Showing posts with label Academia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Academia. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Majoring in Spanish

This piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Ignacio Sánchez Prado about how the study of Spanish is discriminated against and dismissed made me think a lot. There are so many important elements in there, but I am going to shift to my own narrow undergraduate experience, because I keep thinking about it. One of his points is that we need to preserve and emphasize Spanish-language literature as an important thing to study, research, and teach to students. I can't agree more based on my own life.


I came to college with no real sense of what I wanted to do. I took Spanish because I had been doing so since 7th grade (I grew up in San Diego, where just about everybody did), through AP as a senior, so it made sense and seemed familiar. I loved the literature classes. I took more Spanish than Latin American lit--I don't know if that was because of the department at the time or my own prejudices (I eventually did a year abroad in Madrid). But the literature classes are why I decided to major in Spanish (along with Political Science). That combination was totally coincidental, but prompted me to take Latin American politics. It was a logical connection and I needed it for my Political Science major anyway.

I'd have to find my transcript to remember the exact classes I took, but two things stick with me. One was a course with John Polt. I remember being in the class quite distinctly, though I can't recall his teaching style per se. But I know he made the study of literature seem cool--I went to the bookstore and bought his translation of José Camilo Cela's San Camilo, 1936, which is a really hard to book to read, and which I tried to lumber through, mostly unsuccessfully. The other was reading pre-19th century Spanish literature, though I don't remember which class it was. That's why I love the Captain Alatriste novels by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Anyway, I'm on board with his conclusion:
Defending Latin American and Iberian culture at large is of particular importance in this age of Hispanophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment. We have the capacity to fight these phenomena, and a growing responsibility to do so. At a time when administrations are less likely than ever to invest in our growth, we need to bring into our departments subfields like Central American studies, Latinx Hispanophone literature, Afro-Hispanic studies, and indigenous studies. These are urgent areas of study — and there is student demand for them. If we are to deliver cultural recognition, inclusion, and justice to the largest immigrant populations and the speakers of the second-largest national language in the U.S., Iberian and Latin American studies should be front and center in conversations about literary studies. I hope that other humanists will fight alongside us against the existential crisis that threatens us all.

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Thursday, April 30, 2020

A Year After April 30

One year ago today a gunman walked into a classroom in the Kennedy Building at UNC Charlotte, killing Reed Parlier and Riley Howell (who should be graduating now), wounding four others (Emily Houpt, Sean DeHart, Rami Al-Ramadhan and Drew Pescaro) and traumatizing many more. Here is what I wrote last year about it.

A year later, we cannot remember it together in person because of Covid-19. I have not even been on campus since March 20. This evening at 5:10 there will be an online remembrance ceremony after the in-person one had to be cancelled. (On this point, you can also read the feelings of Adam Johnson, the anthropologist who was teaching the class, about how this remembrance was handled, which are quite critical). This is so unfortunate, because the vigil and the ceremony last year were moving, with everyone there together. In fact, Emily Houpt participated in commencement last year for my college, and that was very emotional as well.

We also cannot say that as a society we've made even an inch of progress toward reducing gun violence in this country. The only reason mass shootings aren't happening as much now (though they're still being tried!) is that we're all quarantined in our homes so there aren't many gatherings--and no schools--to target. We are a broken country in this regard.

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Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Whither the Brick and Mortar University?

Mike Munger asks whether brick-and-mortar higher education is disappearing, and say no. His answer relates to something I think is very important, which is that universities are social.

An online degree, an online dating service, a professional sports team in your city, and a proficiency certificate from Microsoft are not a la carte alternatives to a college degree. It is quite possible that the result will be positive, overall, with far more efficient, inexpensive online alternatives operating alongside more streamlined and well-thought-out in person experiences on the college campuses that remain.
The point is that the social aspects of higher education cannot be replicated online. We actually do have a lot of courses all-online or hybrid, so those things can be alongside each other on the same campus.* But there is so much more going on.

Ironically, it is very common to hear complaints about what Mike frames as the "student union," referring to organizations and even buildings that bring students together. They're a waste of money, the lament goes, and that money should be spent on something more strictly related to academia. Set aside the point that at a university like mine, the costs are often captured in student fees and not operational funds, which means they money wouldn't going elsewhere--it would simply not be given at all. Instead, it is useful to consider these organizations and spaces as things that make students want to be here physically rather than just online.

