Thesis (Ph. D.)--Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, 1994. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [419]-434).

Clean water and adequate sanitation are crucial for community development and a reduction of waterborne diseases. Despite this certainty, a viable process for achieving this goal has yet to be formulated. This public health and development problem is not from a lack of hydraulic or biomedical knowledge. Rather, the failure to provide community services and infrastructure is rooted in the dynamic interplay between a hyper formalized public sector bureaucracy and the informal practices of political parties and patron-client relationships. Using qualitative, semi-structured interviews and participant observation, this study undertakes a narrative analysis of three communities and their interactions with political parties and the public sector in Tijuana, Mexico. Bureaucratic incapacity prevents the effective management of water and sanitation planning, programs, and infrastructure development. A sociological analysis of organizations is applied to the policy subsystem involving the persistent prevalence of waterborne diseases. Faced with an unresponsive and inefficient public sector, community groups direct their local development efforts towards political parties and the strategic use of clientelist relationships in order to procure health care services and community infrastructure. The role of community participation, as a means toward local empowerment and political co-option is examined. This study also highlights the need for further research in the areas of public accountability, public vs. private water management, and the role of participation in community development. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Contemporary population displacement trends are impacting cities located in developing countries in unprecedented ways. This scenario is reflected in the Mexican border town of Tijuana, which from May 2016 to January of 2017, experienced the massive arrival of Haitians seeking asylum in the United States. My thesis addresses the Haitians’ patterns of displacement and the actors involved in their migratory processes including governmental and non-governmental authorities in Mexico and the United States. Because of the complexity of displacement today, I argue that in order to comprehend patterns and responses to displacement, it is necessary to use a multi-scalar global perspective that addresses the relationship between time and space as well as the relationship between politics and power. Furthermore, I argue that the Haitians' arrival to the U.S.-Mexico border is an illustration of crisis migration, which views displacement as the result of a combination of social, political, economic, and environmental crises.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 293-314).

The challenge of both the public and private sector to provide infrastructure to meet the demand of current and future housing has emerged as a central issue in discussions urbanization in the developing world. Informal settlements, rapidly developing on the outer peripheries of urban areas are straining cities abilities to provide the infrastructure resources necessary for their survival. This thesis is based on a case study of an informal settlement in Tijuana, Mexico named Las Lomas del Valle. This thesis explores the conditions of infrastructure within the colonia, focusing on the condition of the current road network and its interrelationship with the residents of Las Lomas. It explores the current needs of the residents and how their dependency on the road network and its conditions is essential to their well being. / text

Cities in the global South are confronting unprecedented challenges to urban sustainability and equitable development, particularly in the realm of water provision. Nearly 1.5 billion people worldwide suffer from a lack of safe access to drinking water and sanitation -an increasing proportion of whom reside in cities. Meanwhile, in the gaps of the grid, a diversity of water harvesting and reuse techniques, infrastructures, and institutional arrangements has emerged to provision poor households. Despite the burgeoning presence of the informal water sector, little is known about its institutional character, environmental impact, or relationship with state provision and private supply. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data collected during nearly 13 months of fieldwork in Tijuana, Mexico, this dissertation queries how informal water use is managed, whether informal water use constitutes an alternative economy and sustainable environmental practice, and to what degree informal water use redefines urban space and alternative development possibilities. Findings reveal that: 1) despite historical efforts in Mexico to federalize and centralize the control of water resources, state action opens 'gaps' in the hydrosocial cycle, and informal institutions manage these 'extralegal' spaces; 2) informal water use is widespread across socioeconomic levels in Tijuana, predominantly managed by household-based institutions, and conserves a surprising degree of municipal water; and 3) the spatiality of contemporary water infrastructures and economies is highly diverse-ranging from bottled water markets to non-capitalist, self-provisioning greywater reuse-and is in fact constitutive of 'splintered urbanism' and alternative modes of development.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--United States International University, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 124-143).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2010. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed March 30, 2010). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 384-401).

