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This article contributes to migration and livelihood scholarship by reflecting on global and political dimensions of livelihoods and experiences of illegalisation in Central America. Based on multi-sited ethnographic research with Nicaraguan families and their migrant family members in Costa Rica, the article adopts a translocal livelihood perspective and uses the notion of everyday politics to explore migrants’ mobility practices and nuance the role and reach of illegalisation in relatively accessible South–South migration. In conclusion, the article reinvigorates the notion of ‘everyday politics of mobility’ to incorporate the multi-sitedness, multi-dimensionality and multi-directionality of translocalising livelihoods, offering a lens for future comparison of illegalisation within and beyond the so-called Global South.

El cuidado, a nuestros congéneres y a todos aquellos considerados no humanos, puesto como centro de la vida, permite la incorporación y relocalización de todos los seres vivientes, al recrear formas de convivencia que privilegian la solidaridad y la ética. Muestras de ese nuevo convivir o del reconocimiento de ancestrales prácticas, son observables en las respuestas y prácticas de enfrentar la pandemia del COVID-19. Desde la narración de tres historias, además de comunicar otros mundos y formas de relación con nosotras/os y con los otros no humanos, donde el pensamiento y acción feministas acerca de las relaciones de cuidado, son fundamentales. A través de tres historias nos narra nuevas sensaciones y prácticas para conocer, analizar y discutir el cuidado, intentando responder sus iniciales preguntas: ¿qué significa cuidar de todos los seres vivos; qué tipo de nueva ética exige, y nueva para qué y para quién?

El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo realizar una contribución empírica al estudio de la economía circular (EC) europea desde una perspectiva territorial. Para ello, se estudian algunas de las principales fuentes de datos disponibles sobre la temática a nivel de los distintos Estados miembros de la Unión Europea. A continuación, se busca dar respuesta a diversos interrogantes motivados por el examen mismo de los datos. La hipótesis que subyace al estudio es que diferencias de partida entre los países en términos de desarrollo económico, productividad e intensidad tecnológica y de conocimiento, podrían llevar a la conformación de EC con distintos grados de complejidad, innovación y sustentabilidad, propiciando el desplazamiento de los impactos medioambientales entre territorios, por ejemplo, a través del comercio internacional de desechos y materiales reciclables.

Cooperatives are often seen as an effective and participative way of mobilizing workers, especially in times of crisis. In recent years many organisations have advocated cooperatives as mechanisms of voice, security and social justice, not just within a specific production setting but also, within Global Value Chains (GVCs) (FBB 2004; Utting 2015). What is not clear is whether such labour process contexts generate the conditions (re: Kelly 1998; Atzeni 2009) of injustice necessary to cement and retain effective mobilization and representation? The specific questions we turn to in this paper are - to what degree does mobilization (into cooperatives) have to be driven by a sense of injustice? That is, what form(s) might this sense of injustice need to take? Secondly, what role do external actors (e.g. agencies of assistance; buyers; suppliers) or structural “imperatives” (e.g. organizational form) play in the ongoing (cooperative) development process without compromising initial principles of representation? This paper uses two different examples of cooperatives to reflect on what might drive and what might maintain worker cooperatives. The first example is an older cooperative project (Nova Amafrutas – NAF) for the supply of fruit from the Brazilian Amazon (Pegler, 2009), the form it took and challenges it faced in developing and maintaining structures and worker commitment for a new enterprise (but one tied to global production). The second is the VIOME workers mobilization in Greece and the challenges workers faced to reestablish hands-on management and organizational commitment to a family run national firm/cluster (Philkeram) within the context of sector uncertainty (Chourdakis 2015, unpublished). The cases allow us to contrast two situations of injustice, former mismanagement and sector uncertainty. At Viome the trigger point comes from existing workers, poor work processes and a workforce (plus their leaders) who felt “they” could do better at their plant than was being done by the faltering parent company (Philkeram). In the case of Nova Amafrutas, the injustice was previous mismanagement but also poverty, partly due to the uncertainties of demand from a more distant buying public (of fruit). Yet it was more the leaders and “helpers” of the workforce who saw the need for a new form of organization. Once established, however, both cooperatives faced internal and external challenges. For example, how to establish work, reward and incentive systems? Secondly, how to decide on suppliers (i.e. do they have to be cooperatives?) but also basic production questions (i.e. what volume, quality and flow of production). In terms of our overarching objective, how important is the initial drive for a cooperative (e.g. the nature of injustice, leadership and degree of solidarity) to the continuation of its fundamental principles of participation and equity, this is an important axis of analytical comparison but also of great practical and policy relevance. This paper’s discussion confirms our hypothesis that space and context complicate the drive for worker driven cooperatives in GVC contexts. Yet the prospect of injustice driven “reasons for solidarity” may still exist. Secondly, even in situations where conditions favour injustice driven solidarity (e.g. Viome), conflicts over fundamental labour processes and class dynamics will still abound.

La mayoría de las economías hoy en día operan sobre la base de una moneda por país. Este artículo explora de qué manera los agentes combinan diferentes monedas para la contabilidad, el intercambio, los pagos y el ahorro. Busca conceptualizar la noción de circuitos monetarios como relaciones institucionalizadas de una moneda, producto y categoría de agentes. Se basa en el caso de la Argentina cuando había cinco tipos de monedas circulando simultáneamente a nivel nacional, regional y local. Se estableció qué moneda se utilizó para qué fines. El artículo contribuye así a entender el concepto de “complementariedad del dinero” al nivel micro de los hogares y las empresas que trataron con múltiples monedas. Se argumenta que los usuarios de las monedas las mantienen separadas para comerciar en diferentes circuitos en los que participan, en lugar de incurrir en los costos de convertir una moneda en otra.