The truth of the matter is, UNC Charlotte is a really nice place to be--I wouldn't have stayed here this long otherwise. The campus is an inviting place and there is a lot going on to bring students together. I think students want to be here if they safely can. Higher education is not strictly the classroom.

* Some people want online-only because of work and family commitments. We're trying to help with that too.

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Thursday, April 23, 2020

Podcast Episode 74: Inside The Latin Americanist

In Episode 74 of Understanding Latin American Politics: The Podcast, we co-produce with Historias, the podcast of the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies, which you need to check out if you have not already. We talk about The Latin Americanist, the journal owned by SECOLAS. We get into all aspects of academic publishing, including how excited we've been to be published by the University of North Carolina Press.


You can find this podcast at iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, and anywhere else podcasts can be found. If there is anyplace I've missed, please contact me. Subscribe, rate, and keep a safe physical distance!


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Monday, March 23, 2020

Home For The Semester

Like millions, I am home indefinitely. I am extraordinarily lucky, being salaried and tenured, stocked with food in a home with my favorite people. My job right now is to help keep the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences going--there are both knowns and unknowns in that regard. At the moment, my interactions are through emails, WebEx, and Skype. I am glad for meetings just to remind me that specific days and times still actually exist.

This is tough on faculty and students alike, and I feel terrible for graduating seniors who can't savor their accomplishment as much as they deserve. My own son is a graduating high school senior and he is just seeing the year sort of fizzle out.

The idea that someone in authority is even floating the possibility of 30% unemployment is terrifying. Our national leadership is weak, which is deeply frustrating, though at least the governors are stepping up. We need testing and it's not coming nearly quickly enough, which is also deeply frustrating. People are panic buying, which is bad for everyone. Those without health insurance and the growing number of unemployed are facing eviction and hunger without intervention.

The Latin American response to the crisis transcends ideology, with AMLO and Bolsonaro leading the way in being buffoons in denial on different ends of the spectrum, though at least Brazil's governors are also picking up the slack. People in favelas don't have access to clean water or hand sanitizer, yet their president mocks the whole thing. Nicolás Maduro is taking it seriously, but so many years of incompetence and corruption leave the entire population--not to mention emigrants abroad--terribly vulnerable. There is better leadership elsewhere, like Martín Vizcarra in Peru and others (Boz has some interesting charts on Latin American spread of the virus). But we are learning what can happen when you vote just to "kick the bums out" and then a crisis hits.

In my own small slice of the world, there are positive things to focus on as well. People are trying to help those who can't get out, help local businesses, share tips on online teaching, share info on where to find essential goods (stop buying massive amounts of toilet paper!) and just trying to spread some humor. Sometimes there's not much else you can do.

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Sunday, March 08, 2020

SECOLAS 2021

I have just returned from the 2020 meeting of the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies, which was in Austin. It went really well, with great panels in a cool city. I ate a lot of tacos and did a lot of running on the path along the river. There were people meeting to run almost every morning. My friend and History colleague Steven Hyland at Wingate University is a master at putting it together. It's a welcoming atmosphere, with a lot of opportunities for graduate students and faculty to chat about professional development.

The 2021 meeting will be in New Orleans, so start thinking about it. The exact date is not set but almost certainly in March. You should come.

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Tuesday, March 03, 2020

Publication as Historical Document

As it does periodically, the UNC Charlotte university recently held a book sale for books being withdrawn, and like many other people I cannot resist. I picked up Samuel Flagg Bemis' A Diplomatic History of the United States, 4th edition, published in 1955. Bemis is the historian who published a widely and long-used textbook on U.S. policy toward Latin America, which I blogged about years ago when I was writing my own. Among other things, it's openly (like, really openly) pro-imperialist.

When you think of the countless readers of these volumes, highly educated, male, and white people who would likely go on to be influential in any number of ways, you can see how ingrained bad history could become.

So, for example, at the end of the Latin America section, Bemis writes that "totalitarianism, the shape of international communism, succeeded in intruding itself openly into Guatemala, and covertly into other states and colonies of the Western Hemisphere, without the American republics being yet willing to resort to more than empty words" (p. 786). However, "a successful anticommunist revolution in Guatemala temporarily eased the situation."

