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Much has been debated about the presence of undocumented workers along the South Texas border, but these debates often overlook the more complete dimension: the region’s longstanding, undocumented economies as a whole. Borderlands commerce that evades government scrutiny can be categorized into informal economies (the unreported exchange of legal goods and services) or underground economies (criminal economic activities that, obviously, occur without government oversight). Examining long-term study, observation, and participation in the border region, with the assistance of hundreds of locally embedded informants, The Informal and Underground Economy of the South Texas Border presents unique insights into the causes and ramifications of these economic channels. The third volume in UT–Pan American’s Borderlife Project, this eye-opening investigation draws on vivid ethnographic interviews, bolstered by decades of supplemental data, to reveal a culture where divided loyalties, paired with a lack of access to protection under the law and other forms of state-sponsored recourse, have given rise to social spectra that often defy stereotypes. A cornerstone of the authors’ findings is that these economic activities increase when citizens perceive the state’s intervention as illegitimate, whether in the form of fees, taxes, or regulation. From living conditions in the impoverished colonias to President Felipe Calderón’s futile attempts to eradicate police corruption in Mexico, this book is a riveting portrait of benefit versus risk in the wake of a “no-man’s-land” legacy.
Using original qualitative ethnographic field interviews and quantitative field survey results, Consumption, Informal Markets, and the Underground Economy explores the rationale for and model of 'off the books' consumption in a borderlands environment.
This book presents a curated collection of research on ethnic entrepreneurship, focusing on the informal sector. The common theme of the expert contributions is that entrepreneurial motivation to start informal business is paramount to ethnic groups. In particular, the book explores the factors influencing ethnic groups to start informal businesses and how this creates innovative business activity. It also charts the evolution of ethnic entrepreneurship and informal businesses in advanced and emerging economies; the diversity of entrepreneurial strategies; the economics of co-ethnic employment; and the issues surrounding immigrant entrepreneurship. The book is a valuable resource for researchers in the field of informal ethnic entrepreneurship, as well as for policy makers and entrepreneurs.
This updated edition of the classic study examines life on the Texas-Mexico border, including the effects of NAFTA, drug violence, and immigration crises. Batos, Bolillos, Pochos, and Pelados offers an authoritative portrait of the people of the South Texas/Northern Mexico borderlands. First published in 1999, the book is now extensively revised and updated to cover developments since 2000, including undocumented immigration, the drug wars, race relations, growing social inequality, and the socioeconomic gap between Latinos and the rest of American society—issues of vital and continuing national importance. An outgrowth of the Borderlife Research Project conducted at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Batos, Bolillos, Pochos, and Pelados uses the voices of several hundred Valley residents, collected by embedded student researchers and backed by the findings of sociological surveys, to describe the lives of migrant farmworkers, colonia residents, undocumented domestic servants, maquiladora workers, and Mexican street children. This wide-ranging study explores social, racial, and ethnic relations in South Texas among groups such as Latinos, Mexican immigrants, wealthy Mexican visitors, Anglo residents or tourists, and Asian and African American residents. With extensive firsthand material, the book addresses the future integration of Latinos into the United States.
Advancing U.S. Latino Entrepreneurship examines business formation and success among Latinos by identifying arrangements that enhance entrepreneurship and by understanding the sociopolitical contexts that shape entrepreneurial trajectories. While it is well known that Latinos make up one of the largest and fastest growing populations in the U.S., Latino-owned businesses are now outpacing this population growth and the startup business growth of all other demographic groups in the country. The institutional arrangements shaping business formation are no level playing field. Minority entrepreneurs face racism and sexism, but structural barriers are not the only obstacles that matter; there are agentic barriers and coethnics present challenges as well as support to each other. Yet minorities engage in business formation, and in doing so, change institutional arrangements by transforming the attitudes of society and the practices of policymakers. The economic future of the country is tied to the prospects of Latinos forming and growing business. The diversity of Latino experience constitutes an economic resource for those interested in forming businesses that appeal to native-born citizens and fellow immigrants alike, ranging from local to national to international markets. This book makes a substantial contribution to the literature on entrepreneurship and wealth creation by focusing on Latinos, a population vastly understudied on these topics, by describing processes and outcomes for Latino entrepreneurs. Unfairly, the dominant story of Latinos—especially Mexican Americans—is that of dispossession and its consequences. Advancing U.S. Latino Entrepreneurship makes clear the undiminished ambitions of Latinos as well as the transformative relationships among people, their practices, and the political context in which they operate. The reality of Latino entrepreneurs demands new attention and focus.
Blood Oranges traces the origins and legacy of racial differences between Anglo Americans and ethnic Mexicans (Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans) in the South Texas borderlands in the twentieth century. Author Tim Bowman uncovers a complex web of historical circumstances that caused ethnic Mexicans in the region to rank among the poorest, least educated, and unhealthiest demographic in the country. The key to this development, Bowman finds, was a “modern colonization movement,” a process that had its roots in the Mexican-American war of the nineteenth century but reached its culmination in the twentieth century. South Texas, in Bowman’s words, became an “internal economy just inside of the US-Mexico border.” Beginning in the twentieth century, Anglo Americans consciously transformed the region from that of a culturally “Mexican” space, with an economy based on cattle, into one dominated by commercial agriculture focused on citrus and winter vegetables. As Anglos gained political and economic control in the region, they also consolidated their power along racial lines with laws and customs not unlike the “Jim Crow” system of southern segregation. Bowman argues that the Mexican labor class was thus transformed into a marginalized racial caste, the legacy of which remained in place even as large-scale agribusiness cemented its hold on the regional economy later in the century. Blood Oranges stands to be a major contribution to the history of South Texas and borderland studies alike.