[ ENG ]Modern society's socio-environmental conflicts result from multiple causes, and responding to them is a complex, multidisciplinary venture. This article contributes to the understanding of that complexity, with a discussion of the main analytical keys that political ecology has used for the study of socio-environmental conflicts in Latin America. The article shows the important role that communication takes in this process, and argues that the Theory of Communicative Action can contribute to the political ecological analysis of socio-environmental conflicts in modern society, and can identify paths that allow the establishment of new alternative projects. Keywords: Socio-environmental conflicts, political ecology, Latin America, communicative action, modern society, alternative projects [ ESP ] Los conflictos socio-ambientales presentes en la sociedad moderna actual responden a múltiples causas y su abordaje es a la vez complejo y multidisciplinar. El presente artículo, buscando aportar al entendimiento de esa complejidad, desarrolló una investigación exploratoria para conocer las principales claves analíticas que la Ecología Política ha entregado al abordaje y comprensión de los conflictos socio-ambientales en Latinoamérica. Profundizando en el rol que la comunicación asume en este proceso, un segundo análisis exploró elementos de la Teoría de la Acción Comunicativa que podrían aportar a la lectura de los conflictos socio-ambientales y el estudio de los mismos por la Ecología Política. Lo anterior, específicamente desde la crítica a la sociedad moderna, examinando salidas reales que permitan posicionar y conquistar nuevos proyectos alternativos. Palabras clave: Conflictos socio-ambientales, ecología política, América Latina, acción comunicativa, sociedad moderna, proyectos alternativos.

Un indicador de la actual crisis civilizatoria es la alta dependencia en el petróleo. Así, los agrocombustibles se han presentado como transición sostenible para superar esta situación, y simultáneamente, combatir el cambio climático y promover el desarrollo rural. Sin embargo su producción ha generado la emergencia de conflictos socioambientales en territorios locales. Este artículo caracteriza el modelo de producción de los agrocombustibles en el marco de la estrategia de desarrollo neoextractivista. Además, analiza desde una perspectiva de la Ecología Política las disputas territoriales en el municipio de María la Baja, Colombia, donde la producción de aceite de palma ha crecido masivamente durante la última década. Abstract High oil dependency and the hegemony of resource intensive life style and production patterns within the Western Hemisphere are indicators of multiple crises phenomena, such as the climate and energy crisis. In this context, agrofuels have been presented as a triple solution to fight climate change, reduce oil dependency, and promote rural development. Nevertheless, the promotion of agrofuels at the global scale has lead to the emergence of socio-environmental conflicts at the local scale. From a transnational perspective, this paper characterizes the production of agrofuels as a particular form of a “neo-extractive” development model. Besides, from a political-ecological perspective, the article offers an analysis of the territorial transformation processes and disputes in the municipality of María la Baja, Colombia, where the production of palmoil has been expanding during the last decade., IBEROAMERICANA, Vol. 13, Núm. 49 (2013)

In recent years a substantial volume of work has used a human security perspective to explore international migration. This paper reviews, synthesises and extends that work. It first characterises distinctive elements of human security analysis, under two headings: its equity dimensions, including a focus on all persons and on their basic needs, and its explanatory dimensions, including a stress on interconnections, also on a world-scale, and on the consequent intersections, opportunities and risks. The paper then identifies a series of contributions in migration studies: in descriptive and explanatory work and in policy analysis. Besides highlighting contributions, it looks at possible weaknesses and at relationships with sister streams of work, including livelihoods studies, well-being research, capability theory, and gender studies. While nearly all the various contributions from human security analysis can also be gained from one or more other streams of work, the human security framework provides a powerful and motivated synthesis, plus some useful distinctive elements, including the important theme of common security.

This paper looks at the relation between universities and human development, first, in terms of what human development thinking—notably the contemporary ‘human development approach’ led by UNDP), Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum—can contribute to the university; and second, in terms of how the human development approach can be enriched by thinking about the nature and experience of universities, given their role as important agents of change or brakes on change. Universities have always been concerned with human development in a deeper sense which the UNDP etc.work needs to understand better. The paper asks in particular how universities could contribute to promote, support and defend sustainable human development. Section 2 characterises the contemporary line of thinking that calls itself a human development approach, as represented by the UN Human Development Reports. It relates that to older and broader lines of thought about human development. Section 3 looks at how the human development approach can provide a perspective to reorient performance evaluation in and of universities. The paper then applies these themes to the challenge of environmental sustainability. Section 4 draws out requirements for responding to this challenge: increased commitment to inter- and trans-disciplinarity, which must rest on serious attempts to understand disciplinarity too, and to understand the requirements for moving beyond it: notably, intellectual and organizational tools that provide bridges, and psychological security and mutual respect in order to be ready to leave disciplinary nests. Section 5 presents such one intellectual frame: it proposes that the ‘human security’ strand in the Sen-UNDP human development approach is a boundary-spanning framework that helps in inter- and trans-disciplinary understanding of environmental change, dangers, and responses. This perspective underlines that the systems we develop are often fragile and that we should attend to risks and the people who are most exposed to them. Section 6 argues for the potential centrality of the university in the changes needed to redirect modern socio-economic development into sustainable paths: universities can help to form the next generation of change-agents and they provide a societal forum for debate and learning, in spaces that combine the necessary unconstrained reflection, organized scepticism, rigour and cosmopolitan exchange. But to fulfil that potential requires many changes, to counter the reduction of the university from ‘the seat of universal learning’, to only a machinery for supporting profit generation and medium-term national self-interest.