Dans cette thèse, nous allons étudier le secteur informel du Nicaragua qui constitue une source importante de revenus et d'emploi pour une grande partie de la population. Plus de 50% des emplois sont créés par ce secteur, mais dans des conditions très précaires. Ce dernier, qui se caractérise par son hétérogénéité est composé d'une diversité d'établissements qui connaissent différents niveaux de productivité. Les activités qui s'y réalisent prennent la forme d'auto-emploi ou de petits établissements de type familial et se regroupent dans la catégorie d'établissements connue sous le nom de « microentreprise » et dans la catégorie « petites entreprises à faible productivité » qui, dans le cas du Nicaragua font aussi partie du secteur informel. L'objectif de cette étude est de procéder à une caractérisation des établissements informels et de favoriser ainsi une meilleure compréhension de la réalité du secteur. Ce travail devrait nous aider à identifier les thèmes qui semblent importants à explorer dans le cadre des politiques d'aide aux établissements informels. Pour y arriver, nous avons articulé aussi bien des éléments théoriques que pratiques. En effet, nous avons réalisé une série d'entrevues individuelles semi-dirigées auprès de cinq groupes d'acteurs : (i) microentreprises et petites entreprises; (ii) fonctionnaires; (iii) représentants des associations qui regroupent des petites et grandes entreprises; (iv) des représentants des organisations de coopération internationale et; (v) les représentants du secteur de la microfinance. Notre recherche s'inspire de l'approche méthodologique du Programme régional de l'emploi pour l'Amérique latine et les Caraïbes (PREALC) qui à l'aide de certains critères est parvenu à identifier trois groupes d'établissements dans la catégorie de la microentreprise informelle : (i) de subsistance; (ii) d'accumulation simple et; (iii) d'accumulation accrue. Ensuite, nous avons procédé à leur caractérisation. Notons toutefois que les petites entreprises informelles ainsi que les établissements gérés par des jeunes professionnels ont été incorporés également dans notre démarche. La décision d'incorporer les établissements gérés par des jeunes professionnels se justifie par le fait qu'au Nicaragua le secteur informel devient un passage obligatoire vers la formalité pour un bon nombre de professionnels qui veulent démarrer une entreprise à leur compte pour créer ainsi une source de revenus. Nous avons ainsi eu recours à huit indicateurs, identifiés à partir de notre recension des écrits et de l'enquête de terrain (le niveau de productivité, la taille de l'établissement et le type de travailleurs; le niveau de pauvreté, la gestion comptable, le niveau d'informalité, le niveau de scolarité, les raisons menant à l'informalité, la motivation ou vision entrepreneuriale et la capacité associative). Le recours à ces huit indicateurs a favorisé une meilleure caractérisation de chacun de groupes d'établissements qui composent le secteur informel. L'enquête de terrain nous a également permis de faire ressortir les principaux défis à relever par les programmes d'aide aux petits établissements, dont l'impact s'est révélé jusqu'à présent, peu significatif. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Secteur informel, microentreprise, petite entreprise, hétérogénéité, pauvreté, développement, politiques d'aide, microcrédit, microfinancières, formalisation, informalité, formation, coopératives.

This thesis investigates an adult education program led by Casa de la Mujer, a women’s organization in San Juan del Sur in the south of Nicaragua. At this centre, women acquire vocational skills and engage in workshops about women’s rights, domestic violence awareness and sexual and reproductive health. Several gender and development scholars suggest that empowerment can be achieved through women’s informal education programs that aim to facilitate critical learning for consciousness-raising and self-awareness. This was the topic of my field research at this centre. I conducted semi-structured interviews and participant observation to gain an understanding of how those in the program feel that their participation has impacted their gendered power social relations and livelihood opportunities. My research indicates that despite facing various barriers, through the skills development and gender training programs participants of Casa de la Mujer are able to act as agents to make strategic life decisions.

Designing a culturally appropriate space begins by recognizing that culture affects us from the moment we are born. It plays a role in how a child grows up, how a person communicates, how a person perceives time, the beliefs and values of a family, as well as the way space is inhabited. These cultural characteristics inform how designers design space. However, what happens when the designer is not from the client’s culture? Knowledge about another culture is often gained by interior designers through client interviews, internet searches, and the occasional book. It is important to add community visits to this list. Cultural understanding is enriched when a person is able to experience the culture through smells, sights, sounds, touch, and taste. These sensory experiences explain answers to questions we, as interior designers, never even knew we had. This project responds to the gap that exists between the designer and the clients’ community. Through an exploration of the Nicaraguan culture and cross-cultural theory this project proposes a design for an art therapy centre that addresses Nicaragua’s culturally-specific needs. By examining trauma and its effects on children, the design can be child-specific while being sensitive to trauma-related symptoms. This will be done through the exploration of areas of knowledge related to sensorimotor theory, art therapy, and mind, body, space theory.

