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The present paper sets out to characterize the publication dynamics of collaborative research partnerships between Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean (EULAC) region in the last forty years. We adopt two approaches when analysing data based on the following assumptions: (1) Collaboration is characterized by a central relationship established between researchers from one LAC and one EU institution. (2) Bi-regional collaboration is characterized by a series of scientific publications forged with different scientists and institutions. The objective of this review is to draw a map of the EULAC bi-regional co-publications divided into key areas of knowledge and the countries with more straight or weak scientific collaboration. In our results, we have observed how many studies are focused in emergent areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caribbean populations face increased displacement, dispossession and debt burdens due to shocks related to climate change. As the major neighbouring power that is the most significant historical contributor to global warming, the United States has persistently deflected from this responsibility. Instead, its climate plans are weaponized to target potential climate refugees who constitute a 'national security threat' and are faced with risks of premature death. These policies also aim to create green capitalist peripheries following racial capitalist logics. The paper contends that US climate interventions and policies increase the likelihood of Black dispossession within Caribbean societies. These policies commit to supporting so-called 'left-behind' white communities in need of a 'just transition', while Caribbean racialized subjects are not as equally deserving. To explain this, the paper examines major climate policies, in particular the recent Congressional Climate Action Plan of the US House of Representatives and President Biden's climate proposals. It juxtaposes policy claims against political actions and racial capitalist historiography of the United States, especially its past treatment of climate refugees from the Caribbean. This analysis shows the persistent ways in which US climate policies advance organized abandonment and a neocolonial relationship predicated on an unjust system of racial capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper comprehensively analyzes the overall status of the green bond market in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) for the renewable energy sector. Our results show that, in most cases, issuers are non-financial corporations. Also, despite LAC's low perception of transparency, 78% of the volume issued has been externally reviewed. In general terms, the barriers imposed on issuance by local governments, mainly municipal debt ceiling, low credit rating and solvency, limited capabilities to prepare bankable projects, and lack of communication channels between the financial sector and local governments, constrain the green bond market in LAC. Furthermore, although the presence of development institutions that promote the issuance of green bonds in the renewable sector has improved in recent years, it is mandatory to continue making progress in this area. For that purpose, closer cooperation and alliances are essential to share responsibilities and knowledge in LAC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The single-use plastic bag is the most legislated item of plastic in the world, banned in over 92 countries. The bans are largely concentrated in Africa and the Caribbean, where the plastic bags are often black and the plastic footprints small. The bans have destabilised essential economic, social, and technical arrangements of marginalised communities reliant on plastic engagements and adaptations to improvise against multiple, overlapping, incursive forms of violence. This article seeks to understand the spatial and material nature of these legislative actions and the particular item of single-use plastic they target. Acknowledging the (spatialised) material realities of the single-use plastic bag, this article argues that these bans are a legislative response to the black plastic bag as spatialised, racialised, sexualised, abject Other. Drawing from monster theory, the article reflects on the trans-corporeal body burdening of black plastic bags and the black hands, black bodies, black markets, and black, corrupt, illicit actions with whom and which they are associated. Reconceptualising the (black) single-use plastic bag as an agape, plastic monster that defines, patrols, and transgresses cultural/economic boundaries, this article calls for making explicit the vermicular activities within economic marginalisation and distinguishing them from the discursively constructed amorphous, tentacled mass. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The small island developing states (SIDS) of the Dutch Caribbean have categorized themselves as ill-equipped to provide adequate protection for vulnerable migrants and refugees from Venezuela. Their status as semi-autonomous states with sovereignty over migration matters but whose foreign policy is governed by the Kingdom of the Netherlands distinguishes them from other SIDS in the Caribbean also experiencing increasing arrivals. The paper analyses this issue relying on interviews with elites involved in the fields of human rights, justice and migration management; content analysis of media reports; as well as archival research. The research shows that a confluence of factors has impacted the islands' response, including their small size, regional geo-politics, and a deficient refugee protection framework. The research also reveals a contest of responsibility for migrant protection between the local and Kingdom governments, which has jeopardized the capacity of the