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Purpose: The first objective is to explore how narcotelenovelas and news can be compared in their representation of drug violence and figures. The second is to explore a method which identifies intertextual references in fiction by contrasting them with journalistic reports. Methodology/approach: Qualitative content analysis is of three narcotelenovelas: El Señor de los Cielos, El Chapo, and Narcos: México. After documenting clear historical references and figures, a search was made through news engines and portals to make a comparison of the fictional versus journalistic representation of such references. Findings: Many elements of narcotelenovelas such as events and public figures are highly comparable to those described in news. While producers openly warn that they changed facts for dramatic purposes, it’s possible to propose hypotheses in which audiences construct their historical memories based on fictional narratives. Research limitations: This chapter does not offer an exhaustive list of intertextual references from all three narcotelenovelas. Originality/value: This type of comparative analysis between fiction and journalism hasn’t been explored for the study of narcoculture media products. The author poses a hypothesis, in which fiction contributes significantly to collective memories and imaginaries, especially when it appeals to historical references audiences might identify.

Organised crime, including drug trafficking groups, are often thought of as male-dominated industries. However, even when leveraging romantic or kinship ties, women can be active participants and exert influence in the business operations of these groups. Based on interviews with Mexican and Japanese government officials, indictments, and investigative journalism, this chapter compares the notorious and long-lived Mexico-based Sinaloa drug trafficking group and the Japanese Yakuza Yamaguchi-gumi organisations. It shows that despite substantial differences in their criminal activities as well as the illicit markets in which they operate, women perform active roles along the supply chains. Furthermore, it shows that despite constructions of gender roles that see women as intruders in organised crime, women attain positions of authority even when their membership is not always formally recognised.

As a growing literature points out (Aronowitz, 2009, pp. 165–213), HT becomes criminal because it involves displacing, exploiting and commercializing a human being, all of these necessitating transportation, trade and torture to varying degrees to survive and succeed (Nair, 2010, pp. 12–19). John T. Picarelli informs us, these began ‘in the Americas’ from 1502, ‘when Portuguese traders brought the first African slaves to the Caribbean’ (Picarelli, 2011, p. 180, but see all of Chapter 9). African slaves continued to be imported into the United States until 1808, but by the time the 13th Amendment ‘outlawed’ indentured servitude in 1865, the 645,000 slaves shipped from Africa had multiplied beyond 4 million, to whom were added (a) Chinese women, ‘to work in brothels … to serve both the Chinese and white communities’ after the 1860s; (b) Europeans, through collusion between ‘criminal syndicates’ and ‘U.S. [law enforcement] officials’, in what was called ‘the white slave trade’ from the 1880s (Shelley, 2010, pp. 235, 237); and (c) Hispanics (Alba & Nee, 2003; Gordon, 1964; Suárez-Orozco, 1998), in tandem with the dominant U.S. migratory inflows and economic needs after the 1960s (Borjas, 1999; Huntington, 2004, pp. 30–45), and the emergence of sex tourism after the Cold War (Clift & Carter, 2000; María Agustin, 2007; Rogers, 2009; Thorbek & Bandana Pattanaik, 2002).

The national immigrant rights campaign of 2006 stands as one of the largest mobilizations by people of color in US history, yet less scholarly attention has been given to systematically comparing these mobilizations at the local level. To develop an understanding of what led to sustained mobilization, a comparative case study analysis of seven cities in California's San Joaquin Valley is employed. The empirical evidence is based on interviews with key organizers and participants, newspaper documentation of protest events, census data, and other secondary sources. I find that the presence and size of policy threats explained the initial protest during the spring of 2006 in all localities, but cities with elaborate resource infrastructures (preexisting organizations, histories of community organizing, and coalitions) had more enduring levels of collective action.

Communities are critical sites for studying the politics of inequality within neoliberal capitalism. We illustrate this by providing regional case studies of the enactments and outcomes of three types of neoliberal policies in the United States: (1) cutbacks in family planning policies, (2) municipal underbounding and failures to provide public infrastructure within unincorporated communities, and (3) “tough on crime” policies leading to mass incarceration. Building on insights from intersectional feminist theory and using evidence from in-depth interviews from three Southwestern communities, we argue that neoliberal capitalism is compounding intersecting inequalities affecting women of color. In particular, we claim that neoliberal policies at the local and state levels are compromising the reproductive autonomy and public health of women of color and creating new challenges for their family care work.

This paper aims at a better understanding of contemporary women’s relationship paths and their reasoning behind them. Qualitative interviews with 48 rural and urban women from Western Mexico were conducted and analyzed using a thematic approach and data discussed from a feminist, gender approach and late modernity approach. Findings reveal civil and religious marriages were the paths two-third of women followed to start a family and that women living in permanent and alternating cohabitation did not seek to marry. Women held ambivalent views on marital life and poorer and less-educated women, particularly urban participants, had no choice but to marry. Findings on reasoning reveal a more complex and diverse reality than previous sociodemographic studies have portrayed, where pragmatism and social order were the main causes for marrying and cohabitation. Narratives show premarital sex and the symbolism of marriage and family are changing. A comparative approach between contexts of study, age groups, civil status, and social strata enriched and strengthened the discussion of the findings. The results were contrasted with existing Mexican literature from different fields. A larger qualitative study is needed to broaden the scope of the findings made by this study, whilst large-scale studies should consider either the use of mixed approaches or the inclusion of items that allow them to identify the elements of social and cultural change. The study could help to demystify women’s attitudes toward marriage, sex, and love; a field currently sprinkled with western romantic love values and gender-driven idealizations. This paper might be of interest for social demographers, anthropologists, sociologists, and historians conducting research on these themes from feminist and gender perspectives.

The purpose of this study was to explore the innovative and proactive practices adopted by subsistence businesses under the COVID-19 health contingency. Evidence of the current situation and the contingency practices that businesses have implemented in dealing with the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was collected through a literature review of secondary information sources: bibliographic and hemerographic, as well as in-depth interviews with five owners of artisanal and agricultural subsistence businesses.

Faced with uncertainty, artisanal and agricultural subsistence businesses have adopted innovative and proactive survival practices. The closure of markets, the absence of tourism, the suspension of non-essential activities, the lack of mobility and transportation, and the closure of access in rural communities are some of the realities these businesses are experiencing. Subsistence businesses in marginalised areas are a long way from accessing information technologies for online sales and home deliveries, which are implemented by most businesses in urban areas. In contrast, they revert to ancestral marketing practices such as bartering and low prices to earn an income for family food. Despite the loss of over 50% of subsistence businesses in urban and semi-urban areas, online sales through social media and websites, socially responsible initiatives, along with government support programmes, have helped others stay in business.

In this chapter, the authors take a close look at the current discourse of food system relocalization. From the perspective of theories of justice and theories of neoliberalism, food relocalization is wrapped up in a problematic, and largely unexamined, communitarian discourse on social justice. The example for California's localized governance of pesticide drift demonstrates that localization can effectively make social justice problems invisible. The authors also look at the EU context, where a different form of localization discourse emphasizes the local capture of rents in the value chain as a neoliberal strategy of territorial valorization. Examining Marsden et al.'s case study of one of these localization projects in the UK, the authors argue that this strategy does not necessarily lead to more equitable forms of rural development. In fact, US and EU discourses are basically two sides of the same coin. Specifically, in neoliberal biopolitical form, they both obscure politics, behind either the discourse of “value” in the EU or “values” in the US. Rather than rejecting localism, however, the authors conclude by arguing for a more “reflexive” localism that harnesses the power of this strategy while consciously struggling against inequality in local arenas.