A study of how clashing cultures and religion, the principle of human rights, and the politics of citizenship, identity, and place-making define the boundaries that delineate notions of legality and illegality. This comparative analysis of the immigration laws and policies of Spain and the Netherlands reveals that in spite of historical, social and political disparities between the two countries, which might indicate differences in the way the law treats the immigrant population, both Spanish and Dutch law construct and reconstruct immigrant difference and marginality and thereby reproduce inequalities even as they purport to facilitate the integration of immigrants. At the heart of this issue is the contradiction between the economic incentive for the host governments to maintain a ready source of cheap labor and their need to appease Dutch and Spanish societies’ widespread fear of an established, permanent immigrant settlement. The central paradox is that, in order to achieve these dueling goals, Dutch and Spanish immigration law and public policy ultimately protect those who are already citizens.  .pdf

The promotion of cooperatives has been a core project of President Hugo Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution. Before he came to power there were less than 1,000 cooperatives in Venezuela, but by 2006 that number had risen to 108,000. However, in July 2007, Chávez declared the program a failure; a surprise given his critique of exclusionary nationalist rhetoric and his populist appeals. By examining CECOSESOLA, one of the most successful cooperatives worldwide, I argue that a cooperative’s success is tied to its ability to develop both a sense of personal agency and a collective narrative of resistance. Unlike CECOSESOLA, which has maintained organizational and political autonomy, and developed its own narrative of belonging, Chávez’s program provided cooperatives with a politicized and state-centric narrative of cooperative identity underwritten by Chávez’s personal charisma. My research ultimately suggests that though Chávez discursively encourages citizen mobilization, the Bolivarian narrative perpetuates patterns of exclusion and may consequently undermine the creation of a strong civil society.  .pdf

Drawn to the decades-long economic expansion of the Spanish society, the country’s need for blue-collar labor, and Europe’s open borders, women of Romania are only the latest migratory group to come to the Iberian country in search of opportunity and prosperity. Yet, as they have grown in numbers, the usually tolerant Spanish ambient has shifted to a more sinister attitude toward these instrumental players of the global economy. For its part, this paper will examine the severe and far-reaching consequences of this migratory flow on its protagonists, the Romanian women. The discussion will include an analysis of the Spanish legal framework that directs the migration; the rampant economic challenges that come with being characterized as cheap and expendable labor in an upwardly-mobile European society; and lastly, the social impact of transnational living for a wife, mother, and daughter migrant. In its entirety, the paper will seek to prove the necessity of incorporating this foreign labor force into the Spanish society and the inadequacies with which Spain has met the task    ..pdf

An examination of three infamous atrocities of the Salvadoran civil war and the attempts to bring those responsible to justice. The first case is the March 1980 assassination of Archbishop Romero, an outspoken critic of the Salvadoran government. The second case is the December 1980 rape and murder of four American churchwomen by a paramilitary death squad. The final case discussed is the November 1989 murder of six Jesuit professors and their two domestic servants on the Universidad Centroamericana campus. Ultimately, justice was never served, due to four factors: corruption within the government of El Salvador and the Salvadoran judicial system; a lack of power given to the United Nations Truth Commission; United States Cold War politics; and the inability of the United States civil courts to create meaningful accountability. .pdf

The post-Cold War period has experienced a rise in the use of child soldiers fighting in conflicts worldwide to numbers exceeding a quarter of a million. This research focuses on child soldiers in Chad, and how the worsening regional instability in Central and Western Africa forces more children into both Internally Displaced Persons camps and refugee camps, creating a vicious cycle of violence in which children are vulnerable to being used as soldiers. Although most of the countries perpetuating this practice have signed and ratified the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, children continue to be caught up in soldiering while protection of their human rights remains largely unenforceable. The current debate involving the age of accountability and appropriate punitive measures draws attention away from potential solutions. The policy proposals made in this paper support incentives to create compliance within the Chadian government, but the most significant proposal favors a long-term solution of regional grass roots peace building and human rights education.  .pdf

For many years, Hawai‘i has been a favored destination of vacationers and adventurers, colonizers and usurpers. Its beautiful landscape and strategic placement lend itself for these purposes. However, there is another side of Hawai‘i that many do not see, and even less understand. When the sunscreen, ABC Stores, and hotel lū‘au’s are left behind, one will find that there is a part of Hawai‘i that longs for the return of its independence, its identity, its rights. This Hawai‘i no longer wishes to see its people impoverished or imprisoned. It no longer wishes to be forgotten in history books, and remembered only when it’s time to plan a family trip over the summer. This is the Hawai‘i being fought for by those in the Hawaiian sovereignty movement and is addressed in this article.  .pdf

In the early hours of December 6, 1921, an Irish and British delegation, weary from weeks of negotiations and arguments, signed a document that promised a lasting peace between Ireland and Great Britain. The document, commonly referred to as the Anglo-Irish Treaty , is certainly the most consequential in the tangled joint history of the two nations. The Anglo-Irish Treaty brought an end to the three-year struggle between Irish guerrilla forces, led by Michael Collins, and the military forces of Great Britain. The British domination of Ireland, a fact of life for seven hundred years, almost completely ceased, and the political and legislative union between the two nations effectively ended. The Treaty did not encapsulate all Irish demands, but was rather a compromise between the two nations. Faced with the threat and the burden of resumed warfare, the Irish delegation signed the document containing the final British proposals, hoping that the rest of Ireland would receive it as a great step towards independence. Under the circumstances, the document may have represented the best possible resolution Ireland could have hoped for. Yet despite all of its merits; despite the realization of so many Irish national aspirations embodied in the document; those who opposed the treaty regarded it as an abandonment of the Irish Republic and a corruption of Republican ideals.  .pdf

The Climate Crisis is one of the most prominent issues for society today. In the United States, local governments, at the city and state level, have been documented to be powerful forces determining environmental policy and the centers of the greatest impact. Theory suggests that it is the business elite, in cooperation with the political elite, which determine the outcome of local environmental policy and its enforcement.  However, some have pointed out the importance of stakeholders, citizens and consumers, as being influential in local environmental policy creation.  I examine three models to determine which factors are of the greatest influence in determining which cities adopt environmental policy and which do not.  Included are the investment model, prevalence of manufacturing employment should deter environmental policy, the homogeneity model, greater homogeneity of culture will increase likelihood of environmental policy, and the citizens’ characteristics model, those characteristics that individuals can migrate with will have the greatest effect. This paper examines the relationship of these models with the likelihood of a city to agree with the United States Mayor Climate Protection Agreement, a city-level version of the Kyoto Protocol, and finds statistically significant relationships for homogeneity, political culture, educational attainment and median income.  Results suggest that business investment has no relationship with adoption of environmental policy and that citizen characteristics have a greater effect then theorized.   .pdf