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Although the theory of cumulative causation posits a “saturation point” at which all members of a rural community who are potential transnational migrants will have migrated, in the case of dynamic out-migration centers, this saturation point may never be reached. This is because growth centers – the growth often having been propelled by wages and remittances of prior migrants – attract in-migrants from poorer, less dynamic, surrounding ranchos that eventually become incorporated in transnational migration networks of the more dynamic rancho. It is also due to intermarriage as well as friendship and ritual kinship ties between members of the core rancho and surrounding ranchos.

Drawing on shared research and educational trajectories, the authors illustrate the importance and challenge of tracing Black gay social life in urban ethnography. This chapter investigates the ephemeral nature of Black gay geographies using live experience and data collection from Los Angeles. Guided by Joseph Beam’s (1984) key sociological insight, we offer and amplify a new warrant for urban ethnography emergent from the study of Black and LGBTQ life, visibility is survival. In so doing, we aim to underscore the importance of ethnographic inquiry to understand the spatial and communal navigation of cities by Black gay people. In examining the unique Black gay maps of a rapidly changing Los Angeles, we articulate the multitude of ways that ethnographic inquiry serves as a correction to the record and a form of documenting threatened histories and everyday realities of Black LGBTQ life.

Los Angeles and California are leading tourism brands and destinations, but what is the future given warmer climates, rising sea levels, water shortages, peak oil, and the continuing trend of urbanization? Studies predict that urban Los Angeles will have a climate that will be unbearable to future tourists and the rural landscape of California will undergo radical reshaping. Does this mean that Los Angeles will be akin to the fiction film Logan's Run? This chapter considers metropolis Los Angeles and the Californian hinterland in 2050. It portrays the future as a reversal of fortunes where ecotourism is an exclusive experience for the mega rich and tourism for the middle classes is restricted to an urban environment and controlled mass tourism excursions.

Purpose – This chapter examines the campaign, election and governance of Antonio Villaraigosa as Los Angeles’ first Latino mayor in over 130 years. The intersection of electoral coalitions, governing regimes, political incorporation, and deracialized/racialized campaign methods has wide-ranging implications for 21st century urban and racial politics. This study seeks to better understand the high expectations placed upon minority mayors as they develop policies and programs that benefit minorities and others as well.Method – This chapter employs the case study method. A form of qualitative research grounded in theory, scientific in nature, and investigative in approach. The examination of official city documents, archives of local newspapers, exit poll data, and select interviews join to make a rigorous ethnography. The data were complemented by the use of racial politics as a lens through which to interpret results.Findings – This chapter provides empirical insights about the realities of racial politics, the impact of extreme demographic shifts, and the prospects for coalition formation. Governance and resource allocation among minorities by minorities may be the challenge of the 21st century. Deracialized/racialized campaigns and elections make governing a difficult proposition. Even when broad progressive movements are underway (shared ideology) those arrangements seem much more fragile when long-term alliances cannot be forged.Research implications – This chapter applies the case study method. This approach uses the researcher as the primary tool of data collection and employs rigorous methods to avoid bias and ensure accuracy of data. However, because of the chosen approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Hence, we recommend further testing of the research propositions.Practical implications – This chapter posits implications for long-term coalition building and alliance formation among minority voters; the realities of race and representation; and a re-examination of governance style (“racialized” vs. “deracialized”) in municipal government.Originality/value – This chapter intersects urban and racial politics and purports to examine 21st century minority voting behavior and the impact of such behavior upon the policy process (policy responsiveness). Hence, can political incorporation be better achieved with the interests of minorities’ merged (universal interests)?

Entrepreneurship educators have recently employed various computer- and game-based teaching methods to develop students’ entrepreneurship knowledge and competencies. However, our understanding of the learning outcomes (LOs) of such methods for students and specifically gamification teaching techniques is fragmented and underdeveloped. This chapter aimed to narrow the gap by systematically analyzing the peer-reviewed empirical studies on gamification and students’ entrepreneurship LOs (ELOs).

