Encierro y exclusión en el mundo global

El presente trabajo indaga el proceso de reestructuración represiva en el mundo actual, en el contexto de la reorganización del poder hegemónico. Factores como el incremento de las penas, la disminución de la edad penal, la obsesión por una seguridad absoluta y una "tolerancia cero" -la criminalización de la protesta social-, permiten pensar cómo el encierro de ciertos grupos sociales marginados, y con ello el aumento de la población carcelaria, resultan funcionales al nuevo modelo estatal y global en lugares como Estados Unidos, Europa Oriental y Latinoamérica. Sobre este eje de análisis este artículo propone repensar la relación entre el modelo económico-político y el modelo penitenciario en el mundo globalizado.

"La recuperación es para obedientes" : Algunas articulaciones y ajustes metodológicos para el análisis de un tratamiento de adicción a las drogas

El escrito reflexiona sobre la adecuación teórica y metodológica del recurso a las categorías institución total, dispositivo y disciplina, para investigar problemáticas recientes en el campo de la salud-enfermedad-atención, particularmente las denominadas adicciones a las drogas. De la mano de numerosas investigaciones empíricas, ciertos conceptos se anudan en los análisis, asociándose disciplina-encierro, e institución total-espacio cerrado. El escrito propone el desacople de estas nociones y la recuperación de su productividad analítica, desde la investigación en un dispositivo terapéutico ambulatorio para la adicción a drogas del Area Metropolitana de Buenos Aires. Se aborda esta problemática desde una perspectiva etnográfica, con análisis documental, observación participante y entrevistas realizadas a profesionales de la salud de la institución, personal de apoyo y usuarios. Se concluye que las formulaciones de Goffman y Foucault ayudan a comprender la existencia de modalidades de tratamiento para las adicciones a las drogas que, sin fundarse en el encierro como técnica primordial de control de los cuerpos, sostienen un proceso de clausura y despojo significativos; y que la renuncia a homologar la clausura, y el espacio cerrado a una materialidad, permitió dar realce a una vivencia de despojo subjetivo de parte de quienes se encuentran en tratamiento en la institución

Characteristics of introduced Aphididae species, an endemic fly (Anatalanta aptera) and an introduced ground beetle (Merizodus soledadinus) on the Kerguelen Islands

The suite of environments and anthropogenic modifications of sub-Antarctic islands provide key opportunities to improve our understanding of the potential consequences of climate change and biological species invasions on terrestrial ecosystems. The profound impact of human introduced invasive species on indigenous biota, and the facilitation of establishment as a result of changing thermal conditions, has been well documented on the French sub-Antarctic Kerguelen Islands (South Indian Ocean). The present study provides an overview of the vulnerability of sub-Antarctic terrestrial communities with respect to two interacting factors, namely climate change and alien insects. We present datasets assimilated by our teams on the Kerguelen Islands since 1974, coupled with a review of the literature, to evaluate the mechanism and impact of biological invasions in this region. First, we consider recent climatic trends of the Antarctic region, and its potential influence on the establishment, distribution and abundance of alien insects, using as examples one fly and one beetle species. Second, we consider to what extent limited gene pools may restrict alien species' colonisations. Finally, we consider the vulnerability of native communities to aliens using the examples of one beetle, one fly, and five aphid species taking into consideration their additional impact as plant virus vectors. We conclude that the evidence assimilated from the sub-Antarctic islands can be applied to more complex temperate continental systems as well as further developing international guidelines to minimise the impact of alien species.

(Table A1) Species list of the high Antarctic Weddell Sea food web

Human-induced habitat destruction, overexploitation, introduction of alien species and climate change are causing species to go extinct at unprecedented rates, from local to global scales. There are growing concerns that these kinds of disturbances alter important functions of ecosystems. Our current understanding is that key parameters of a community (e.g. its functional diversity, species composition, and presence/absence of vulnerable species) reflect an ecological network's ability to resist or rebound from change in response to pressures and disturbances, such as species loss. If the food web structure is relatively simple, we can analyse the roles of different species interactions in determining how environmental impacts translate into species loss. However, when ecosystems harbour species-rich communities, as is the case in most natural systems, then the complex network of ecological interactions makes it a far more challenging task to perceive how species' functional roles influence the consequences of species loss. One approach to deal with such complexity is to focus on the functional traits of species in order to identify their respective roles: for instance, large species seem to be more susceptible to extinction than smaller species. Here, we introduce and analyse the marine food web from the high Antarctic Weddell Sea Shelf to illustrate the role of species traits in relation to network robustness of this complex food web. Our approach was threefold: firstly, we applied a new classification system to all species, grouping them by traits other than body size; secondly, we tested the relationship between body size and food web parameters within and across these groups and finally, we calculated food web robustness. We addressed questions regarding (i) patterns of species functional/trophic roles, (ii) relationships between species functional roles and body size and (iii) the role of species body size in terms of network robustness. Our results show that when analyzing relationships between trophic structure, body size and network structure, the diversity of predatory species types needs to be considered in future studies.

Experiments with low-energy antimatter

Investigations on antimatter allow us to shed light on fundamental issues of contemporary physics. The only antiatom presently available, antihydrogen, is produced making use of the Antiproton Decelerator (AD) facility at CERN. International collaborations currently on the floor (ALPHA, ASACUSA and ATRAP) have succeeded in producing antihydrogen and are now involved in its confinement and manipulation. The AEGIS experiment is currently completing the commissioning of the apparatus which will generate and manipulate antiatoms. The present paper, after a report on the main results achieved with antihydrogen physics, gives an overview of the AEGIS experiment, describes its current status and discusses its first target.

On Labor Complementarity, Cultural Frictions and Strategic Immigration Policies

In this paper we consider a model with two industrialized countries that face a flow of immigration from the "rest of the world." The countries differ in three characteristics: the labor complementarity between the "native" population and immigrants, the population size, and the magnitude of the cultural friction between the natives and immigrants. We consider a non-cooperative game between two countries' when their strategic instrument is the choice of an immigration quota and the world immigrant wages introduce the spill-over effect between two countries. We first show that the quota game admits unique pure strategies Nash equilibrium. We then compare the equilibrium choices of two countries and show that even though the larger country attracts more immigrants, it chooses lower quota than its smaller counterpart. It also turns out that higher degree of labor complementarity between natives and immigrants and a lower degree of cultural friction between two groups yield higher immigration quota. We also examine the welfare implications of countries choices' and argue that coordinated and harmonized immigration policies may improve the welfare of both countries.

International labor migration in Vietnam and the impact of receiving countries' policies

Labor export has been part of Vietnam’s socio-economic development strategy since the beginning of the doi moi era. Recent years, Vietnam has sent about 80,000 workers abroad per year. Vietnam has become a major source country of unskilled foreign workers for high-income East Asian countries. However, in these receiving countries, the desertion rate among Vietnamese workers is quite high, compared with that for workers from other countries. This paper examines the impact of Korean and Japanese policies for receiving foreign workers applied to and implemented in Vietnam, as well as the impact of Vietnamese labor sending system, on the problem of runaway workers.