This dissertation aims to expand our understanding of how lifestyle migrants from the Global North impact the urban space of a Global South city, particularly the built environment. In order to situate the questions posed in this dissertation, I focus on how lifestyle migrants from the Global North and their foreign capital transform the city of Granada, Nicaragua through processes of gentrification, and how the social and economic climate of the city and its residents are impacted. This research allows for empirically informed theoretical critiques to be made about the economic and social implications of the globalization of gentrification resulting from heterogeneous lifestyle migration. The property markets in many Global North locations, most notably the US, have pushed lifestyle migrants to look abroad; gentrification has gone international, spreading to the Global South. For reasons such as affordability and proximity to the US and Canada, many Global North property-buyers are looking to the colonial historic city center of Granada, Nicaragua as a site for relocation and investment. These migrants are purchasing and remodeling colonial-style homes as part of a broader transformation of the historic center to cater to international tourism and elite consumption. Many lifestyle migrants involved in the gentrification processes occurring in Granada are choosing transnational lifestyles by maintaining citizenship in their home countries, and simultaneously engaging in economic and social relationships in both Nicaragua and their home (or other) countries. The advantages that accompany their positions as migrants from the Global North greatly affect the lifestyle migrants’ roles in the transformation of the city, regardless of their own personal social and economic status at home. Many lifestyle migrants embrace a role of economic and social developers, and often enact a racist and neocolonialist understanding of the Nicaraguan people and culture as needing “improvement”. Lifestyle migrants are generally able to benefit from capital accumulated in Global North markets and their Global North citizen status enables them to live a mobile, transnational lifestyle. Such economic and mobility opportunities are unavailable for many Nicaraguans, further exacerbating the inequalities between local Nicaraguan residents and privileged lifestyle migrants.

Designing a culturally appropriate space begins by recognizing that culture affects us from the moment we are born. It plays a role in how a child grows up, how a person communicates, how a person perceives time, the beliefs and values of a family, as well as the way space is inhabited. These cultural characteristics inform how designers design space. However, what happens when the designer is not from the client’s culture? Knowledge about another culture is often gained by interior designers through client interviews, internet searches, and the occasional book. It is important to add community visits to this list. Cultural understanding is enriched when a person is able to experience the culture through smells, sights, sounds, touch, and taste. These sensory experiences explain answers to questions we, as interior designers, never even knew we had. This project responds to the gap that exists between the designer and the clients’ community. Through an exploration of the Nicaraguan culture and cross-cultural theory this project proposes a design for an art therapy centre that addresses Nicaragua’s culturally-specific needs. By examining trauma and its effects on children, the design can be child-specific while being sensitive to trauma-related symptoms. This will be done through the exploration of areas of knowledge related to sensorimotor theory, art therapy, and mind, body, space theory.

Communities in the vicinity of the Mico River, located in Chontales, Nicaragua, suffer from periodic dry season water shortages. The Mico River is impacted by artisanal and industrial mining, cattle ranching, effluent from local dairies and tanneries, and poor waste management practices in the watershed. Available water quality data consists of short term assessment studies and monitoring data for a mine operating in the headwaters, but to date this information has not been collated and interpreted as a whole. Communities in the vicinity of the Mico River have expressed an interest in having this data reviewed to verify information they have received from government and industry with regards to impacts from the La Libertad Mine. A gap analysis of existing water quality data in the headwaters of the Mico River is presented, with interpretation of current data and identification of further data needs. Recommendations are provided for future water quality monitoring in the region. The study area was defined as the Mico River watershed upstream of the town of Santo Tomas. A total of 14 studies were identified with information about the Mico River in this area. Individual study reliability was assessed, and study data were compiled to assess conditions in comparison to water quality guidelines and any spatial or temporal trends. Both water chemistry and bioassessment studies were assessed. The major gaps in existing information are: insufficient baseline/ reference information, insufficient information on impacts from contaminants other than metals, insufficient coverage of streams not directly impacted by the La Libertad Mine, poor quality and reliability of data, and poor coordination/ continuity between studies done to date. Cyanide concentrations were found to be below drinking water criteria at the majority of sample locations. Metals concentrations were elevated throughout the study area but it cannot be determined if this is due to natural background levels or anthropogenic sources. Water quality conditions with regards to other parameters (e.g., dissolved oxygen, temperature, pesticides and bacteria) and bioassessment data cannot be assessed due insufficient data quality and quantity. Existing monitoring in the region should be expanded to include reference locations. It is recommended that a benthic invertebrate bioassessment program designed for tropical mountain streams be implemented to supplement existing monitoring and identify areas where stream function is impaired, as bioassessment is cheaper and requires less equipment and logistical coordination than water chemistry monitoring programs. Whatever future work is done, care must be taken that study design and implementation is of a higher quality than that done to date, so that results are comparable and reliable. Coordination and cooperation between bodies involved in monitoring is essential for efficient use of scarce resources. / Graduate

