This paper presents findings from an exploratory qualitative study of the experiences and perceptions of undocumented (irregular) migrants to the United States with various forms of surveillance in ...the borderlands between the U.S. and Mexico. Based on fieldwork conducted primarily in a migrant shelter in Nogales, Mexico, we find that migrants generally have a fairly sophisticated understanding about U.S. Border Patrol surveillance and technology use and that they consciously engage in forms of resistance or avoidance. Heightened levels of border surveillance may be deterring a minority of migrants from attempting immediate future crossings, but most interviewees were undeterred in their desire to enter the U.S., preferring to find ways to avoid government surveillance. Furthermore, migrants exhibit a general lack of trust in the “promise” of technology to improve their circumstances and increase their safety during clandestine border-crossing—often due to fears that technology use makes them vulnerable to state surveillance, tracking, and arrest.
In an increasingly globalized world, border control is continuously changing. Nation-states grapple with ‘migration management’ and maintain secure borders against ‘illegal’ flows. In Mexico, borders ...are elusive; internal and external security is blurred, and policies create legal categories of people whether it is a ‘trusted’ tourist or an ‘unauthorized’ migrant. For the ‘unauthorized’ Central American woman migrant trying to achieve safe passage to the United States (U.S.), the ‘border’ is no longer only a physical line to be crossed but a category placed on an individual body, which exists throughout her migration journey producing vulnerability as soon as the Mexico–Guatemala boundary is crossed. Based on policy analysis and fieldwork, this article argues that rather than protecting ‘unauthorized’ migrants, which the Mexican government narrative claims to do, border policies imposed by the state legally categorize female bodies in clandestine terms and construct violent relationships. This embodied illegality creates forced invisibility, further marginalizing women with respect to finding work, and experiences of sexual violence and abuses by migration actors. The analysis focuses on three areas: the changing definition of ‘borders’; the effects of categorization and multiple vulnerabilities on Central American women; and the dangers caused by forced invisibility.
Biometric security and screening systems have revolutionized border crossings. As bodies move across the physical space of the borderland, the border moves through them, scanning and cataloguing and ...scrutinizing bodies for irregularity. While such technologies have been scrutinized, they have largely been so through heteronormative and cisnormative lenses that fail to recognize the vastly different experiences of nonbinary, nonconforming, transgender, and queer border crossers. This paper examines the implications of what we argue is the individualization of the border, and the effects of biometric security screenings for people whose bodies do not conform to heteronormative and cisnormative standards. We argue that border securitization increasingly equates body differences to narratives of threat and risk, which endangers nonbinary, trans, and queer border crossers, and places their safe passage at risk.
La biometría humana aplicada por el Estado con fines de control social ejemplifica su propia transformación como actor político. La inserción y aplicación de la biometría en la región sudamericana ...con fines documentarios, previsionales, impositivos, de control electoral, de beneficios sociales, y de control migratorio, entre otros, revelan la necesidad de contar con más estudios que focalicen y problematicen su papel actual. En este sentido, el propósito de este trabajo sostiene que la biometría aplicada por el Estado especialmente al control migratorio es una forma de biopoder en sentido foucaultiano. Para situar el trabajo, se analizará la transformación reciente del Estado argentino, desde 2003 hasta 2015, interrogando a través de disposiciones y discursos de funcionarios públicos ¿Desde cuándo la biometría se adopta como opción política para el control migratorio?, ¿Cómo llega a posicionarse en Argentina?, y ¿Qué rol juega Argentina como país difusor de implementaciones biométricas en la región sudamericana?
A short-term pot experiment was made to evaluate the effectiveness of municipal solid waste compost amendment on salt-affected soil. Hordeum maritimum plants were cultivated in pots filled with a ...clay-loam soil containing 0 or 40 t ha⁻¹ of compost and irrigated with tap water at 0 or 4 g l⁻¹ NaCl. Soil properties and heavy metal (Zn² ⁺, Pb² ⁺, Cd² ⁺) accumulation were investigated. Municipal solid waste compost application significantly increased the soil contents of carbon, nitrogen and potassium under both non-saline and saline conditions. Soil heavy metal concentrations increased substantially too, but the recorded values were below the toxicity limits. Interestingly, plants subjected to the salt–compost interaction were more vigorous, compared with those grown on non-amended soil. Altogether, our data indicate that short-term utilization of municipal solid waste compost at 40 t ha⁻¹ may be of potential interest in the perspective of the rehabilitation of salt-affected soils. Yet, it must be stressed that the present findings are preliminary and need to be further evaluated under field conditions before practical recommendations can be inferred.
