Fronteras en construcción: Diferenciación social y desterritorialización en el Sur ibérico (siglos IX-VI a.C.)

Durante las tres últimas décadas, numerosos/as arqueólogos/as han discutido extensamente sobre el ritual funerario original de las poblaciones del sur ibérico entre los siglos ix y vi a.c., esto es, cremación o inhumación. Este debate está además conectado con la existencia o no de complejidad social antes de la llegada fenicia, con la aparición de una élite “orientalizada” y con la adopción de nuevos objetos y prácticas por las poblaciones locales. En este artículo hago uso del concepto deleuziano de “desterritorialización” y lo asocio con el de “frontera” desarrollado por anzaldúa para interpretar la sociedad del sur ibérico. Para ello, analizo la evidencia funeraria indígena y cuestiono la división estricta entre cremación e inhumación en la región; así como examino la profundidad y significado de los cambios funerarios en las comunidades locales.

From labelling to social aid for immigrants in the 21st Century

Migration is as old as humanity, but since the 1990s migration flows in Western Europe have led to societies that are not just multicultural but so-called «super-diverse». As a result, Western towns now have very complex social structures, with amongst others large amounts of small immigrant communities that are in constant change. In this paper we argue that for social workers to be able to offer adequate professional help to non-native residents in town, they will need balanced view of ‘culture’ and of the role culture plays in social aid. Culture is never static, but is continually changing. By teaching social workers about how to look at cultural backgrounds of immigrant groups and about the limitations of then role that culture plays in communication, they will be better equipped to provide adequate aid and will contribute to making various groups grow towards each other and to avoid people thinking in terms of ‘out-group-homogeneity’. Nowadays, inclusion is a priority in social work that almost every social worker supports. Social workers should have an open attitude to allow them to approach every individual as a unique person. They will see the other person as the person they are, and not as a part of a specific cultural group. Knowledge about the others makes them see the cultural heterogeneity in every group. The social sector, though, must be aware not to fall into the trap of the ‘inclusion mania’! This will cause the social deprivation of a particular group to be forgotten. An inclusive policy requires an inclusive society. Otherwise, this could result in even more deprivation of other groups, already discriminated against. Emancipation of deprived people demands a certain target-group policymaking. Categorized aid will raise efficiency of working with immigrants and of acknowledging the cultural identity of the non-natives group. It will also create the possibility to work on fighting social deprivation, in which most immigrants can be found.

Ecuadorian migration and family strategies of social mobility: dialectic relation between emotional and financial capital

This text deals with transnational strategies of social mobility in Ecuadorian migrant households in Spain. We apply the capital accumulation model (Moser, 2009) for this purpose. The main target of this article is, beyond thinking in terms of capital stock and accumulation, the analysis in depth of the dynamics of the different types of capital, that is to say, how they interact with each other in the framework of the social mobility strategies of the migrants and their families. We are bringing into light the way some households adopt investing decisions in capitals that don't translate into any addition or earnings in all cases, on the contrary, concentrating all their efforts on the accumulation of a certain asset they may, in some cases, lead to a loss of another. We will concentrate our analysis primarily on the dynamics between the physical and financial capital and the social and emotional capital, showing the tensions produced between these two types of assets. At the same time, we will highlight how migrants negotiate their family strategies of social mobility in the transnational area. Our study is based in empirical material obtained from qualitative fieldwork (in-depth interviews) with families of migrants in the urban district of Turubamba Bajo -(south of Quito) and in Madrid. A series of households were selected where interviews were carried out in the country of origin as well as in the context of immigration, with different family members, analysing the transnational social and economic strategies of families of migrant members. Family members of migrants established in Spain were interviewed in Quito, as well as key informants in the district (school teachers, nursery members of the staff, etc.). The research was framed within the projects "Impact of migration on the development: gender and transnationalism", Ministry of Science and Innovation (SEJ2007/63179) (Laura Oso, dir. 2007-2010),"Gender, transnationalism and intergenerational strategies of social mobility", Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FEM2011/26210) (Laura Oso, dir. 201-1-2015) and “Gender, Crossed Mobilities and Transnational Dynamics”, Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FEM2015-67164).