In October of 1998 the category 5 storm, Hurricane Mitch, struck Nicaragua, leaving in its wake mass destruction and devastation. Numerous aid agencies and social organisations poured funds into the country to assist in emergency disaster relief efforts, and to rebuild the lives of those who lost their homes and livelihoods (damnificados). El Mirador in the city of Matagalpa is one example of the many communities built with aid monies after Hurricane Mitch. This thesis uses qualitative data constructed from in-depth interviews with participants (community members in El Mirador) to understand the level of successful community development that has been achieved, the ability for longer term sustainability as a result of community development strategies, and the areas in which community development has failed. Through an examination of the relationship the community has with the NGO the Communal Movement, the question of long term sustainability becomes important. The most telling indicator (that development practice is unsustainable) is the unproductive coping mechanisms of community members as aid and social organisations withdraw leaving members with ineffective social networks and at times uncooperative behaviour. Added into this is the arrival of new members into the community, and squatters, who have only added to the feelings of segregation already apparent, as a 'them and us' mentality develops. This study provides a detailed case specific analysis of community development through disaster relief efforts. It highlights some of the consistent, broad inefficiencies as well as more location and situation specific difficulties of community development. Moreover, it adds to the growing body of literature researching how disaster relief can become more effective and sustainable in the longer term.

There is a clear relationship between motherhood and space in the sense that motherhood is constituted spatially, taking specific and shifting forms in different spaces and because gendered geographies are made, remade or contested in terms of how women practise motherhood and other social identities in particular spaces. The meanings of motherhood are subject to constant renegotiation when gender identity is lived and constructed in times of hardship, political change or upheaval. Over the last few decades, Nicaragua has experienced dictatorship, insurrection, revolution, Contra war, more than a decade of neoliberal structural adjustment policies and a number of disasters including Hurricane Mitch which hit Nicaragua in October 1998. The social and cultural context in which women mother is a complex one. Family life is unstable and fluid and Nicaragua has large numbers of single mothers. However, a number of institutional actors have attempted to undermine this complexity by trying to fix the meanings of motherhood, family, femininity, masculinity and sexuality in simplified and reified ways. These attempts contribute to the pervasiveness of dominant discourses of motherhood. In many ways, everyday practices of motherhood are at odds with dominant discourses and the goal of this thesis is to broaden understandings of the way motherhood intersects with other cultural processes in particular spaces and of how women negotiate competing facets of multiple identities. Based on qualitative research conducted in Matagalpa with a group of single mothers, this thesis explores a number of arenas in which women negotiate motherhood, including family breakdown, revolution and counterrevolution, structural adjustment and disaster, and demonstrates how everyday practices challenge dominant understandings. Given that individuals participate in a number of discursive practices simultaneously, the intersection of dominant discourses and everyday practices work to create specific geographies of mothering. This means for example that women might adopt more masculine subject positions in relation to work and family while engaging in maternal politics in the political sphere or that male violence towards women can be condemned and single motherhood adopted as a positive form of identity assertion while uneasiness is expressed about the absence of fathers in children’s lives. By contextualising the conditions in which women mother and focusing on how individual women feel about and reflect upon their lives, this study illustrates the multiple dimensions of motherhood which exist within Nicaraguan culture and the contradictions faced by women who mother in sites of intense cultural struggle. This study has important implications for the epistemological transformation that is taking place within feminist geography in particular and within human geography more broadly. Motherhood has the discursive power to shape and define gender identities, but it can also be used to unsettle or destabilise gender and sexuality in material and discursive space.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Uppsala : Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, 2004. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Uppsala : Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, 2004. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.