Doctorat en sciences sociales, politiques et économiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Why was the United States caught completely unprepared for the Central American refugee crisis during the summer of 2014? Although thousands of unaccompanied children from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador streamed across the southwest U.S. border in unprecedented numbers, the systemic problems plaguing the region stem back decades, and recent data clearly shows a trend of increasing yearly migration flows to the United States from these countries. Even in the face of the crisis, the U.S. government’s response was targeted more towards mitigating the symptoms of the crisis while insufficiently addressing its underlying causes. This is largely due to U.S. domestic policy, which undermines and conflicts with sound foreign policy. By focusing attention and resources on domestically popular foreign aid programs—primarily security initiatives and drug interdiction—rather than on programs to address the underlying, systemic causes of the crisis, like rampant corruption, lack of rule of law, and extreme poverty, U.S. policy-makers worked against their own best interests. As a result, the number of migrants crossing the U.S. southwestern border is once again rising rapidly. U.S. domestic and foreign policy must be reconciled to ensure that now and in the future, the root causes of migration crises are dealt with once and for all.

Despite a large influx of Guatemalans to cities such as Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., their narrative has largely been subsumed in the traditional Latino/a immigrant narrative. The importance of the historical specificity and traumatic nature of Guatemalan immigration, as a consequence of the Central American revolutions, has only now begun to be studied by scholars such as Arturo Arias and Claudia Milian, though the field of Latino/a studies is still largely focused on immigrants from Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Thus, through an examination of two novels by Guatemalan-American authors, Héctor Tobar’s The Tattooed Soldier (1998/2000) and Tanya Maria Barrientos’ Family Resemblance (2003), I compare how each novel differently positions Guatemalan diasporic identity around traumas surrounding the Guatemalan civil war and diaspora. Ultimately, I argue that Tobar establishes Guatemalan diasporic fiction as a kind of refugee literature, while Barrientos attempts to fit the Guatemalan diasporic narrative into a traditional Latino/a immigrant narrative using the genre of chica lit, thus flattening out the unique historical experience of the Guatemalan civil war while also highlighting the constraints of the chica lit genre for Central American-American women writers. / text

Traditionally, the analysis of ceramics has played a major role in archaeological research the world over, and this is particularly true in the Maya area where until recently ceramic studies have been used for the sole purpose of chronological ordering. This dissertation discusses the historic development of ceramic research in Maya archaeology, as well as documenting the present role of ceramic analyses, as preface to the analysis of the ceramics from Cuello, a small site in northern Belize. Excavations at the site indicate that the area under study, Platform 34, was occupied from the Early Formative at about 2,000 b.c. until the Late Formative at about a.d. 250, when Platform 34 was apparently largely abandoned, although other areas of the site continue to be occupied. The analysis of the ceramics from Cuello proceeds utilizing the traditional type: variety classification system to order the ceramics chronologically. The Cuello typology, in accordance with the major period of occupation of Platform 34, spans a period of time beginning in the Early Formative with the Swasey Complex, and ending in the Late Formative with the Cocos Complex. While some typological comparisons of ceramics among sites in the Maya Lowlands are made to place Cuello securely within a chronological framework, the main thrust of the analysis is to understand intra-site ceramic variability. Unlike earlier maya ceramic analyses, the present one continues with a vessel form classification, since forms are considered sensitive indicators of functional variability within the site. It is shown, through this analysis, that ceramic analyses are useful for more than chronological ordering,and when ceramic variability is examined within the archaeological contexts in which the ceramics are found, has the potential of informing on functional and social patterns on an intra-site level.

This dissertation examines the processes by which Central American women and men face unprecedented forms of violence and exploitation as they migrate through Mexico. Central Americans are regularly subject to abuse, extortion, rape, kidnapping, dismemberment and death as multiple actors profit off of their bodies, labor and lives. In turn, the political economy of violence and security along the migrant journey permeates into local Mexican communities, creating new tensions and social ruptures. Going beyond a simple accounting of abuse, I engage ethnography as a lens through which to understand the social effects of historical and contemporary processes of war, displacement, economic restructuring and social dislocation as people move through local spaces. Throughout the journey, the logics of migration and violence rework social relations based on race, gender and nationality where migrants are both victims of and agents within the often de-humanizing processes of human mobility. I use a lens of gender in particular to understand the ways larger processes impact the intimate spaces of people's lives and the intimate labors they perform as parents, migrants, partners, laborers and activists. I also examine the ways violence is not simply destructive, but also generates new possibilities for solidarity and political action through social movements around humanitarianism and migrant rights. In particular, I examine the emergence of a movement of Catholic-based migrant shelters and a transnational feminist movement of mothers and families of disappeared migrants.

This thesis is dedicated to the issues of deciding about the place of construction of Central American canal, how it was mentioned in speeches of American politics and presidents. The main part is dedicated to these speeches in American Senate and theannual reports of American presidents with taking historic affairs into account. Since the canal was an important issue of international politics, in another part of this thesis we also mention French participation in Panama region. Success was strongly assumed for Nicaragua Route as well, this topic is the focus of a separate charter, too.

This thesis is dedicated to the case about deciding about places for Central American canal, how it was mentioned in speeches of american politics, historics and presidents. Main part is dedicated to these speeches in american second chamber and first annutal messages with taking into account historic affairs. Canal was a great problem of international politicy, so in another part of this thesis I mention a french participation in Panama region. There was a great reqirement for a success thought about Nicaragua path. This problem is mention in one special chapter.