Late-career international migration and reproductive work. A comparison between Peruvian and Ukrainian women in the Southern Europe

Research on the relationship between reproductive work and women´s life trajectories including the experience of labour migration has mainly focused on the case of relatively young mothers who leave behind, or later re-join, their children. While it is true that most women migrate at a younger age, there are a significant number of cases of men and women who move abroad for labour purposes at a more advanced stage, undertaking a late-career migration. This is still an under-estimated and under-researched sub-field that uncovers a varied range of issues, including the global organization of reproductive work and the employment of migrant women as domestic workers late in their lives. By pooling the findings of two qualitative studies, this article focuses on Peruvian and Ukrainian women who seek employment in Spain and Italy when they are well into their forties, or older. A commonality the two groups of women share is that, independently of their level of education and professional experience, more often than not they end up as domestic and care workers. The article initially discusses the reasons for late-career female migration, taking into consideration the structural and personal determinants that have affected Peruvian and Ukrainian women’s careers in their countries of origin and settlement. After this, the focus is set on the characteristics of domestic employment at later life, on the impact on their current lives, including the transnational family organization, and on future labour and retirement prospects. Apart from an evaluation of objective working and living conditions, we discuss women’s personal impressions of being domestic workers in the context of their occupational experiences and family commitments. In this regard, women report varying levels of personal and professional satisfaction, as well as different patterns of continuity-discontinuity in their work and family lives, and of optimism towards the future. Divergences could be, to some extent, explained by the effect of migrants´ transnational social practices and policies of states.

Understandings of transnational families in debates on Migration and development

International migration sets in motion a range of significant transnational processes that connect countries and people. How migration interacts with development and how policies might promote and enhance such interactions have, since the turn of the millennium, gained attention on the international agenda. The recognition that transnational practices connect migrants and their families across sending and receiving societies forms part of this debate. The ways in which policy debate employs and understands transnational family ties nevertheless remain underexplored. This article sets out to discern the understandings of the family in two (often intermingled) debates concerned with transnational interactions: The largely state and policydriven discourse on the potential benefits of migration on economic development, and the largely academic transnational family literature focusing on issues of care and the micro-politics of gender and generation. Emphasizing the relation between diverse migration-development dynamics and specific family positions, we ask whether an analytical point of departure in respective transnational motherhood, fatherhood or childhood is linked to emphasizing certain outcomes. We conclude by sketching important strands of inclusions and exclusions of family matters in policy discourse and suggest ways to better integrate a transnational family perspective in global migration-development policy.

Perspectives on gender, migration and transnational work: joint work of social reproduction and care in Southern Europe

This paper presents the "state of the art" and some of the main issues discussed in relation to the topic of transnational migration and reproductive work in southern Europe. We start doing a genealogy of the complex theoretical development leading to the consolidation of the research program, linking consideration of gender with transnational migration and transformation of work and ways of survival, thus making the production aspects as reproductive, in a context of globalization. The analysis of the process of multiscale reconfiguration of social reproduction and care, with particular attention to its present global dimension is presented, pointing to the turning point of this line of research that would have taken place with the beginning of this century, with the rise notions such as "global care chains" (Hochschild, 2001), or "care drain" (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2013). Also, the role of this new agency, now composed in many cases women who migrate to other countries or continents, precisely to address these reproductive activities, is recognized. Finally, reference is made to some of the new conceptual and theoretical developments in this area.

