Examining recidivism among foreign-born jail inmates: does immigration status make a difference over the long term?

The topic of ‘illegal’ immigration is currently the focus of intense ideological and policy debate in the United States. A common assertion is that those without legal immigration status are disproportionately involved in criminal offending relative to other foreign-born populations. The current study examines the long-term recidivism patterns of a group of male removable aliens compared to those foreign-born with legal authorisation to be present in the Unites States. The sample includes 1297 foreign-born males released from the Los Angeles County Jail during a 1-month period in 2002, and the follow-up period extends through 2011. Using three measures of rearrest and a rigorous counterfactual modelling approach, we find no statistically significant differences between the two groups in likelihood, frequency, or timing of first rearrest over 9 years. The findings do not lend support to arguments that removable aliens pose a disproportionate risk of repeat involvement in local criminal justice systems.     

‘Remaining awake through a great revolution’: The rhetorical strategies of Martin Luther King Jr

Martin Luther King, Jr is the most recognisable face of the black Civil Rights movement in America in the 1950s and 1960s. His ‘I’ have a Dream’ speech, given in 1963 as part of the march on Washington, has been identified as a key moment in American history, beyond just its importance to the Civil Rights movement. King's lasting place in American history has recently been codified in the declaration of his birthday as a National Holiday by the Reagan Administration in 1986. Unlike other Civil Rights leaders, King gained support from black and white communities for his program of change. In fact, King's major successes in gaining Presidential support for Civil Rights Bills in 1964 and 1965 resulted from his ability to win the support of Northern white liberals for Federal intervention in Southern race relations. Although considerable work has been done on the methods through which King's campaigns sought to tap white support for Civil Rights, scant attention has been given to one of the central vehicles through which King was able to mobilise white support, his language. Despite the publication of two recent studies on King's rhetoric, (Miller 1992; Lischer 1995) scholars have largely ignored King's rhetoric as a source of study. In this paper, I seek to fill some of this gap by analysing the key rhetorical strategies King employs to win support from his predominantly white audience in his speech ‘Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution’.     

Using Booking Data to Model Drug User Arrest Rates: A Preliminary to Estimating the Prevalence of Chronic Drug Use

Public policy is often concerned with the size and characteristics of special populations that are difficult to reach in household surveys. Chronic drug users, who often live outside conventional households, provide the illustration motivating this paper. An alternative to household surveys is to question chronic drug users where they congregate—jails, treatment programs, and shelters, for example. Using such opportunistic data for prevalence estimation raises difficult problems for statistical inference: Study subjects who arrive at the collection points cannot be deemed a random sample of the general population. However, if we could estimate the rates at which chronic drug users arrive at the collection points, then we could use those estimates to weight the sample to represent the population. This paper presents a modified Poisson mixture model used to estimate the stochastic process that accounts for how chronic drug users get arrested. It uses that model to estimate arrest rates for 38 counties using up to sixteen quarters of data from the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring survey.

Explaining the Politics of Recognition of Ethnic Diversity and Indigenous Peoples' Rights in Oaxaca, Mexico

A 'politics of recognition'– a process of political reform intended to recognise formally cultural diversity and indigenous peoples' rights – has developed in Mexico, both at the federal and at the state levels, since the early 1990s. The case of the state of Oaxaca stands out in this respect – the local constitution and nearly a dozen secondary laws were reformed during the 1990s, resulting in the conformation of the most comprehensive multicultural framework in Mexico. In this article, I attempt to explain the emergence and the particular development of Oaxaca's unique politics of recognition. Following an explanatory framework proposed by Donna Lee Van Cott, I conclude that the recognition agenda emerged in Oaxaca as legitimacy and governability was put under strain. In addition, I conclude that the (by Mexican standards) rapid and broad fashion in which it developed can be explained on the bases of the severity of the threats to governability and of the capacity of indigenous actors to influence the decision‐making process and form alliances with key political actors – i.e. the state governors.     

Biopi®acy and Intellectual Property as the Basis for Biotechnological Development: The Case of Mexico

This article provides a geopolitical and geoeconomic analysis of the strategic foundation of biodiversity, as the basis for the development of technologies that are leading the technological revolution in the early 21^st century, specifically in relation to the advance of biotechnology. It explores the mechanisms promoted by Nation States and Multinationals involved in biobusiness in order to establish global processes of biotic plundering in highly biodiverse areas—biopiracy—as well as the forms of their appropriation—patenting genetic material and its related knowledge. This dynamic is analyzed at the world level and discussed with specific reference to Mexico.     

