processus de subjectivation politique sont spatialement lisibles et de commencer à caractériser territorialement la subalternité, l’antagonisme et l’autonomie
Based on both Henri Lefebvre's production of Space (1974) and the concept of experience, we have linked the subjective and objective worlds, making possible the exploration of the spatial conditions of collective subjects’ conformation. So, studying the territorial dimension of experiences means undertaking the spatialization of power relations existing between students and academic institutions, in which relationships of domination and/or conflict and/or emancipation are intermingled.The research was conducted on two places chosen for their characteristics that involve radically different experiences. The UTCGG is a small university that trains students of indigenous and peasant origins, with the aim of boosting the economic development of a rural and economically disadvantaged region. As for the students of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM, they follow courses in human sciences in one of the most prestigious institutions in Latin America. Located in the Mexican megalopolis, this faculty has known and continues to be the theater and the epicenter of a strong student activism.We have discovered two series of territorial experiences characterized by specific relations between the social origins of students, the ideological contents of university courses, and differentiated learning of space. The main results make it possible to establish that the processes of political subjectivation are spatially readable and to begin to characterize territorially the subalternity, the antagonism and the autonomy

Le 4 octobre 2005, l'État du Chiapas (situé dans le sud-est du Mexique) a vécu l'un des plus grands désastres de son histoire. Aux origines de ce dernier se trouvent les conséquences de la dépression tropicale Stan ainsi que de multiples autres facteurs. Le dessein de notre thèse est de s'interroger sur la réalité sociale, politique, économique et environnementale que la presse écrite a bâtie et véhiculée à propos de cette catastrophe dite " naturelle ". Il nous est apparu essentiel d'étudier ce discours médiatique afin d'analyser la gestion du désastre par les différents niveaux de gouvernements mexicains, et la relation qu'ils entretiennent entre eux, sachant qu'a fortiori, c'est de cette représentation dont se nourrit la société civile. Notre démarche est de mettre au jour le système qui régit la relation entre le monde politique, la presse écrite et la société civile car nous considérons qu'il détermine la construction du discours de presse. Les médias sont donc des filtres qui constituent une réalité souvent considérée comme " La " réalité. Cependant, nous verrons qu'ils ne sont que des prismes à travers lesquels émerge un reflet de la sphère sociale et du monde politique ainsi que les interactions qui se créent à l'intérieur même de ce prisme. Nous avons choisi comme objet et instrument d'étude deux journaux de la ville de Mexico (La Jornada et Crónica de Hoy) et deux journaux de la région du Chiapas (El Heraldo de Chiapas et Cuarto Poder). La méthode d'analyse de contenu du discours de presse Morin-Chartier ainsi que notre investigation audiovisuelle sur le terrain nous ont permis à la fois de réaliser une étude quantitative et qualitative

This dissertation focuses in the phenomenon of partner violence in Mexico. It examines the causes of partner violence at multiple levels of analysis. At the micro level it examines characteristics of individual victims, the family and the relationship. At the macro level the focus is on the legal and social structures that define domestic violence and the State's response. Throughout the analysis, the State plays a central role as the set of institutional arrangements that define the rules of the game and that determine the possibilities for change and the potential roles and effectiveness of key players including the feminist movement. Throughout the analysis I examine the confluence of forces that influence the State's attempts to reduce individual women's risk of partner violence through its legislative, judicial and police powers in a historically defined situation characterized by pervasive structural patriarchy. A major objective is to asses the influence of the pervasive patriarchy in the system on individual women's risk of partner violence. The approach adopted in this dissertation is based on the assumption that patriarchy is a social system that permeates social institutions and that becomes internalized and part of the normative everyday reality that structures individual's interpretations and motivations. This research demonstrates that, on average, the structural gender inequality between Mexican men and women is high. This inequality is revealed through qualitative and quantitative analyses that demonstrate empirically the influence of the patriarchal system both on individual experiences of partner violence, and on the State's response. Adopting a feminist post-structuralist approach to the analysis of the State's role, the research reveals inconsistencies between the discourses and practices of the Mexican State regarding partner violence. By analyzing administrative family violence legislation, I determine whether the Mexican State has in fact made substantively meaningful attempts to challenge patriarchy and to end violence against women in the family realm. The family violence legislation has two often inherently contradictory purposes. On the one hand the objective is to protect the family as a core social institution. The second, which is often in conflict with the first objective, is to protect women from abuse by their partners. This dissertation demonstrates that these conflicting objectives and the embededness of patriarchy throughout the social help explain why certain branches of the Mexican State tend to strengthen patriarchy and reify women's subordinate position in the family. The way in which the State interprets and implements family violence legislation reveals the inability and/or unwillingness of the State to protect women's rights and highlights the patriarchal assumptions pervading the State's actions. Finally, this research looks at feminist and women's movements and NGOs to determine whether they have been effective in influencing the State to adopt measures to guarantee women a life free of violence. I looked not only for their influence on the legislative level, but also surveyed the role they continue to play in implementing antiviolence laws.
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abstract: Mexico City has an ongoing air pollution issue that negatively affects its citizens and surroundings with current structural disconnections preventing the city from improving its overall air quality. Thematic methodological analysis reveals current obstacles and barriers, as well as variables contributing to this persistent problem. A historical background reveals current programs and policies implemented to improve Mexico’s City air quality. Mexico City’s current systems, infrastructure, and policies are inadequate and ineffective. There is a lack of appropriate regulation on other modes of transportation, and the current government system fails to identify how the class disparity in the city and lack of adequate education are contributing to this ongoing problem. Education and adequate public awareness can potentially aid the fight against air pollution in the Metropolitan City.
Dissertation/Thesis
Masters Thesis Justice Studies 2018