states of Aruba and Curaçao to effectively address the migrant crisis, with negative implications for undocumented migrants. The paper contributes to forced migration scholarship by providing data on the Dutch Caribbean, which along with other countries in the Southern Caribbean have been disproportionately impacted by the crisis relative to their size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global South scholars have long documented and theorised their communities' struggles against the ecological degradation, toxic contamination, and climate change–related extreme weather events which result from the overlapping ills of colonialism, imperialism, and racial capitalism. Building on that existing work, contributors to this collection extend and deepen understandings of the material entanglements of race and ecology in our contemporary conjuncture. Speaking from various scales and locations, including the Caribbean, Brazil, Sri Lanka, and Palestine, the authors reflect on those sites while also collectively recovering and amplifying lineages of thought on ecology from across the South. As the contributions collected here show, the traps set by global structures of race also direct mainstream climate solutions back towards the expropriation, premature death, or prevention of birth of peoples of colour by various means, from militarised conservation to eugenic populationism. Confronting the racial logics of both ecological harm and its supposed solutions is therefore a key task of this collection. As a collective, however, the issue's contributors also carve out paths to reparation and structural change which form the contours of an anti-racist ecology for our times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Absent from the criminological literature on policing in the Caribbean are studies on female's motivations to become police officers, studies using female police recruits and studies using a comparative approach. As a result of this gap, data were gathered from female police recruits in Jamaica (N = 37) and Trinidad and Tobago (N = 60) in July 2017 via a standardised, self-administered questionnaire in order to determine their motivations for entry into policing. The main motivation for female's entry into policing in both jurisdictions was job security. Revenge and the desire for power and authority were the least cited motivations for entry into the police profession in both jurisdictions. The importance of females as police officers, study limitations and directions for future research are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay works through how seeing Caribbean Studies from my singular location – a Caribbean diaspora human geographer based in the UK but interested in the Caribbean as an area of study – leads to ‘conversations’ with a range of differently located academics, and locates Caribbean Studies in very particular ways. The particular concept of conversation comes through Hall’s (1993) Walter Rodney Memorial Lecture, published as ‘Negotiating Caribbean Identities’ in New Left Review. This routing leads to two critiques of defining one’s own cultural and disciplinary identity through Caribbean Studies, and also points to a renewal of Caribbean Studies, through unending conversations in and with the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers in public administration for the past few decades are interested in exploring how public service motivation (PSM) influences turnover intentions. This study puts the theory of PSM to test in a different cultural context and explores the relationship between PSM and leadership on turnover intentions via person-organization fit (P-O fit) in public sector employees from Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados. Results of structural equation modeling indicate a significant negative relationship between senior leadership and turnover intentions, but a positive and significant relationship between PSM and turnover intentions. The positive effects of PSM on turnover are different from the Western models of motivation in the public sector. Results also show a partial mediation of PSM and turnover intentions via P-O fit. This research highlights the need for studying leadership, motivation, and turnover by utilizing a cultural and value lens to examine and understand employee behaviors in public organizations outside of North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diaspora remittances are a faithful source of capital, a vital social safety net and a source of local economic investment for many households, communities and states across the Caribbean. But recent efforts by powerful interests to exercise control over these flows of capital are beginning to threaten the continuity and accessibility of this lifeline. As financial institutions, fiscally constrained governments and imperializing states have become increasingly attuned to the value of Caribbean remittances, so too have their efforts to gain control over the volume and flow of these private transfers of funds. For governments, remittances promise the possibility of access to funds that can be used to bridge finance gaps, and among financial institutions they offer opportunities to generate profits from the cross-border movement of money. But for imperializing states, remittances are increasingly viewed as a potential threat to their efforts to control the movement of money. I argue that these different and sometimes conflicting views of remittances reflect the complex forms of coloniality and racial subjugation that continue to reproduce economies of dispossession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Only six countries have banned the industrial use of asbestos in Latin America and the Caribbean. In fact, the industrial use of asbestos appears to be growing in this region. Asbestos is one of the most dangerous