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The article discusses the Sarah Mazelis Paper of the Year Award, which recognizes authors whose articles in the journal "Health Promotion Practice" made contributions to the fields of health education and health promotion and reports that in 2014 the award was given for the article "Integrating Health Literacy and ESL: An Interdisciplinary Curriculum for Hispanic Immigrants" by Francisco Soto Mas, Erika Mein, Brenda Fuentes, Barry Thatcher, and Héctor Balcázar.

Taking Zygmunt Bauman and Etienne Balibar's reflections on translation as its point of departure, this paper considers how the practice of translation operates through the discourse and practice of 'design'. Specifically, it considers how design translates the US - Mexico border region into both a territorializing topography of cruelty where violence directed against undocumented migrants is so extreme that it appears to us to be worse than death and a virtual deterritorializing topography of civility where a collective participation in public practices to assist undocumented migrants is possible. It does this by analyzing US defensive designs (US border fence, surveillance) that inhibit the free flow of people across this border versus design projects by Judi Werthein (Brinco/Jump), Ricardo Dominguez et al (Transborder Immigrant Tool), and Robert Ransick (Casa Segura/Safe House) that enable the safer passage of undocumented migrants crossing through this border region. It concludes by reflecting on the limits of translation. Specifically, it considers how the always incompleteness yet overloadedness of translation-the 'almost' of translation-means that the virtual deterritorializing designs discussed in this paper place border subjects in positions of almost mobility, almost legality, almost hospitality, almost cruelty, and almost civility. In so doing, these designs go some way toward demonstrating how virtual deterritorializing practices of translation might make it possible, as Etienne Balibar puts it, "to 'appropriate' or 'inhabit' a transnational political space and transform it into a new public sphere" while at the same time materializing many of the "almost civilities" that are also "almost cruelties" that are activated in any call-including Balibar's-for us to become active citizens again. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although scholars agree that nationalism remains an important aspect of the new vocabulary of neoliberalism, little is known about how these discourses operate on the ground and in particular contexts. In this paper, we investigate how a specific adaption of national identity, one that underscores the values of cultural integrity, is used to naturalize neoliberal shifts in the tequila industry. Tequila has long circulated in the images and myths of Mexican identity. However, in the last two decades, the Mexican government has increasingly relied on tequila's reputation as the nation's 'spirit' to obscure changes in tequila regulatory policies that are linked to broader neoliberal changes in Mexico. Extralocal actors--in particular, multinational companies--have more influence over the direction the industry is taking and the institutions that regulate it, while tequila production is increasingly untethered from the communities and traditions that make it distinct. Here, we examine how private and public actors mobilize the language of authenticity, place, and quality to justify the adoption of neoliberal measures in the tequila industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/Context: Much research has investigated the complex interplay between education and migration. Education has been alternatively conceptualized as playing an important role as motivator or deterrent of future migration. This relationship, however, is often investigated in terms of coarse indicators of educational attainment. Purpose: In this paper we investigate a less commonly explored side of the link between education and immigration. Our study estimates the relationship between immigration and educational quality and opportunity for the case of Mexico and the United States. Using these indicators we are able to delve deeper into how education affects migration decisions. Studying the relationships between immigration rates and aggregate indicators of education quality and opportunity can shed light into the ways in which education systems and governmental structures may influence or react to immigration patterns among school-age children. Research Design: Data for this study come from three different sources: The Mexican Family Life Survey (MXFLS), which contains information on individual migration decisions; the Oportunidades program, which contains extensive family socio-economic characteristics and school quality indicators; and data from the National Population Council of Mexico, which contains socio-economic and demographic information about communities. Taking advantage of this data, we use logistic and linear regression models to estimate the relationship between education quality and migration. Results: Our results suggest significant relationships between individual decisions to migrate and indicators of educational access, quality, and opportunity, suggesting that the experiences and opportunities afforded to individuals and families in school throughout the years can be of consequence for explaining immigration decisions and patterns. Conclusions/Recommendations: Our analyses raise questions for delineating a framework for studying the relationship between educational quality and immigration. Such a framework should consider that not only individuals may have a lower incentive to further their schooling, but communities and even authorities may also have a lower incentive to improve school quality and opportunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Illicit drug markets vary organizationally and operationally in terms of things like the product