On New Year's Eve 1993, there was little indication that popular President Carlos Salinas de Gortari was about to take a monumental fall. Mexico was in the midst of unprecedented prosperity. The world's oldest ruling political party, Mexico's PRI, enjoyed substantial support. Allegations of corruption within an authoritarian regime were now frivolous charges obscured by economic success. The nation was poised to become a major player in the global market; vying with Japan to be the second largest trading partner of the U.S.A. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, the largest trading partner of the U.S., Mexico and the United States became effective January 1, 1994. Just after midnight 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) went to war in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. Approximately 2500 peasants (mostly indigenous men of Mayan descent) had mobilized against the Mexican government. The violence sparked world wide interest in the human rights of Mexican Indians. Ten days later, as the EZLN retreated into the jungle, an international audience remained captivated by the struggle. The Mexican Army did not advance. The EZLN refused to lay down its arms. Within the year, the Mexican economy collapsed. Soon thereafter, President Salinas went into voluntary exile amidst charges of high crimes against the state. Was it just a coincidence that the rebellion coincided with the implementation of NAFTA? Did the treaty really present such an enormous threat to Mexico's underclass? Did NAFTA contribute to the nation's political problems? The following thesis answers these questions. It is the product of years of travel and study throughout Chiapas and Mexico, both before and after the rebellion. The intricacies of the relationship between NAFTA, the Mexican government and the EZLN are revealed. The government's position and rebel demands are reconcilable. This is an important conclusion. But Mexico is a poor country embroiled in a rebellion to the south as well as a precarious economic treaty with the world's wealthiest nation to the north. In addition, the EZLN has come to represent the world's beleaguered poor in an era of free trade. As Mexico's past and present are explored, conclusions about the country's future have implications that go beyond NAFTA.
Graduation date: 2000

This dissertation examines the cultural politics of conservation efforts in Mexico City, where in 2000, the city legislated a soil and water conservation plan in its rural areas. During 12-months of field work in the village of San Luis Tlaxialternalco 1 focused on how the conservation plan was to be established in the wetlands with chinampa agriculture, directly above one of the city's fresh water reservoirs. Political ecology research of conservation suggests that ecosystemic processes are intricately linked to economic and social processes on many scales. Post-structuralist analysis has complicated homogeneous and generalizing descriptions of social categories, politics of power, and the causality between socio-economic, political, cultural, and ecological factors. Research in political ecology emphasizes the diversity of actors and their subject positions and seeks to locate and understand the dynamics of power and agency within and outside formal institutions. I examined the negotiations of the conservation plan on three social scales and I looked at the intersecting axes of power and the knowledge of various actors, and how they inform conservation. On the scale of the state, a discursive analysis of the 'coloniality of power' of the conservation plan uncovers the city government's underlying assumptions about how the fanners' land use practices and social organization contribute to the conservation effort. I ask how do those assumptions define and condition chinampa farmers as 'Indian'? I conclude that in the conservation plan, colonially-based discourses constitute rural communities and agriculturalists in ways that subject them to the city's needs and interests, and exclude them from equal livelihood opportunities. In San Luis Tlaxialternalco I examined ideas of 'community' by documenting how the conservation plan affected local power relations. Analyzing the dynamics among chinampero farmers in their meetings, I exarnined the alliances in and the 'voice' of the village. I conclude that 'community' is a fluid and contested entity shaped by class, knowledge, and cultural values in unpredictable constellations. The tjaird scale of analysis concerns women's knowledge and voice, and examines ideas of silence as agency. In semi-structured interviews and participant observation in farmer women's everyday lives in San Luis I explored how they make decisions that affect the environment. The research shows that multiple constraints and opportunities, such as economic responsibilities, class, prestige, and patriarchy shape women's daily lives and direct their decisions to advance goals consistent with their values even when their decisions may undermine the long-term health of the environment they depend on. By looking at the micropolitics of conservation, my research provides cultural understanding of how at different scales decisions that affect ecology are made and how they are articulated through cultural idioms in the charged context of the conservation plan. The dissertation de-mystifies predominant representations of chinampas and chinamperos. It also complicates ideas of 'cornmirnity' and suggests that the analysis has to go beyond class and include values and knowledge. Further, I show that relevant ecological knowledge does not automatically lead to 'appropriate' action, and that silence can be a powerful tool that resists impositions and firrthers individual and community interests. Finally, the thesis suggests that political ecologists need to move away from equating power with action and activism within "progressive movements", and that conservation efforts need to have multiple goals and follow diverse strategies.
Arts, Faculty of
Geography, Department of
Graduate