natural substances in the world, it is contained in several types of rocks (such as serpentinites, mafic and ultramafic rocks) but fibers can be released to the atmosphere both by natural and anthropogenic sources. Six countries have banned the industrial use of asbestos in this region, we expected that laws established before 2007 would be less adherent to the 2007 WHO/ILO recommendations. In contrast, the Chilean law of 2001 is one of those that most adheres to international recommendations along with the Colombian law of 2021. Which means that the newest laws are not necessarily the strongest. This article aims to draw a regional overview of the laws against asbestos production in Latin America and the Caribbean, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each national policy. We recommend that countries that have already banned asbestos consider updating and strengthening their existing laws and develop clinical guidelines for the management, monitoring, and rehabilitation of asbestos-related diseases. The challenge of asbestos goes far beyond a prohibition law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: School feeding programs (SFPs) can play a crucial role in the emergency food and nutrition response, but there is a dearth of information on how SFPs operate during emergencies. Design and Methods: A rapid comparative assessment of 11 SFPs throughout Latin America and the Caribbean during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data from (1) systematic document search and (2) surveys with key informants (n = 23) about barriers/facilitators to modifications were systematically analyzed using a multiple case study approach. Results: During the pandemic, all SFPs continued (although continuation plans varied from a few days in Chile to > 1 month in Puerto Rico) via food kits, food vouchers, and/or grab n' go meals. The SFP implementation was highly dependent on the programs' autonomy and financial support, which impacted their logistics to acquire and distribute foods during the pandemic. The types of foods offered in some SFPs suggest that established nutritional guidelines were not always followed. Key informants expressed concerns about the deterioration of the nutritional quality of foods offered during the pandemic and lack of community engagement that impeded distribution to the neediest. Conclusions: Results underscore the urgency for clear implementation guidance on how to modify SFP during emergencies. Public health implications include (1) allocation of autonomous resources to an intersectoral working group to safeguard nutritional benefits during emergencies, (2) strengthening efforts of SFP community engagement before and during emergencies, and (3) establishing guidelines of the types of foods that can be distributed to meet the nutritional needs of beneficiaries during emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory chapter presents a background to the Venezuelan migrant crisis impacting the Caribbean region. While migration is deeply embedded in Caribbean history and culture, the movement of Venezuelans into the region, characterized mainly by displaced migrants, presents new dynamics never experienced before. This chapter describes the emerging Venezuelan situation as a 'crisis' in light of Caribbean communities unpreparedness in terms of protocols, policy and capacity for dealing with the influx of displaced migrants. Within this context, the Editors thus make a case for the need for reconceptualization, empirical research and new frameworks for action among Caribbean migration scholars. The chapter ends with a summary of the seven articles contained in this special issue, demonstrating their multi- and interdisciplinary focus, as well as the various methodological tools employed by the authors in bringing indigenous, rights-based, gender sensitive perspectives to the Venezuelans displacement and its impact for the Caribbean region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The aim of this study is to contrast the genetics of neuropsychological tasks in individuals from nuclear families clustering ADHD in a Caribbean community. Method: We recruited and clinically characterized 408 individuals using an extensive battery of neuropsychological tasks. The genetic variance underpinning these tasks was estimated by heritability. A predictive framework for ADHD diagnosis was derived using these tasks. Results: We found that individuals with ADHD differed from controls in tasks of mental control, visuospatial ability, visuoverbal memory, phonological and verbal fluency, verbal and semantic fluency, cognitive flexibility, and cognitive ability. Among them, tasks of mental control, visuoverbal memory, phonological fluency, semantic verbal fluency, and intelligence had a significant heritability. A predictive model of ADHD diagnosis using these endophenotypes yields remarkable classification rate, sensitivity, specificity, and precision values (above 80%). Conclusion: We have dissected new cognitive endophenotypes in ADHD that can be suitable to assess the neurobiological and genetic basis of ADHD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For researchers and educators working to engage Indigenous knowledges, colonial legacies, including assimilation-driven education curriculum, form challenging and complex pathways to navigate. To address such legacies and support Indigenous education efforts, we developed a participatory research model exploring benefits, barriers, and resources for engaging Indigenous knowledges in science education and research. This article details methods and findings from an inter-island knowledge exchange describing the experiences of seven Indigenous scholars and practitioners working in the Caribbean. We drew from Indigenous research methodologies, participatory action research, and constructivist grounded