Although entrepreneurship in the informal economy occurs outside state regulatory systems, informal commercial activities account for an estimated 30% of economic activity around the world. Informal entrepreneurship goes unmonitored despite the fact that it significantly contributes to poverty reduction and economic development. As a result, the informal sector is open to unethical practices including corruption, worker exploitation, and natural environment abuse to name just a few. In the media, debates have formed around whether informal entrepreneurship should be assisted or legitimized. Hence, a deep understanding of the phenomenon is vitally important. This book is the first on the market to offer models and approaches to informal entrepreneurship as well as to its prospects for economic development. Offering an in-depth examination of informal entrepreneurship in many different countries, it reveals the motivations for engaging in entrepreneurship in the informal economy, characteristics of informal entrepreneurship, and informal entrepreneurs’ response to ethical issues. This volume illustrates the relationship between formal and informal economies and the conditions for the benefits of informal entrepreneurship to outweigh its disadvantages. And finally, it gives recommendations about when and how the informal economy can be formalized, which sectors should be formalized, and which ones can remain informal. This book offers much-needed guidance for stakeholders involved in economic development programs and scholars and entrepreneurs interested in the field of informal entrepreneurship as it is developing around the globe.
Economy and Architecture addresses a timely, critical, and much-debated topic in both its historical and contemporary dimensions. From the Apple Store in New York City, to the street markets of the Pan American Highway; from commercial Dubai to the public schools of Australia, this book takes a critical look at contemporary architecture from across the globe, whilst extending its range back in history as far as the Homeric epics of ancient Greece. The book addresses the challenges of practicing architecture within the strictures of contemporary economies, grounded on the fundamental definition of ‘economy’ as the well managed household – derived from the Greek oikonomia – oikos (house) and nemein (manage). The diverse enquiries of the study are structured around the following key questions: How do we define our economies? How are the values of architecture negotiated among the various actors involved? How do we manage the production of a good architecture within any particular system? How does political economy frame and influence architecture? The majority of examples are taken from current or recent architectural practice; historical examples, which include John Evelyn’s villa, Blenheim Palace, John Ruskin’s Venice, and early twentieth century Paris, place the debates within an extended critical perspective.
With the end of apartheid rule in South Africa and the ongoing economic crisis in Zimbabwe, the border between these Southern African countries has become one of the busiest inland ports of entry in the world. As border crossers wait for clearance, crime, violence, and illegal entries have become rampant. Francis Musoni observes that border jumping has become a way of life for many of those who live on both sides of the Limpopo River and he explores the reasons for this, including searches for better paying jobs and access to food and clothing at affordable prices. Musoni sets these actions into a framework of illegality. He considers how countries have failed to secure their borders, why passports are denied to travelers, and how border jumping has become a phenomenon with a long history, especially in Africa. Musoni emphasizes cross-border travelers' active participation in the making of this history and how clandestine mobility has presented opportunity and creative possibilities for those who are willing to take the risk.
For a post-human hitchhiker, human life – with its anxiety, ageing, illness and constant need for problem-solving – may look unviable. Yet, for humans, the life struggle is softened by human touch, human emotion and human cooperation. The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 3 continues the journey of the two previous volumes into the world’s open secrets, unwritten rules and hidden practices. It focuses on issues of emotional ambivalence and pressures of the digital age. The informal practices presented in this volume demonstrate the urgency of alleviating tensions between continuity and all-too-rapid change and the need to tackle the central problem of modern societies – uncertainty. The volume takes a reader on a ‘biographical’ journey through elusive, taken-for-granted or banal ways of getting things done from over 70 countries and world regions. It offers innovative understanding of the significance of fringes, and challenges the assumption that informality is associated exclusively with poverty, underdevelopment, the Global South, oppressive regimes or the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. It also maps the patterns of informality around the globe; identifies specific informal practices in a context-sensitive way; and documents their ambivalent impact on people engaged in problem-solving, on societies in which these problems arise, and on humanity overall. Praise for The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 3 ‘This book tells a story of human cooperation. It is not the narrative you’ll find in books teaching you how to solve problems. It is an assemblage of something much more endemic, fundamentally human, and much more pervasive than we tend to think of informality. It involves money and power, but also the alternative currencies of gaining advantage or gaming the system.’ Bruce Schneier, author of A Hacker's Mind ‘Alena Ledeneva’s latest database of rule bending is a goldmine for documentary makers and storytellers. Entries from 70 countries, covering a human lifespan from Chinese “anchor babies” to funeral feasts in Azerbaijan, offer remarkable insights into the way the world really works.’ Lucy Ash, journalist