Grounded in the geographies of Chiapas, Mexico, the dissertation maps a cartography of Zapatista indigenous resistance practices and charts the production of decolonial political subjectivities in an era of neoliberal governance and low intensity conflict. It analyzes the relationship between local cultural political expressions of indigenous autonomy, global capitalist interests and neoliberal rationalities of government after more than decade of Zapatista struggle. Since 1996, Zapatista indigenous Mayan communities have engaged in the creation of alternative education, health, agricultural production, justice, and governing bodies as part of the daily practices of autonomy. The dissertation demonstrates that the practices of Zapatista indigenous autonomy reflect current shifts in neoliberal state governing logics, yet it is in this very terrain where key ruptures and destabilizing practices emerge. The dissertation focuses on the recolonization aspects of neoliberal rationalities of government in their particular Latin American post Cold War, post populist manifestations. I argue that in Mexico's indigenous regions, the shift towards the privatization of state social services, the decentralization of state governing techniques and the transformation of state social programs towards an emphasis on greater self-management occurs in a complex relationship to mechanisms of low intensity conflict. Their multiple articulations effect the reproduction of social and biological life in sites, which are themselves terrains of bio-political contention: racialized women's bodies and feminized domestic reproductive and care taking roles; the relationship between governing bodies and that governed; land reform as linked to governability and democracy; and the production of the indigenous subject in a multicultural era. In each of these arenas, the dissertation charts a decolonial cartography drawn by the following cultural political practices: the construction of genealogies of social memories of struggle, a governing relationship established through mandar obedeciendo, land redistribution through zapatista agrarian reform, pedagogical collective selfreflection in women’s collective work, and the formation of political identities of transformation. Finally, the dissertation discusses the possibilities and challenges for engaging in feminist decolonizing dialogic research, specifically by analyzing how Zapatista members critiqued the politics of fieldwork and adopted the genres of the testimony and the popular education inspired workshop as potential decolonizing methodologies.
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The under-theorisation of the concept of generation within feminism has led to negative and unproductive disputes. In the heated generational exchanges of the 1990s, feminists were cast according to age into opposing sides: old or young, mothers or daughters, second wave or third wave. These categories are limiting and the conflict harmful for feminist politics. In order to avoid these pitfalls, a theoretical framework is developed that draws on the work of Karl Mannheim and post feminist cultural analyses to elucidate the significance of popular culture in marking a generation. This framework then enables an examination of the way feminist discourses are played out in popular culture and helps explain young women’s complex engagement with feminism. This thesis brings together interviews with young Australian women and an analysis of two television programmes that exhibit post feminist characteristics: Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives. It examines the ways in which young women critically engage with these texts and explores popular culture as an arena where feminist discourses are contested. The era is characterised as post feminist because of the entanglement of feminism with popular culture, but it is also marked by the intersection of equality feminism with a neoliberal emphasis on individualism. Within this context, second wave feminist discourses of equality have slipped into the rhetoric of choice, which has important implications for feminist theory. The pervasive sense of choice and opportunity circulated by these discourses obscures the structural limitations that continue to affect women’s lives and demand that women make the “right” choices, build a successful career, find a suitable long-term partner, and become a good mother. This thesis mobilises post feminism as a valuable analytical concept that can be used to characterise the current generation of young women, not simply because they have grown up after the height of second wave feminism, but because the prevailing discourses of this historical moment reflect both continuity with, and a challenge to, earlier feminist debates. The mainstreaming of many feminist ideas and their reflection in popular culture provides the conditions for new forms of feminism to emerge.
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This dissertation proposes to explain how militarization during the turn of the twentieth century affected relations in the transnational West Texas region between Mexicans and Anglos and between the United States and Mexico. The study seeks to demonstrate that militarization complicated these relations and deepened racial and international divisions. Within this discussion, the study will also demonstrate that the "border troubles" of the early twentieth century gave shape to an authority structure that was composed of border institutions that sought to pacify the region with ever-increasing vigilance and punitive measures. The result of such measures was a disciplined society that reinforced racial segregation in towns and cities along the border, specifically El Paso. A case study approach is utilized to highlight specific events, institutions and public figures that contributed to the formation of authority in El Paso. They include the National Guard, the 1916 El Paso race riot, the Texas Rangers, and the Border Patrol. The affects of developing authority and their institutions on race relations along the U.S.-Mexican divide are addressed. Historians have discussed various aspects of the history of immigration, race, and labor in the border region. However, they have given little attention to militarization and the emergence of authority in the integration of Mexicans and Mexican Americans into American society in the border region. Militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border between 1890 and 1924 contributed to the definition of racial and ethnic relations. This study examines the history of the West Texas region while focusing on the changing relationship between the Mexican-origin community and larger society. The general intent is to demonstrate that the militarization of the region complicated relations at the same time that it established institutions that defined the new political structure in the border region. The dissertation also studies how the history of Mexican Americans was tied to the special relations between the communities along the border. This transnational relationship serves as a vantage point from which to study national and regional histories and an emphasis on race allows this study to explain the extent to which militarization affected social relations in the border region.