theory. Our research findings describe how individual experiences weave into a larger collective, intergenerational story of survival, adaptation, resilience, and regeneration. Findings from this study deepen understandings regarding how underlying socio-political challenges manifest at different scales of space and time, from immediate to intergenerational, and practitioner-identified resources to overcome them, such as Indigenous language, community action, and creating support systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The postdisaster environment presents a multitude of ethical and logistical challenges for researchers interested in gathering timely and unpreserved data. Due to the unavailability of secondary data in the immediate aftermath of disasters, postdisaster researchers have become dependent on qualitative methods that involve engaging with disaster survivors as research participants. This is a common interaction in the Caribbean due to the region's high occurrence of disasters and human participant engagement by external researchers during the postdisaster phase. However, due to escalating unethical practices since the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Caribbean nations are beginning the process of censuring unapproved postdisaster fieldwork by external researchers. In this study, the authors approach these ethical considerations through a justice lens to propose a checklist for postdisaster researchers interested in ethical fieldwork and justice for their research participants. Correspondence with Caribbean emergency managers confirms the negative perception toward external researchers and the trend of enacting protocols that stop unvetted community access following disasters. However, these local agencies acknowledge the benefits of ethical postdisaster research and are open to serving as research coordinating centers. Such coordinating centers would harness local capabilities and lower the likelihood of the duplication of research topics and the overburdening of survivors as research participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was conducted to determine the generalizability of the Mother–Adult Daughter Questionnaire (MAD) for first- and second-generation Afro-Caribbean women. The measure was created specifically to explore adult daughters' reports of their relationship with their mothers in order to capture the values of connectedness, trust in hierarchy, and interdependence in the mother–daughter relationship. We test this cross-generational applicability to (1) determine the generalizability of the measure for first- and second-generation women and (2) assess whether the means of the subscales differ across first- and second-generation women. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test the factor structure of the MAD with this population. The sample (N = 285) was comprised of reports from 129 adult daughters born in the United States and 156 born in the Caribbean. CFAs indicated that the scoring algorithm for the subscales fit these data well. Results indicated that the MAD subscales (Connectedness, Trust in Hierarchy, and Interdependence) were applicable and may operate similarly across first- and second-generation Afro-Caribbean women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the effect of different economic and financial crises, such as inflation crisis, stock market crash, debt crisis, and banking crisis on international tourism flows using a panel gravity data set of 200 countries over the period 1995 to 2010. The results show that the inflation crisis has a dampening effect on international tourism flows in both the host and origin countries. The results also show that domestic debt crisis encourages international tourism arrivals in the host countries, whereas its impact on international tourism services in originating countries is negative. Further, the impact of these crises on tourism is region dependent. In particular, banking crisis depresses international tourism flows in host countries situated in regions such as America and Latin America and Caribbean, whereas its impact on originating countries located in regions such as Asia and the Middle East is insignificant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how so-called "slum" tourism commodifies poverty and violence, transforming urban deprivation into a tourism product. In particular, we pay ethnographic attention to the role of brokers who mediate encounters between residents and tourists. The article explores how brokers—tour guides, art curators and civil society organizations—work to mediate power structures and enact a specific representational-performative politics. In so doing, brokers play a key role in aestheticizing and performing poverty and violence and converting disadvantaged spaces into a tourist product. We argue that brokers are vital to the reproduction of existing inequalities and to the formation of new social relationships and subjectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The devastating impacts of Hurricanes Irma and Maria across the Caribbean (especially in Barbuda, Dominica, Puerto Rico, St Martin/St Maarten, and parts of the British and US Virgin Islands) are haunting harbingers of a world of climate disaster, halting recovery, and impossible futures. Being at the leading edge of the global capitalist exploitation of people and other living and non-living beings in a world-spanning system of vast inequity and severe injustice, Caribbean thinkers, writers, poets, philosophers, activists, and artists have long lived with, dwelt upon, and offered answers to the problem of being human after Man, as Sylvia Wynter puts it. This reflection on island futuring and defuturing offers a critical analysis of Caribbean “disaster recovery” and “climate adaptation” based on an understanding of the disjuncture between