This is factually incorrect and a bad interpretation to boot, but there would be no way for anyone (if they happened to be inclined) to know that. Fortunately, that is not true anymore. I've been thinking about how what we write becomes a historical document on its own. So in 50 years, someone writing about U.S.-Latin American relations may take a look at my own textbook and point out how my interpretations reflected the era I lived in, perhaps in ways I've never even considered.

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Monday, March 02, 2020

Improving the Academic Publishing Process

Mike Munger has an interesting post on academic publishing. We use an archaic system that doesn't work well, so change seems inevitable. That change, he thinks, will be an online and transparent process with reviews and citations, with academic prestige given to those who (pseudonymously) provide high-quality reviews. Go read the whole thing.

I hope things move in this direction. I've worked with large publishing corporations both as a textbook author and as a journal editor, then learned more from our university library how their journal budget works, and this is mindbogglingly and depressingly expensive. Not only that, but authors--especially untenured, who have a short window of publication to keep their jobs--are unhappy with how slow the traditional process is. I would love to see the kind of system that Mike suggests.

I've published in all kinds of ways, which has taught me something. There are the standards: the academic monograph with a university press, edited volume, textbook, peer-review journal article, and the book review. But I've dabbled in many non-peer reviewed avenues, from this blog, my podcast, posts and op-eds elsewhere, tweets, and even an Open Access textbook.

The standards are great in their own way and convey expertise, but increasingly I find them limiting. My hope is that the traditional and the modern can merge more. In the book I am writing (at a glacially slow pace because of my administrative work) I've put chapters up electronically as I finish drafts. I have the privilege to do so, in the sense that I do not "need" the publication do I don't fear intellectual theft and if people don't like what I am writing, it doesn't affect my employment. I wish the publication process could be more innovative, more creative, and integrate podcasts, posts, and the like.

Make it an interactive intellectual process. I find that so much more satisfying. Writing a book, for example, is a lonely enterprise. You sit alone, thinking, staring at the screen, looking things up, and typing. You write some number of words a day and then reread them the next day to see what should be cut or revised. Maybe you have a writing group, but I think that's the exception. We should think of controlled, constructive ways to get your drafts reviewed online, a formal ways of posting bits (even in audio form) online. This is what we do in writing intensive courses at UNC Charlotte--it's an iterative process, with feedback all along the way.

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Friday, January 17, 2020

RIP Tom Davies

Two years ago I posted about how one of the professors from my MA program at San Diego State University (Charles Andrain) had died. I just recently got an email from someone who got their MA earlier than me who ran across my post. That prompted me to reach out to people at SDSU I still know, at which point I found out that Tom Davies died in February 2019, which I hadn't known. He was only 78.

Tom was a historian of Latin America and given my own inclination toward political history became a natural fit for my MA thesis (on U.S. recognition policy). Tom had a big personality. As one faculty member put it in a memorial:

When he left, our universe was poorer--and it stayed that way. Now, we are all poorer for having lost him, but forever enriched by the example he set for living life richly and deliciously.
I took one of Tom's classes (I don't remember exactly but I think it was on indigenous groups in Latin America) and met with him regularly about my thesis. He was an early riser and so I often met in his office on the ground floor of Storm Hall somewhere about 7:30 am. I can clearly hear his deep, resonant voice in my head.

He was effusive and warm. One of my enduring memories is being at his house for a Latin American Studies party, where he walked around in his guayabera (I never saw him in anything else) with a big bird on his shoulder, and smoking Marlboro reds (remember this was almost 30 years ago!) while talking to everyone. What I didn't know at the time was that he also served as expert witness for hundreds of asylum cases, especially for LGBTQ immigrants. Later as I finished my dissertation, I was an adjunct at SDSU for three semesters (filling in for my MA advisor and longtime mentor Brian Loveman while he had a grant) and was on the market. I got a phone interview at a university in Nebraska and since Tom was from there he took me to lunch (Por Favor in La Mesa, for some reason I remember this) to talk about it.

Really just a tremendous person. I hadn't seen him in years but feel sad that he's not still with us.

With both Charles and Tom, it is a reminder that even in the midst of our daily grinds, we can make lifelong and lasting impressions and serve as models if we do our mentoring well. It's funny for me to think that I am now just about the same age as all my professors were when I was in the MA program.

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Sunday, November 17, 2019

Judging the Bolivian Coup

In the context of Bolivia, Erica De Bruin is troubled by the U.S. government to accept what it considers to be "good" coups.