The Troubled Quest for National Political Leadership in Fiji

Abstract

The tendency for ethnic conflict to dominate political life has impeded attempts to achieve leadership and equitable government for the multi-ethnic nation and caused crises of political instability. A review of the past attempts to achieve national leadership through electoral competition illuminates the historical context of the turbulent political process of the last decade. Overcoming the impasse of ethnic conflict is the central objective of the military-based regime which continues to rule following the first parliament elections since the 2006 coup against an ethno-nationalist government and the first based on a full common franchise and the prohibition of invidious ethnic appeals in campaigning. Inter-ethnic cooperation and cross-ethnic voting were stronger features than in past elections and perhaps augur well for achievement of the elusive broad-based national leadership.     

National Policy‐Making in Indigenous Affairs: Blueprint for an Indigenous Review Council

This article examines the dearth of any representative Indigenous role in national Indigenous affairs policy‐making and suggests a remedy. After making the case for a specific Indigenous place in national policy‐making, the article considers the reasons for the failure of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), the body that filled this brief for a decade and a half. The article then considers three possible ways of ensuring an Indigenous role in the policy‐making process: a replacement for ATSIC with specific policy powers; set seats for Indigenous representatives in federal parliament; and the creation of a new elected body whose role would be to review Indigenous affairs legislation. The article concludes that the latter proposal in particular is worth trialling as it would ensure a significant Indigenous voice in national policy‐making while learning from the mistakes that led to ATSIC's demise.     

What’s unsettling about On Settling: discussing the settler colonial present

This article considers the current relevance of settler colonial tropes, narratives and idioms by discussing the opening section of On Settling (2012), a recently published book authored by respected political scientist Robert E. Goodin. While Goodin argues that ‘settling’ should be considered a ‘normatively defensible practice’, my critique focuses on his assumed link between ‘settling’ in general and settler colonialism in particular. The first section of this article follows the narrative of settlement that underpins Goodin’s book. The second section discusses this narrative’s inherently exclusionary character, a characteristic that undermines claims to universal normative validity; while the third section appraises the language that supports it. In the fourth, conclusive, section On Settling’s apology of settler colonialism is used as a starting point for an analysis of the settler colonial present in an ‘age of unsettlement’.     

Evaluation of skin-related variants in African ancestry populations and their role in personal identification

Pigment-related genetic variants point out their role in personal identification as they can be considered predictors suitable for Forensic DNA Phenotyping (FDP) and mounting evidence suggest also their bio-geographic inferential power for gaining information about the individual geographical origin. As they could be regarded as AIMs (Ancestry Informative Markers) they are powerful tools for inferring genetic composition of admixed population. Despite the huge range of skin tones across our species, little is known about genetic basis in global population and particularly our knowledge is less precise for those showing a complex historical and genomic background. The current research aims to explore the allelic status in several SNPs mapped in selected genes known to be involved in skin pigmentation: OCA2, HERC2, SLC45A2, SLC24A5 and two intergenic regions between BEND7/PRPF18 and EIF2S2/ASIP. The genetic evaluation has been performed on selected African and African derived populations: Fon, Dendi, Bariba and Berba communities from Benin, and Afroecuadorians. Data integration has been made up merging genotypic results with available information from major biological data warehouse as Phase 3–1000 Genomes Project or International HapMap Project in order to obtain a selected populations panel useful for their use as inferential model training set to test the likelihood of correct assignment to geographically differentiated human groups. The proposed variants panel seems to properly interpret the geographic variation and some new interesting evidence could be pointed out in African mixed populations, that seem to be differentially distributed if the total panel is considered. Understanding human pigmentation architecture can provide fundamental insight into genetic interaction of complex traits and the relationship between environmental adaptation and population history. In addition, the results support the use of phenotypic inference along with bio-geographical ancestry information as valid auxiliary tools in personal identification.     

论旅游文化与原生态舞蹈的关系——以贵州苗族舞蹈为例

舞蹈作为文化的一种外化符号和表现形态,与市场经济发展、社会体制结构、文化教育环境等有着内质性关联。片面臆断旅游文化在原生态舞蹈上的影响而作肯定或否定,都不免流于局限性判断与非客观评鉴、决策。在此以贵州苗族舞蹈为研究对象,对旅游文化与原生态舞蹈二者进行双向动态探讨,以舞蹈人类学方法进行科学论证,并祈能引起反思,作出展望。