three uneven spatio-temporal realities: (1) the decelerating “islanding effects” of debt, foreign aid, and austerity; (2) the accelerating mobilities of the “offshore” and extended operational landscapes of “planetary urbanization”; and (3) the durational im/mobilities of Amerindian survival, Maroon escape, and Black/Indigenous cultural endurance of alternative ontologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Skin lightening is very popular among women and some men of the Caribbean, and its popularity appears to be growing. The lightening of skin colour is done to produce a lighter complexion which is believed to increase attractiveness, social standing and improves one's potential of being successful. Design and Methods. Fifteen (15) common skin lightening creams found in pharmacies and cosmetic retailers throughout Trinidad and Tobago were evaluated for Mercury by Cold Vapor Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry (CVAAS) and Arsenic by Hydride Generation Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry (HGAAS). The results obtained were compared to global standards and previous research. Results. Fourteen (14) of the fifteen samples analysed contained Mercury in the range of 0.473 µg/g to 0.766 µg/g. One sample had a Mercury content of 14,507.74±490.75 µg/g which was over 14,000 times higher than the USFDA limit for mercury in cosmetics of 1 µg/g. All samples contained Arsenic in the range 1.016 µg/g to 6.612 µg/g, which exceeds the EU limit for cosmetics of 0 µg/g. Conclusions. All the samples analysed contained significant amounts of Mercury and Arsenic and none of them can be considered safe for prolonged human use. The samples that contained Mercury levels which were lower than the USFDA limit contained Arsenic levels which exceeded the EU standard of 0 µg/g in cosmetics. The popularity of these skin lightening creams in the Caribbean region places the population at elevated risk of chronic Mercury and Arsenic poisoning and possibly acute Mercury Poisoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I aim to make two closely connected, intersecting and in some cases parallel scholarly and political contributions to wider discussions about area studies through a focused engagement with Caribbean Area Studies. First, I position myself within Caribbean (area) studies as a feminist anti-racist researcher and scholar. I explore the im/possibilities of my role within the “area” of the Caribbean through a feminist analysis. Second, I aim to ensure that the scholarship from academics within and of the Caribbean is placed central. I provide insights from Caribbean theorists who discuss the ways in which the region is both bounded and exploded but nevertheless a recognisable entity of Caribbean area studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a heavy dependence on tourism and unrelenting challenges on the horizon, Caribbean nations are called to collaborate for their survival. This is a trend being observed globally as various nation groupings are banding together for the success of their tourism industries. With the responsibility of steering tourism in the region, the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) has the task of representing all of its member nations and the particularly critical task of marketing them as a region. That being considered, this study aims at examining the effectiveness of the collaborative marketing efforts of the CTO. To aid this assessment, CTO’s member nations were contacted and, those who were willing, interviewed. Palmer’s (2002) study on marketing effectiveness was consulted and from this the measures of effectiveness were obtained and further applied to the interview protocol. Similarity among members, reciprocity, governance style and commitment were the variables used to determine member nations’ views on the effectiveness of the CTO’s collaborative marketing initiatives. Using framework analysis, the data received were analysed and further interpreted. It was found that the marketing initiatives of the CTO are effective insofar as its members are committed but ineffective in that governance is doubted, reciprocity is pegged as minimal and the dissimilarity among member nations fuels perceptions of inequity. In light of the issues revealed, recommendations were made that can be considered by both the CTO and its member nations for the overall development of the Caribbean region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study shows the utility of the concept of diaspora for physical cultural studies, and particularly for thinking through sport in a Canadian setting. The capacity of diaspora theory to specify a matrix of real and imagined cross-border cultural, kinship, and social relationships makes it useful for understanding community (re)generation in sport settings. Relatively little about recreational cricket in the Caribbean and its diaspora has been documented, despite the sport’s power as a symbol of Caribbean unity. My findings indicate that a group of first-generation Afro-Caribbean immigrants living in the Greater Toronto Area use a particular form of cultural production, the sport of cricket, to generate and maintain diasporic communities, that is, cross-border interpersonal networks with other Afro-Caribbean people who remain in their nations of origin, and who are dispersed throughout the United States, elsewhere in Canada, and England. Regardless of where they play, cricket matches are “home games” that allow players and spectators to lime (hang out) and (re)generate diasporic consciousness, that is, a sense of themselves as one people through the “authentic” Afro-Caribbean environment they create. The reproduction of Afro-Caribbean culture, community, and consciousness includes conflicts with South Asian and Indo-Caribbean diasporic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]