In Latin America, the debate on what constitutes a 'good' or 'bad' job has been dominated by the phenomenon of informality. Indicators like the 'informal sector size' or the proportion of workers in 'informal employment' give little attention to the intrinsic features of jobs that affect workers' well-being, thus misleading policy efforts. Validation of alternative and comparable human-centred measures of job quality (JQ) is needed. This study aims to evaluate the validity of a multi-dimensional measure of JQ in developing countries, and its usefulness against narrow indicators of formality/informality. To this end, Sen's capability-approach is used along with Green and Mostafa's operationalisation of JQ (Eurofound, 2012), which considers dimensions as varied as earnings, career prospects, autonomy, intensity, social environment, physical environment, and working time. With Central America as the research setting, I address four questions: (1) does Eurofound's indicator capture JQ inequalities at the individual level? (2) Can we draw meaningful comparisons between countries about their ability to provide good jobs? (3) Are the selected features of what constitutes a good job positively associated with Central American workers' well-being? (4) Is the concept of JQ attuned with what local experts conceive as a 'good job'? The research uses a mixed-methods approach to analyse the First Central American Survey on Working Conditions and Health - conducted in 2011 in Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala - in addition to semi-structured interviews with selected informants from these six countries. The results obtained show, firstly, a reasonable distribution of JQ across groups of workers. They confirm that formal jobs are not ubiquitously the best quality jobs. Secondly, the results evidenced significant variation at the country level regarding earnings and intrinsic job quality, with Costa Rica often ranking at the top. Interestingly, JQ rankings do not always follow from countries' industrial structure, economic performance, informal sector size, or other developmental indicators of common usage; country differences in JQ appear associated with the practical enforcement capacity of labour institutions like trade unions, inspection systems, and the state itself. Thirdly, I corroborated that the selected job features have a positive impact on Central American workers' well-being (except, puzzlingly, for work-time related aspects). Moreover, the positive health effect associated with performing in an intrinsically good job proved to be greater than the effect of working formally. Lastly, I confirmed that local perspectives about what constitutes a 'good job' are in great part consistent with the features included in Green and Mostafa's JQ scheme, while other intrinsic dimensions of the framework have struggled to enter the public discourse. These findings indicate that a JQ framework is generally valid in the Central American context, and provides more information than a conventional indicator of informality. The study contributes to extend the capability approach to the realm of work and to stress its potential for international comparative research. It is recommended that countries collect richer data about those aspects of jobs that have been proven to affect workers' well-being significantly and are not revealed in unidimensional informality figures.

Ecotourism has been promoted globally as a model for sustainable development because it simultaneously benefits the environment and the residents of the given destination. However, many conservationists have questioned the long term sustainability of ecotourism as it is difficult to mitigate the impact of even low levels of tourism on a particular ecosystem. Further, social scientists including anthropologists have similarly questioned whether most residents of a particular destination actually benefit significantly from the alternative tourism economy. The Globalization Research Center in cooperation with the Monteverde Institue in the Monte Verde Zone, Costa Rica, is undertaking a longitudinal study -- dubbed the Triangulation Study -- to understand the effects that development through ecotourism has on human and natural systems. In order to collect preliminary data, the Globalization Research Center funded the Development Survey which was designed to collect demographic data from a representative stratified random sample of household from nine communities in the Monte Verde Zone. Basic descriptive information was also collected for all of the businesses in the area that would agree to participate. The data collected showed that there is a significant difference in the extent that the nine communities in the Monte Verde Zone are involved in and perhaps benefiting from ecotourism despite the fact that their opinions about ecotourism are mostly positive. The communities located on the main road to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve have demographic statistics that are significantly different from communities that are off the main road, and all communities are significantly different from the Monteverde community. Further, the ecotouristic businesses are located in these road proximate communities. Like the ecotourism literature predicted, the majority of the businesses are small and locally owned. Further study that carefully looks at the differences between those communities closest to the road and those furthest away is recommended. Perhaps a repetition of the Development Survey after a period of time would help elucidate changes in the Zone.

The first section of this work examines melt inclusions in phenocrysts from Volcán Popocatépetl and Volcán de Colima within the Trans Mexican Volcanic Belt (TMVB). These inclusions are dacitic to rhyolitic. Trends in melt inclusion major element and water concentrations form the evolved extension of other Mexican volcanics including those presumably derived directly from primitive melts. Water concentrations in Popocatépetl and Colima melt inclusions are similar (0.3 to 3.4 weight percent Hsub2O). Melt-vapor equilibration pressures calculated from dissolved Hsub2O and COsub2 (Popocatépetl) or Hsub2O (Colima) in melt inclusions correspond to depths of entrapment of 12 km or less. Water and carbon dioxide concentrations correlate negatively with SiOsub2 and potassium. Normalized olivine-augite-quartz compositions are consistent with near cotectic crystallization under vapor-saturated conditions at pressures of 1.5 kb or less. Our results show that Popocatépetl and Colima magmas have undergone vapor-saturated crystallization during ascent in conjunction with varying degrees of mixing between degassed rhyo-dacitic and less degassed, mafic melts in the upper portions of the crust. These data suggest melt evolution occurred in conduits or inter-fingered dikes rather than a large stratified magma chamber. Part II looks at the Masaya caldera in Nicaragua. This volcano has erupted frequently in recorded history, producing lava lakes and very high gas emissions. Melt inclusions from Masaya are basaltic, with low Hsub2O (below 0.5 wt. %), low S (less than 300 ppm) and high COsub2 concentrations (up to approximately 6000 ppm). Relationships between water, sulfur, Cl and F in combination with Masaya's high COsub2 and Ba/Zr and Ba/Nb ratios suggest that Masaya has undergone a multi stage degassing process involving 1) shallow degassing, 2) recycling of magma into a deeper reservoir, and 3) fluxing of previously degassed magma with a nearly pure COsub2 vapor. Trace element signatures of melt inclusions are consistent with contributions that have been variably metasomatized by fluids generated by dehydration of subducted sediments and/or altered oceanic crust.