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A fundamental concern in the practice of experimental research is how to ensure that laboratory simulations model field conditions as closely as possible, thereby providing useful information about ...natural and built environments. Salt weathering is one research area where studies conducted in the laboratory have fostered a significant portion of the knowledge, but the results of many experiments are difficult to apply to field sites because they focus on the salt weathering process itself, rather than the situation at a particular site. The design of the experiment reported in this paper, which simulates salt weathering along a hard-rock coast near Swansea, Wales, incorporates the results of previous work that demonstrated the critical importance of the salt solution, rock properties, and environmental conditions in determining the rate and nature of salt weathering. SEM images demonstrate the development of incipient weathering zones with characteristics specific to the type of salt solution used, a result that may have implications for the origins of larger-scale weathering features. Samples also gained mass due to the uptake of salt. This work is useful both for understanding a process that helps to shape hard-rock coasts, and in highlighting the importance of experimental design in salt-weathering research.
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Methodologies and methods represent one of the most fundamental and persistent topics of scientific debates, especially in western political science. While Czech political science strives for deeper ...international integration, such an effort may be limited by (among other things) the insufficient methodological training of its scholars. Acknowledging this concern, the article compares the levels of methodological education at elite western universities and selected Czech universities. The resulting comparison shows that Czech political science programs offer (i) less methodological courses in general, (ii) but especially in the realm of quantitative methodologies, and (iii) above all, they do not provide training in advanced (qualitative as well as quantitative) methods at all. The long term effects include the limited ability of Czech researchers to productively use works utilizing more sophisticated methods, which may in turn negatively affect their chances of publishing research in some of the prestigious international journals. Under these adverse conditions researchers may unwittingly eschew research questions whose solutions presume the employment of an advanced method. Considering, however, on the one hand, the deep rooted and self-reproducing historical embeddedness of the Czech way of methodological education, and the financial weakness of Czech universities on the other, one apprehends that there will not be a significant improvement in this area in the middle-term horizon.
Spory o definice a vymezování jejich hranic jsou oblíbenou akademickou kratochvílí, která připadá vnějšímu světu stejně nepochopitelná (a zábavná) jako pravidla kriketu autorům tohoto textu. To však ...neznamená, že by podobné debaty skutečně potenciálně ne-měly přesah do akademické praxe. Pokud bychom chtěli naši odpověď na kritiku Jakuba Eberleho (2015) udržet v neakademicky střídmém duchu, nejspíše by stačilo napsat, že děkujeme za podnětnou kritiku našeho představení výzkumného programu mezinárodní politické sociologie (MPS) bezpečnosti (Daniel – Rychnovská 2015), nemyslíme si, že by feministické a poststrukturalistické přístupy nepatřily mezi významné současné přístupy k výzkumu bezpečnosti, a plně souhlasíme s poslední kapitolou Eberleho textu. Také bychom si přáli post disciplinární výzkum (nejen) bezpečnosti, který přistupuje ke všem teoretickým přístupům, jimi využívaným konceptům a obecně různým typům poznání s plnou otevřeností a hodnotí je na základě jejich přínosu pro objasnění konkrétních otázek.
Beyond the clash of civilisations? Jacinta O'Hagan
Australian Journal of International Affairs,
09/2005, Volume:
59, Issue:
3
Journal Article, Book Review
Peer reviewed
The clash of fundamentalisms: Crusades, jihads and modernity, by Tariq Ali, London: Verso, 2002, pp. x + 342, US$22, ISBN 1 859 84679 3; Western supremacy: The Triumph of an idea?, by Sophie Bessis, ...transl. Patrick Camiller. London and New York: Zed Books, 2003, pp. x + 290, US$85, ISBN 1 842 77218 X; Barbarians and civilisation in international relations, by Mark B. Salter, London: Pluto Press, 2002, pp. x + 228, US$85, ISBN 0 745 31902 5; The West and the rest: Globalization and the terrorist threat, by Roger Scruton, Wilmington, Delaware: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2002, pp., 200, US$19.95, ISBN 1 882 92681 1.
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