Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this article we seek to contribute to a greater understanding of citizenship by exploring the gendered experiences of Latin American-origin immigrants in the Phoenix metro area. Making use of the literature from sociology, political science, economics, anthropology and ethnic and gender studies, we examine how immigrants maneuver through the legalization process, and how their place vis a vis the law affords or denies them membership and rights. Although men and women share common experiences in the legalization process, their lived experiences and the legalization process often are vastly different. We explore some of these gender differences by relying on in-depth interviews with women and men from Mexico and Central America in Phoenix, conducted from 1998 through 2004. The data reveal that immigration policies reflect norms based on ideals of a nuclear family in which geographic origins, race, religion, gender and sexuality matter and continue to deny women full participation and inclusion in US society. Although immigration generates change for immigrant women, often this transformation remains embedded in a patriarchal order. As such, women for the most part, remain dependent on men through judicial, economic and cultural standards created by men that dictate the process to citizenship. This study suggests that, though in principle the law is gender neutral, gender emerges as a central organizing principle in the relationship immigrants have with immigration law from the very act of crossing the border (physical and legal) through the naturalization process.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The development of the Zapatista movement since the emergence of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in 1994 has occurred in highly complex circumstances. While the movement has enjoyed popular support, the political context has always been closed to their demands. Nevertheless, the Zapatistas have been able to maintain a constant level of protest activity over time within and outside their region of influence. This study investigates the local factors that have allowed the Zapatistas to maintain the level of protest activity by looking at the three main theoretical streams in the study of social movements, namely the structure of political opportunities, the availability of mobilizing networks, and the type of demands’ framing. I analyze the mobilizing capacity of the EZLN over an eight-year period (1994-2001). Using event history models, I analyze the ebb and flow of Zapatista initiated events across the 111 localities (municipios) of Chiapas. To complete these analyses, I coded protest events from national and local newspapers and collected data on socioeconomic and electoral information to create a comprehensive dataset on the Zapatista movement. The results of this study show that Zapatista protest events are more likely to occur in municipios ruled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional), with low electoral fractionalization; where the Zapatistas could build upon pre-existing mobilizing organizations; where counter Zapatista organizations are also active; and where protests have been framed using political claims.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This study focuses on the differences and similarities between the “classic” statement of American strategic thought in NSC-68 and the recent National Security Strategy as articulated by the Bush administration. It asks the question did each statement of strategy adequately provide a guide for American policymakers. Using a qualitative and historically driven framework for analysis, this study looks at the impact of both documents in light of the role of grand strategy for a nation. Additionally the Bush security strategy is examined for its ability to be a new “classic” of strategic vision. Is the new approach to security able to cope and adapt to future situations or is the policy flaw

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Climate change is often figured in academic and popular discourse alike as a "global" challenge, a threat "beyond borders". Our paper will contend that the social construction of climate change has been produced principally through a discourse concerning territory and territorialisation. This discourse has been one which has simultaneously legitimised climate politics itself, by rendering it intelligible to state elites to whom discourses of state territorial sovereignty are "master discourses", and at the same time limited, shaped, circumscribed the range of possible responses to climate change. The paper will analyse three specific elements in climate policy discourses which serve to structure concrete policy developments, and show how they reterritorialise climate politics in this manner. The first concerns the discourses of "danger" and "opportunity" which attend both climate change itself and (in our view more importantly) policy responses to mitigate emissions. The second concerns discourses surrounding international justice, in particular those of burden sharing, equal per capita emissions, and "contraction and convergence". The third concerns the focus on sinks. All of these act to reframe climate politics in terms of reimposing territorial notions of political space. But at the same time these constructions are contradictory in a variety of ways, and the paper will explore these contradictions.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Female voters seem to be identifying with more conservative political candidates rather than more liberal ones. This article will examine the correlation between marriage, motherhood, and a more politically conservative female population.