Propuesta sostenible para mitigar los efectos climáticos adversos en una ciudad costera de Argentina

Los indicadores de sostenibilidad climática constituyen herramientas fundamentales para complementar las políticas de ordenamiento del territorio urbano y pueden beneficiar la calidad de vida sus habitantes. En el presente trabajo se diseñó un indicador climático urbano para la ciudad de Bahía Blanca considerando variables meteorológicas y análisis de la percepción social. El mismo permitió delimitar la ciudad en cuatro regiones bien diferenciadas entre sí. A partir de entonces, se realizó una propuesta sostenible para mitigar los efectos adversos del clima a partir de la aplicación del método DPSIR. Las mismas estuvieron destinadas a mejorar las condiciones de vida de la población. Los resultados permitieron considerar que una pronta implementación de la misma junto con una activa participación de los actores sociales y los tomadores de decisiones es necesaria para mejorar las condiciones actuales en la que se encuentra la ciudad. Con las medidas propuestas, la población local sabrá cómo actuar ante la ocurrencia de distintos eventos extremos, eventos de desconfort climático, etc. Al ser un método sencillo, la metodología aplicada en este estudio puede replicarse en otras ciudades del mundo con el objetivo de mejorar la calidad de vida de los habitantes.

What is this thing called Historical Archaeology?

Historical archaeology, in its narrow temporal sense -as an archaeology of the emergence and subsequent evolution of the Modern world- is steadily taking pace in Spanish academia. This paper aims at provoking a more robust debate through understanding how Spanish historical archaeology is placed in the international scene and some of its more relevant particularities. In so doing, the paper also stresses the strong links that have united historical and prehistorical archaeology since its inception, both in relation to the ontological, epistemological and methodological definition of the first as to the influence of socio-political issues in the latter. Such reflection is partly a situated reflection from prehistory as one of the paper’s authors has been a prehistorian for most of her professional life.

GIS technologies and spatial organization patterns among hunter-gatherers: an archaeological case study from Southern Patagonia (southern South America)

This paper discusses some aspects of hunter-gatherer spatial organization in southern South Patagonia, in later times to 10,000 cal yr BP. Various methods of spatial analysis, elaborated with a Geographic Information System (GIS) were applied to the distributional pattern of archaeological sites with radiocarbon dates. The shift in the distributional pattern of chronological information was assessed in conjunction with other lines of evidence within a biogeographic framework. Accordingly, the varying degrees of occupation and integration of coastal and interior spaces in human spatial organization are explained in association with the adaptive strategies hunter-gatherers have used over time. Both are part of the same human response to changes in risk and uncertainty variability in the region in terms of resource availability and environmental dynamics.

¿Alessandro Geraldini antiquitatum indagator? Su papel en los estudios epigráficos de inicios del s. XVI

El interés del humanista italiano Alessandro Geraldini (1455-1524) por los monumenta antiquitatis (y especialmente por las inscripciones romanas) se pone de manifiesto en su Itinerarium ad regiones sub aequinoctiali plaga constitutas, compuesto al final de su vida. Analizamos aquí la información anticuaria contenida en su obra; señalamos por primera vez las fuentes epigráficas utilizadas como hipotexto en su Itinerarium, identificamos la síloge epigráfica de donde conoció dichos textos y, finalmente, valoramos su participación efectiva en los estudios epigráficos llevados a cabo durante su larga permanencia en España (ante 1475-1519).

Toledo, locus terribilis. Iglesia y milagro en el De viris illustribus de Ildefonso de Toledo

A mediados del siglo VII, el obispo Ildefonso de Toledo (657-667) elaboró su propio catálogo de hombres ilustres, continuando una tradición cuyos orígenes cristianos se remontaban a Jerónimo en el siglo IV. Sin embargo, en lugar de reproducir los modelos de sus antecesores cristianos, entre los que se incluyen además a Genadio de Marsella e Isidoro de Sevilla, el De viris illustribus de Ildefonso incorporaba cambios significativos en el género. Este artículo estudia el tópico del milagro en el opúsculo toledano con el objetivo de indagar qué tipo de relación estableció la Iglesia visigoda de la segunda mitad del siglo VII con este tipo de fenómenos y qué estrategias elaboró en función de él.