A response to the crisis in Bolivia consistent with promoting democratic rule would involve simultaneously condemning both the alleged electoral fraud that triggered the recent crisis as well as the military’s response to it. The temptation to rely on the military to check would-be authoritarians will continue to crop up in the context of mass protests. But the longer-term survival of democratic rule depends on resisting it.
There is an academic/analytic issue here as well. As always, there was (and is) considerable discussion about whether what happened in Bolivia was a coup. In my opinion there was, and my sense is that this is a majority academic view. The military stepped into a political crisis and forced out the president with implied threats in a manner that was not consistent with the constitution.

But then was it a "good" coup, one that opens the door to democratic transition? De Bruin forcefully argues no, saying that there coups rarely lead to democratic outcomes. She provides a link to a political scientist who questioned the idea that all coups were bad (based on the case of Burundi). Now, Javier Corrales has an op-ed in The New York Times leaning that direction. If it's not necessarily good, it might just be the only option.
The best that can be hoped for is that the military sides with moderate civilians, democratic norms, and constitutional rule.
I find this unsettling. All of the "good" coup arguments rely on the assumption that we feel there is an optimal candidate out there with characteristics we like. A "moderate." But what does that mean anyway, beyond just being the person we like? The U.S. has often sought out this fabled moderate, with the Cuban and Nicaraguan cases coming immediately to mind. So Batista and Somoza were too authoritarian and the rebels were too radical. Trying to find Goldilocks tended to mean ignoring local political realities, These so-called moderates weren't acceptable to anyone.

So let's condemn coups, no matter who they overthrow, and let's not just sit back and hope the Latin American militaries make great undemocratic decisions on behalf of democracy. That history is not one we want to repeat.

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Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Someone Please Start Studying Latin American Twitter Diplomacy

Yesterday Juan Guaidó started negotiating with Nicolás Maduro and the international community via Twitter. For years now, well before Donald Trump was even a candidate, Latin American presidents have used Twitter to excite their base, snipe at foreign adversaries, and lay out their preferred policy options.


And yet no one is publishing academic works on the phenomenon. There are plenty of works on Twitter diplomacy in general, or on non-Latin American countries. But this has been a big deal in the region and deserves analysis. Up to now, there is virtually nothing.

There is one article examining "populism," but this is a term fraught with problems so it's of limited utility. Another simply argues that there is no common usage of Twitter by Latin American presidents. We need more than this, focusing on public diplomacy via Twitter. Latin American political leaders clearly view the medium as useful and important, but scholars somehow don't, ironically perhaps even as they closely follow such exchanges on their own.

So Guaidó talks to Maduro and the world, Hugo Chávez and Alvaro Uribe sparred all the time, Rafael Correa went and still goes on rants about foreign policy, post-presidency Vicente Fox got full-on weird about foreign policy, Evo Morales rails against the United States, and those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head. We need to study this stuff and figure out whether and how it changes our traditional ways of understanding international relations. For some reason, no one is bothering.

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Wednesday, June 05, 2019

Embracing Autonomy: Chapter 2

I have posted a draft chapter 2 of my book manuscript, Embracing Autonomy: U.S.-Latin American Relations in the 21st Century. Given my administrative position, this work has become slower and slower, but it is still fun to work on.

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Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Where Should LASA Be Held?

Once again, the U.S. government blocked Cubans from attending the Latin American Studies Association conference in Boston. As a result, LASA president Lynn Stephen announced that the organization would not hold any more conferences in the U.S. until that changed. LASA imposed this self-restriction before. As I wrote seven years ago, it's an untenable decision.

Let me say first that I agree completely that blocking Cuban academics is petty and absurd. They pose no threat to anyone, and if anything we should want more Cubans traveling to the U.S.

The biggest problem with the decision is that it really hurts U.S. graduate students as well as many U.S. faculty with small travel budgets. It's just too hard to attend when it's in, say, Brazil. The flip side is that it is good for Latin American academics who might not be able to afford getting to the U.S. But this should be something that rotates.

There are other problems. Should we judge the optimal location for LASA based solely on access for Cubans? What about discrimination in the country against other groups? You certainly should not have it in Brazil these days, for example.

Finally, it is an important symbolic measure but is only symbolic. Ideally, it should get the attention of whoever makes the policy you dislike, which in this case won't happen. Last time LASA did this, the U.S. government ignored it (as you would expect) and eventually it was given up even though Cuban scholars were still denied entrance. It's quite likely the same will happen this time around.

