Why Listening to Children and Young People is Important in Family Justice

During the last 30 years, there has been a growing body of evidence indicating that children and young people often feel marginalized when their parents are making critical decisions that will shape their young lives, and they are calling for family justice professionals to hear their voices. This article explores the research evidence, examines the relevant theories about child development, and demonstrates how a focus on age‐related competency fails to take account of children's subjective meanings about their lives. The authors consider a model of participation first designed to understand adult participation in government and show how this can be usefully applied to understanding children's participation in family justice.     

Institutional design and organisation of the civil protection national system in Mexico: the case for a decentralised and participative policy network

Mexico established the Civil Protection National System (CPNS) following the disastrous 1985 earthquake that killed nearly 10,000 people and devastated large sections of Mexico City. The institutional design and structure of the CPNS embraced citizen demands for greater participation in the Federal government's disaster prevention and response programmes. The authors examine the Federal government's response to disasters since 1985 and conclude that the CPNS operates in a manner that is contrary to the precepts that shaped its design and structure. The authors conclude that orthodox beliefs and assumptions about disasters rationalise the current operations of the CPNS. They argue that a holistic perspective of disasters, rather than a change in institutional design and organisation, is required in order to operationalise intergovernmental cooperation and citizen participation. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gendered Academic Adjustment among Asian American Adolescents in an Emerging Immigrant Community

Research on the academic adjustment of immigrant adolescents has been predominately conducted in large cities among established migration areas. To broaden the field’s restricted focus, data from 172 (58% female) Asian American adolescents who reside within a non-traditional or emerging immigrant community in the Southeastern US were used to examine gender differences in academic adjustment as well as school, family, and cultural variables as potential mediators of gender differences found. Results suggest that girls report significantly higher educational goals, intrinsic academic motivation, and utility value of school compared to boys. These gender differences are statistically mediated by ethnic exploration and family processes, most prominently, family respect. School connectedness and perceived discrimination are also associated with academic adjustment at the bivariate level, suggesting that academic success may be best promoted if multiple domains of influence can be targeted.     

Geopolitical transformation in rural Mexico: toward new social and territorial boundaries in an indigenous municipality of central Mexico.

After decades of being one of the most loyal and reliable sources of PRI electoral votes, rural Mexico has become the arena of partisan political competition. The increasing political party rivalry in rural areas is not only related to a legal or formal institutional transformation at the national or sub-national level but to the ejido endogenous reconfiguration. Today local interest groups and supporters of opposition political parties are challenging the once hegemonic ejido authority, associated with the PRI regime, which since 1930 has ruled most Mexican rural villages. The ejido as a political institution is yielding many of its political functions to the empowered municipal government. As I will show in this paper, a major transition in rural Mexico is well under way, moving from agrarian toward municipal governance. The new political order challenges the ethnic and territory boundaries associated with the ejido rule forged in rural Mexico during the post-revolutionary era.     

Gradual institutional change and media influence: The case of Petrobras in Brazil

The media as a social actor emits discourses that reflect in the institutional context, influencing the process of institutionalization of existing practices. One view about the media in organizational studies is that it is a mechanism of organizational complexity reduction, and in this way, it is the focus of the managers' attention to certain aspects of the environment, which has implications for the way that everyday tasks are accomplished in organizations. In this sense, an interest has emerged to understand how the dissemination of information about the acquisition of a refinery in Pasadena, Texas, by Petrobras was the embryo of an international corruption scandal that compromised the organization's image but was also responsible for the emergence of new organizational practices. The data and information used are from secondary sources: the newspapers and magazines with the largest national circulations. The findings reveal that the media sought to influence individuals by elaborating its understanding of the context without being consistently coherent over time. We propose an analytical model of how the media can act in the gradual change of organizational and actors' practices.     

College students’ perceptions of police use of force: do suspect race and ethnicity matter?

Incidents of police use of force continue to draw a considerable amount of attention from both researchers and the public alike. The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between suspect race and ethnicity and perceptions of police use of force among college students. Using a vignette research design with manipulated independent variables, this study seeks to answer the question: Do suspect race and ethnicity affect college students’ perceptions of police use of force? Three vignettes were developed regarding an incident in which an encounter between a suspect and a police officer resulted in the officer using force. College students were randomly assigned to one of the three vignettes and were asked to complete a questionnaire. Results indicate that although suspect race and ethnicity do not predict perceptions of police use of force among college students, there are significant respondent race and gender effects. Male and white respondents are significantly more likely to perceive police use of force as justified compared to female and non-white respondents. The policy implications of these findings for police-citizen interactions are discussed.     

Latin American ‘free-trade unionism’ and the cold War: an analysis based on educational policies

The political education of workers and their leaders was viewed as a strategic concern in the cold war period’s bipolar world. This article discusses how this issue was dealt with by Latin American reformist trade unions grouped together in the Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT, for its Spanish acronym), analyzing the educational policies promoted by its Inter-American Institute for Labor Studies (IIES), focusing specifically on its educational program for trade union instructors. We argue that the nature of the education provided changed, shifting from a rationale based on explicit ideological confrontation to a more focalized technical type of training. We claim that this shift started in the early 1960s, when the Alliance for Progress was launched.