Graduation date: 1976

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This thesis treats a wide variety of sociological issues within the context of urban Latin America. The selected and utilized urbanization-migration materials converge around a common denominator, popularly known as poverty. The chapters are designed to provide renewed examinations and interpretations of discussions relating to poor urbanites. Opening passages reveal several widely shared empirical generalizations about urbanization. Throughout the thesis, it is essential to keep in mind that urban populations in Latin America are increasing rapidly, that the poor component to urban populations is extremely large and continues to expand, and that the tenement slums, shack slums and progressive squatter settlements are swelling. Because it contributes heavily to the growth of urban populations in general and urban poverty segments in particular, the process of internal migration holds an important position for topical analyses in this study. Crucial points to grasp are the not-so-rural origins of migrants, the typical step-wise pattern of city-ward movement, the reliance on a mixture of former and newly acquired experiences and interactions for suitable urban existence, the variable motives for migration, and the heterogeneous residence patterns of recent and established migrants. Theoretical and conceptual examinations portray and contrast two sides of a debate over poverty perspectives. A look at the "psycho-cultural" perspective, as clearly applied in Oscar Lewis' "culture of poverty" model, reveals the need to critically question value-laden claims such as poverty-culture inferiority and distinctiveness, psychosocial breakdown, personal unworthiness and resistance to change which are supposedly preventing the elimination of poverty. The "situational-structural" perspective represents an attempt to understand many poor urbanites' attitudes, actions and reactions in terms of adaptive responses to constraining situations imposed on them by total social and economic structures. The effective elimination of poverty relies on an extensive modification of structural flaws and an immediate introduction of socio-economic improvements to the deserving poor. Empirical re-analyses of posited "culture of poverty" traits and of recent and established migrant political destabi1ization cast serious doubts on the validity, exclusiveness and explanatory potential of such notorious poverty images. "Situational-structural" considerations of existing data furnish more realistic explanations of specific urban poverty conditions, as well as social, economic and political attitudes and behaviours displayed by poor urbanites. Lastly, a careful investigation of various kinds of public housing schemes which intend to cater to lower-income families discloses an elaborate assortment of unnecessary problems being levied on both poor urbanites and urban society as a whole. When considered objectively, there are remarkably valuable lessons to be learned from the practical and sensible housing approaches being favoured and employed by so many Latin American urban squatters. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

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The 1990s were characterized by severe turbulence in the global economy. Economic and financial crises occurred in Latin America, Middle and Eastern Europe and Asia. This analysis distinguishes between the two socioeconomic criteria "transitional" and "emerging" region. Transitional countries are former centrally planned socialist economies and emerging countries former agricultural-oriented classical developing economies with mostly a history of military or some other kind of autocratic dictatorship. The resources for the analysis are data sets regarding investment, exchange rate behavior, government finance, international liabilities of monetary authorities and inflation. The study reveals macroeconomic patterns associated with economic development in each socioeconomic region. It is shown that similar patterns are responsible for successful and non-successful performance in each region. A comparison of different regions shows many parallels between emerging economies, but only little similarity between transitional economies.

This study attempts to examine the international debt crisis in the 1980s from a primarily political perspective, to permit a greater understanding of the interaction between economics and politics in the course of crisis management The process of dealing with the current international debt crisis provides an pat case for investigation of how economic concerns affect political outcomes, and how political factors influence economic outcomes, and how political factors influence economic policies. This study concentrates on the two regions of Latin America and Eastern Europe where the debt crisis started. The study emphasizes that the international debt crisis started. The study emphasizes that the international debt problem has been increasingly politicized in the contemporary international relations, and that its solution, in addition to the economic aspects, calls for political willingness by all parties concerned.

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