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Thursday, April 04, 2019

Rogelberg's The Surprising Science of Meetings

I read The Surprising Science of Meetings (2019) by Steven Rogelberg, a highly decorated Professor of Organizational Science, Management, and Psychology here at UNC Charlotte. There are a lot of meetings in academia and plenty of them are not run well. But we are never trained how to do so well, which is a shame given how much time we spend in them.

The book uses the scholarly literature to provide better understanding of meeting dynamics and, more importantly, to give specific tips on how to improve them. Whoever leads the meeting is of course critical--that person needs to start with the idea that everyone's time is valuable and find the right meeting structure for the task at hand. They need to be positive and provide an agenda that makes sense for that meeting. They also need to make sure that the right people are attending and that it is not too full. Other people can be invited but notified of what happened later if they don't feel the need to come. There are all kinds of other insights (e.g. don't do phone meetings).

I actually immediately took one of his nuggets of advice by shortening meetings. In Google Calendar there is an option called "speedy meetings" that reduces the default one hour to 55 minutes, and 30 minutes to 25. That can reduce lateness (because you have a buffer between consecutive meetings) and push you to finish a bit quicker. He notes "Parkinson's law," whereby a meeting will expand to fill the time you allot to it.

Especially if you're an administrator in academia, it's worth checking out.

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Friday, March 29, 2019

SECOLAS 2019 in Oaxaca

I have not been on social media as much recently because I've been in Oaxaca for the conference of the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies, which is always a great conference. Oaxaca itself is gorgeous, as is our conference venue, the Instituto Cultural Oaxaca. Here is a shot I took just as I arrived at the opening reception:


There are also enough runners here that we started a SECOLAS running group. We met first thing this morning and yesterday to go run at a local public sports area (running around streets is challenging, even early!).


We do Latin America every third year (the next one is still being decided). Next year is in Austin, which is also a fun place. I will post the Call for Papers when it comes--it will be March 2020 and the specific days will be nailed down soon. You should come.

BTW, if you're on Twitter you should also follow @SECOLAS_org to keep up.

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Thursday, February 28, 2019

Is Political Science Relevant?

Michael Desch makes an oft-repeated argument at The Chronicle that Political Science is no longer policy relevant. I've refuted this argument many times over the years:

2010

2012

2013

2014 (which was Nicholas Kristoff)

There are problems with translation, especially with sophisticated methodologies (I organized a LASA panel about the academia-policy connection in 2014). We need to consciously bridge that gap. Many, many people already are.

There are boatloads of political scientists publishing op-eds in major newspapers, writing posts at The Monkey Cage (which has a national, and definitely DC, audience) or other online outlets, giving presentations at conferences hosted by the government (e.g. State and DoD), getting grants from the U.S. government (not just NSF but also Minerva, which is aimed at the social sciences), tweeting to thousands, or even tens of thousands, of people on policy, talking on podcasts, or even working in the government (which has been true in recent years of a number of political science professors).

I think there is a case to be made that political science is more widely read and relevant now than ever before. There are far more avenues to reach the eyeballs of the public and policy makers than in the past. If I had these ideas 30 years ago, what could I even do? Maybe write them in an email to the few people who had an account. That's about it.

Barack Obama talked about reading How Democracies Die, written by two political scientists. How much more relevant do you want?

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Thursday, December 06, 2018

The Decline of Academic Blogging

Matt Reed, a community college vice president and long-time blogger, asks where all the bloggers are.

why don’t my administrative colleagues elsewhere do something similar. After all these years, where is everybody?
He argues that in part people are concerned about having so many of their ideas and opinions public, a paper trail that could count against you.

Physicist Chad Orvel also discusses the issue and notes:
In the end, though, I think the biggest factor is that it takes a certain type of personality to make it as a blogger. You have to enjoy communicating through the written word in a way that isn’t all that common. Even in academia, where people’s careers are built on the production of text, you don’t see many people who are actually good at the sort of communication needed for blogging. 
This all resonates with me. I think one of the biggest reasons people don't blog is because they dislike it. These days academic journals often ask their authors to write blog posts summarizing their article and making it more accessible. More than one such author has talked to me about how difficult and time consuming they found the process. A number of people have talked to me and then launched blogs, only to stop quickly because they felt it took too much time and became a chore to do regularly.