Juniperus navicularis - a study of Portuguese population structure and fitness

Juniperus navicularis Gand. is a dioecious endemic conifer that constitutes the understory of seaside pine forests in Portugal, areas currently threatened by increasing urban expansion. The aim of this study is to assess the conservation status of previously known populations of this species located on its core area of distribution. The study was performed in south-west coast of Portugal. Three populations varying in size and pine density were analyzed. Number of individuals, population density, spatial distribution and individual characteristics of junipers were estimated. Female cone, seed characteristics and seed viability were also evaluated. Results suggest that J. navicularis populations are vulnerable because seminal recruitment is scarce, what may lead to a reduction of genetic variability due solely to vegetative propagation. This vulnerability seems to be strongly determined by climatic constraints toward increasing aridity. Ratio between male and female shrubs did not differ from 1:1 in any population. Deviations from 1:1 between mature and non-mature plants were found in all populations, denoting population ageing. Very low seed viability was observed. A major part of described Juniperus navicularis populations have disappeared through direct habitat loss to urban development, loss of fitness in drier and warmer locations and low seed viability. This study is the first to address J. navicularis conservation, and represents a valuable first step toward this species preservation. 

Measuring the Diversity and the Integration of Film Production in Mercosur: A Social Network Analysis

Based on an original and comprehensive database of all feature fiction films produced in Mercosur between 2004 and 2012, the paper analyses whether the Mercosur film industry has evolved towards an integrated and culturally more diverse market. It provides a summary of policy opportunities in terms of integration and diversity, emphasizing the limiter role played by regional policies. It then shows that although the Mercosur film industry remains rather disintegrated, it tends to become more integrated and culturally more diverse. From a methodological point of view, the combination of Social Network Analysis and the Stirling Model opens up interesting research tracks to analyse creative industries in terms of their market integration and their cultural diversity.

Waged domestic work in Argentina: the regulation of care provision

This paper addresses the condition of domestic work in Argentina, in a perspective that draws from the literature on care work. In this approach, domestic work can be interpreted as one of the mercantile forms in which care work is socially organized, due to the persistence of the traditional sexual division of labor and the weakness of public policies. From these considerations, I develop a quantitative study on the levels of informality, precarity, and wage inequality that characterize domestic work in that country. Thereafter, I discuss the main measures adopted by the Argentine government since 2003, with the goal of reducing legal discrimination of domestic workers and promoting their formalization. On this basis, the paper highlights the advances in the recognition of domestic workers’ labor rights, while emphasizing how social and cultural restraints still permeate labor relations in this sector.

The elderly care and domestic services sector during the recent economic crisis. The case of Italy, Spain and France.

Over the past ten years in Italy, Spain and France, the demographic pressure and the increasing women’s participation in labour market have fuelled the expansion of the private provision of domestic and care services. In order to ensure the difficult balance between affordability, quality and job creation, each countries’ response has been different. France has developed policies to sustain the demand side introducing instruments such as vouchers and fiscal schemes, since the mid of the 2000s. Massive public funding has contributed to foster a regular market of domestic and care services and France is often presented as a “best practices” of those policies aimed at encouraging a regular private sector. Conversely in Italy and Spain, the development of a private domestic and care market has been mostly uncontrolled and without a coherent institutional design: the osmosis between a large informal market and the regular private care sector has been ensured on the supply side by migrant workers’ regularizations or the introduction of new employment regulations . The analysis presented in this paper aims to describe the response of these different policies to the challenges imposed by the current economic crisis. In dealing with the retrenchment of public expenditure and the reduced households’ purchasing power, Italy, Spain and France are experiencing greater difficulties in ensuring a regular private sector of domestic and care services. In light of that, the paper analyses the recent economic conjuncture presenting some assumptions about the future risk of deeper inequalities rising along with the increase of the process of marketization of domestic and care services in all the countries under analysis.