This dissertation analyzes the possibilities and limits of art to perform upon borders in the Americas, and to open space for individuals to encounter, experience, and imagine them otherwise. I share the story here of my journeys with two touring transnational art groups working at and across borders: The Frontera Project and Maré from the Inside. The Frontera Project is a community-engaged bi-national performance of varied stories about the U.S.-Mexico border, that aims to complicate simplistic narratives of that border and build connection across difference. Maré from the Inside is an evolving multimedia exhibition addressing the Maré favela complex in Rio de Janeiro that grew out of a collaboration between 'outside' researchers and artists living in that neighborhood. I ask: how are artist/scholars experiencing and imagining borders? How does art perform and (re)shape social, cultural, and political borders? To this end, I place border/lands studies, performance studies, and feminist international relations in dialogue and draw on my ethnographic fieldwork across different sites in the United States, Mexico, and Brazil to examine the ways that politically engaged artists seek to navigate and shape multi-scalar borders. Overall, I argue that Maré and Frontera valorize artistic expression as a form of thought and open space for alternate border imaginaries that challenge existing social frames. They do this through varied performance strategies and processes of collective artmaking that involve careful consideration of the content of their work (whose stories to tell, what the stories contain, what images to use), in tandem with embodied performances that facilitate encounters at and across difference. I utilize collaborative, arts-based methods, drawing on the artists' insights, and further reflect on the possibilities of these methods to challenge prevailing approaches in international relations. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation considers how art can shift the way people imagine the world around them. More specifically, I look at how art acts upon, or shapes, how people imagine borders of different kinds. This includes international boundaries, neighborhood divisions, and the contours of identity in North and South America. I investigate how two art groups have sought to create opportunities to re-think, experience, and imagine borders in new ways. The Frontera Project is a community-engaged bi-national performance of varied stories concerning the U.S.-Mexico border that offers daily-life narratives of that boundary and builds connection across difference. Maré from the Inside is an evolving multimedia exhibition addressing the Maré favela complex in Rio de Janeiro that grew out of a collaboration between 'outside' researchers and artists living in that neighborhood. In this dissertation I ask: how are these artist/scholars experiencing and imagining borders? How does art perform and (re)shape social, cultural, and political borders? Placing border/lands studies, performance studies, and feminist international relations in dialogue and drawing on visits to different sites in the United States, Mexico, and Brazil, I argue that Maré and Frontera valorize artistic expression as a form of thought and open space for alternate border imaginaries that challenge existing social frames. They do this through careful considerations of the content of their work (what the stories contain, whose stories to tell, what images to use), in tandem with embodied performances that facilitate encounters at and across difference.

Cette thèse traite de la question des enfants des rues au Mexique, de son histoire, de sa construction en enjeu social et de l’expérience des jeunes aux marges des villes de Mexico et de Tijuana. Symbole de « l'enfance délaissée » dans les pays en voie de développement, cette catégorie sociale a été l'une des « priorités officielles » du premier gouvernement élu démocratiquement à la tête du pays en 2000. La thèse montre comment se configure le monde des enfants des rues en analysant les acteurs de l’intervention sociale auprès des jeunes mais également la façon dont se déploient les existences de ces jeunesses urbaines marginales dans un pays traversé par d’importantes reconfigurations politiques et sociétales. Par une approche sociohistorique de 1880 à nos jours, cette thèse se penche en premier lieu sur l'émergence de cette catégorie dans l’espace public et sa mise en problème qui s'articulent aux transformations sociopolitiques du pays. L’analyse de plusieurs supports iconographiques et documentaires révèle une tension constante entre les figures de la victime et du délinquant qui va de pair avec les angoisses que produit l’important développement urbain du Mexique. L'enquête ethnographique réalisée à Mexico et Tijuana entre 2003 et 2010 montre la pertinence de l'étude à l'échelle de la ville pour comprendre comment s'articulent les politiques, les représentations et les expériences sociales. L'analyse met au jour les spécificités de ces deux villes dans l'appréhension et le traitement du problème, mais également dans les modes d’individuation et les trajectoires biographiques de ces jeunes : si un « effet de frontière » est observé à Tijuana, la dynamique du monde des rues à Mexico se caractérise plutôt par un « effet de capitale ».Finalement, l'analyse par le genre met en évidence les tensions à l'œuvre entre la traduction du langage des droits dans les pratiques quotidiennes des organisations qui travaillent avec cette population et la permanence d'un imaginaire de la famille sexué et hiérarchisé, qui s'articule au récit national. / This thesis deals with the history and construction of the social problem of Mexican street children and with the actual experience of marginalised youth in Mexico City and Tijuana. Symbol of the issue of “abandoned children” in developing countries, this social category has become one of the priorities of the first democratically elected Mexican government in 2000. The thesis examines how the world of “street children” is shaped by analysing the actors of social intervention and the effects of the country’s deep political and societal changes on these marginalised urban youth.Through a socio-historic approach from 1880 to nowadays, this thesis firstly studies the emergence of this category within the public space and its construction as a social problem, embedded in the socio-political transformations of the country. By exploring iconographic and documentary supports, the analysis identifies a constant tension between the figure of ‘victim’ and of ‘delinquent’, a tension which goes hand in hand with the anxiety produced by the tremendous urban development of Mexico.This ethnographic research, carried out in Mexico and Tijuana between 2003 and 2010, demonstrates the relevance of observing at city level in order to understand how the policies, representations and social experiences articulate. The analysis brings to light the specific features of these two cities in their perception and treatment of the problem as well as in the resulting individualisation modes and biographies of these young people. In Tijuana, a “border effect” is observed, whereas the streets dynamics in Mexico City are characterised by a “capital effect”. Finally, the gender analysis demonstrates the tensions between the appropriation of a law terminology in the everyday practices of the organisations working with this population and the traditional image of a sexualised and hierarchic family, embedded in the national narrative.