Just clicking on the "Blogs" subject on the front page of my blog and seeing old posts reminded me of how many blogs are no longer updated, while new ones rarely appear. Next year will be an entire decade since I organized a panel on blogging for the Latin American Studies Association. There was a wave, albeit a small one, but it crashed and receded.

And that's fine. There are many other ways to communicate to a wider audience and blogging is just one of many. I feel like it is a good fit for academia but I am in a small minority. As I've written numerous times, I will blog until I don't find it fun. Somehow after almost 13 years, I still haven't reached that point.


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Thursday, November 01, 2018

Ignoring Latin American Scholars

Victor Ray, a sociologist at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, published a piece in Inside Higher Ed about racial bias in academic citations. It's well worth reading.

Much of the bias in citation patterns may be unintentional, as a path of dependency is built into them that reflects, reproduces and legitimates racial inequality. Inequality is reflected through a veneration of the classics. In the social sciences and humanities, many of these works were written during a period when racial and gender exclusion was simply expected and taken for granted. What counts as canonical is shaped by who had access to existing knowledge and the tools and institutional resources to produce new knowledge.
This immediately made me think of the study of U.S.-Latin American relations. In my book project I am using the Latin American concept of autonomy to understand the evolution of relations in the 21st century. After a bit of digging--and only a bit, it's all out there to be found--I realized that U.S. scholars were ignoring just about everything south of the border. This is from a draft of my intro chapter:

As it turns out, Latin American academics study the issue in ways that their U.S. counterparts seem mostly unaware of, at least if their citations and references are any guide. My goal is to consciously step out of both the U.S.-based academic literature and U.S. policy-centric viewpoints.
I can only speculate why this is the case, but there are several pretty obvious possibilities:

1. No one has heard of the Latin American journals so assume they are inferior.

2. No one has heard of the Latin American scholars because they cannot afford to attend conferences in the United States.

3. U.S. scholars cannot read Spanish or Portuguese. These days Google Translate can get you through, but you have to do initial literature searches in Spanish or Portuguese.

4. It just doesn't occur to them to look.

For years, I'd say I was guilty of a bit of #2 and a good dose of #4, and it's embarrassing to think about. How did I write two editions of a textbook on the topic without digging more deeply into all these sources?

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Wednesday, October 03, 2018

Why Central Americans Migrate

Jonathan T. Hiskey, Abby Córdova, Mary Fran Malone, and Diana M. Orcés, "Leaving the Devil You Know: Crime Victimization, US Deterrence Policy, and the Emigration Decision in Central America." Latin American Research Review 53, 3 (2018): 429-447. It's open access.


Abstract

Following a sharp increase in the number of border arrivals from the violence-torn countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras in the spring and summer of 2014, the United States quickly implemented a strategy designed to prevent such surges by enhancing its detention and deportation efforts. In this article, we examine the emigration decision for citizens living in the high-crime contexts of northern Central America. First, through analysis of survey data across Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, we explore the role crime victimization plays in leading residents of these countries to consider emigration. Next, using survey data collected across twelve municipalities in Honduras, we evaluate the extent to which knowledge of heightened US immigration deterrence efforts influenced respondents’ emigration decision. Though a vast majority of these respondents were aware of the stricter US immigration policy regime, this awareness had no effect on their consideration of emigration as a viable strategy.
It's been clear this summer that deterrence does not work--August numbers went up. Crime victimization--at least in El Salvador and Honduras--overwhelms any concern about what might happen to you once you get to the United States. Meanwhile, Guatemalans leave more for economic reasons, but are also not deterred.

But the crime angle is the focus here, and the one that we need to incorporate into immigration policy because it affects not just the questions of deterrence but also asylum. U.S. immigration policy right now is specifically aimed at making suffering worse, in the mistaken belief that if you reach a certain level of suffering, you will return home and cease to be a "threat" to the United States.

For now, sadly, we can expect the false argument that deterrence is something that can actually work, and that harshness is the answer.

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Monday, July 02, 2018

My Open Access Latin American Politics Textbook is Now Available

My textbook Understanding Latin American Politics, which was originally published by Pearson, is now available in its full form as Open Access, free and available to absolutely anyone. Go take a look. I will be working on a second edition over the course of the year, which will also be Open Access. Here is the new cover:



For some background, see my earlier post.

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