being bought and sold, the community and population being served, the people engaged in the business, and the extent to which the market has matured. In this paper we use data from a survey of 1,367 law enforcement agencies to examine the characteristics and dynamics of illicit retail methamphetamine markets in U.S. communities. We describe the characteristics of those markets and we distinguish different types of communities in terms of the characteristics of their local meth markets. Despite finding similarity in the organizational and operational characteristics of methamphetamine markets in the U.S., we found variability in terms of the source of production of meth for the local market (local labs and importing from Mexico and other U.S. states) and the extent to which local police consider meth to be a local problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the recent worldwide trend towards devolution has been driven by the belief that fiscal decentralisation is likely to have a positive effect on government efficiency and economic growth. It is generally assumed that the transfer of powers and resources to lower tiers of government allows for a better matching of public policies to local needs and thus for a better allocation of resources. These factors, in turn, are expected to lead to an improvement in regional economic performance, if subnational authorities shift resources from current to capital expenditures in search of a better response to local needs. In this paper we test these assumptions empirically by analysing the evolution of subnational expenditure categories and regional growth in Germany, India, Mexico, Spain, and the USA. We find that, contrary to expectations, decentralisation has coincided in the sample countries with a relative increase in current expenditures at the expense of capital expenditures, which has been associated with lower levels of economic growth in countries where devolution has been driven from above (India and Mexico), but not in Spain, where it has been driven from below. We hypothesise that the differences in legitimacy between the central or federal government and subnational governments in top-down and bottom-up processes of devolution may be at the origin of the diverse capacity to deliver greater allocative and productive efficiency and, eventually, greater economic growth by devolved governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides new insights into the process of undocumented border crossing by examining both men and women in the process. We investigate differences in the ways in which men and women make their way across the well-guarded Mexico-U.S. border, and the extent to which men and women by the end of the 1990s were similar to, or different from, their counterparts who crossed before 1986 and the implementation of immigration policy designed to reduce undocumented migration. We find substantial differences in how men and women crossed the border without legal documents and in their chances of being apprehended. Our analysis makes clear that shifts in U.S. immigration policy after 1986 have led to women's greater reliance on the assistance of paid smugglers to cross without documents but men were more likely to cross alone. Moreover, immediately after 1986, women on first U.S. trips faced higher risks of being apprehended compared to women who migrated in the early 1980s, but men faced lower risks. After accumulating some U.S. experience, however, both women and men faced lower risks of being detected after 1986 compared to earlier in that decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent strategies to enforce the United States boundary with Mexico have shifted undocumented immigrants into remote lands federally designated as protected areas (as in national park or national wildlife refuge). Government and media institutions represent such entries as a threat to nature. In this paper we argue that representations and interpretations of threats to nature in border-protected areas are laden with identity attachments. In repeatedly defining that which is threatened as `American', such discourses work to draw boundaries around the nation, thereby narrating inclusion and exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Altruism, insurance, and investment are three potential motives for migrant remittances that have been explored in the literature. The model developed in this paper posits an additional motive - that remittances are necessary for the migrant to participate in the employment networks that are based in the village, and thus are partially a payment for the option to change jobs within this network. The model is tested with data on Mexican migrants to the United States and finds support in that network strength and diversity increase remittances, whereas the insurance motive predicts stronger networks will decrease remittances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to examine the validity of Max Weber's theory of domination as applied to Latin America and its social and political structures.The article concentrates on the advantages and risks involved when using the concept of patrimonialism to explain the authoritarian regimes of Latin American societies. To do this, the author examines how this concept has been applied for the study of the political organisation in different countries during various periods of time: the colonial era, the nineteenth century and contemporary societies.Focused on terminological analysis, the paper shows the conceptual problems of classical sociological theory when used for the study of social realities that were not at all central preoccupations for the original European writers. The author points out two main causes for the ambiguities and multiple meanings of concepts 1) the partial and fragmented reception of Weberian sociology in Latin America and 2) certain confusion already present in Weber's studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]