This study employed the systematic literature review method to examine the papers on the intersection between gamification and entrepreneurship education (EE). Some of 80 papers were retrieved from Google Scholar, Web of Science and Scopus databases and 16 papers were included in the final analysis. The papers were analyzed based on the key LOs that teaching entrepreneurship using gamification have for students.

This study found limited literature on the interrelationship between gamification and students’ ELOs. The majority of these studies suggested a positive association between gamification and students’ ELOs. These ELOs were classified into four key groups including cognitive, behavioral, social/interpersonal and skill-based LOs. This analysis explored the huge gap in empirical studies on the impact of gamification on students’ ELOs.

This exploratory study is limited to the systematic review of the empirical researches published in scientific journals. Of the numerous game-based and simulation teaching methods, this systematic analysis focused on gamification and its effects on cultivating entrepreneurial knowledge and competencies in students. Future studies should include published and unpublished papers in other sources (such as books, book chapters, working papers and theses) and other types of technology-based entrepreneurship teaching methods.

Educators and computer-based game designers may use the findings of this study to improve the effectiveness of gamified EE and training programs by connecting the objectives and content of the programs to students’ ELOs and examining if the programs create the intended ELOs in students.

This chapter is one of the first attempts that examines students’ LOs of gamification in EE. This chapter contributes to the limited validated knowledge and understanding of the impact of gamification on ELOs of students.

This chapter provides in-depth case studies of two large urban public libraries in the United States and how communities and libraries respond to reductions mandated by their funding agencies. Boston Public Library (BPL) and Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) are both in communities that faced, and are still facing, recessionary budget pressures that began in 2007. Each community and library system has responded in different ways. In the recent past, in both Boston and Los Angeles, the Mayors and City Councils have supported libraries that have come to define the great cultural heritage and heart of these cities in the past. In 2010, however, both cities faced unheard of budget pressures. In Boston, there was a budget shortfall of $3.6 million. In Los Angeles, the budget shortfall began in 2007 due to huge increases in pension payments to city workers, particularly in the police and fire departments (City of Los Angeles Web site, 2011). In Boston, the community was told there could be branch closures. In Los Angeles, the budget shortfall created severe personnel, material, and service cuts. How each library and their leaders responded to those challenges differed. The level of support that their communities provided and the manner in which it was provided also differed. The two cases describe what can happen when budget crises occur and how libraries and their communities deal, or do not deal with them. The cases also reflect how the two library systems serve metropolitan areas with very distinct characteristics.

We need a locally relevant curriculum because it is engaging and leverages community knowledge strengths. However, new teachers are not always aware of the resources available to make a locally relevant curriculum. Here in New Mexico, Los Alamos is a location with many resources detailing its purpose and existence. These resources coupled with so much notoriety inside and outside the state make Los Alamos a place that lends itself to culturally relevant instruction. Specifically, graphic novels provide a unique medium for students and teachers alike to start learning about the city that started the Atomic Age: Los Alamos and begin applying that knowledge more broadly. I, being a student and a teacher from New Mexico, offer my own understanding of a locally relevant curriculum utilizing three graphic novels about Los Alamos, its people, and its stories.

Unprecedented levels of investment in transit and transit-oriented development in Los Angeles County have not resulted in gains for transit-dependent populations or overall higher ridership for that matter. They have instead saddled them with inordinate cost burdens and displacement pressures. Yet racialised, low-income communities that rely on transit are far from passive victims. Rather, they are participating in advocacy campaigns that penetrate decision-making venues and procedures and co-create institutional practices, policy priorities, and public and private investments that serve their interests and build a Los Angeles that is more widely accessible and affordable. This chapter presents a case study of the Alliance for Community Transit-Los Angeles (ACT-LA), a regional coalition of over 40 community-based organisations at the helm of direct-action policy campaigns and participatory planning initiatives to advance transit justice and equitable transit-oriented communities (TOC). After examining ACT-LA's origins in the LA-based movement for community benefits agreements, the analysis focuses on how ACT-LA has combined political mobilisation for ballot-box measures with participatory policy-making and planning processes to advance just, equitable, sustainable transit systems, and TOC. The concluding discussion considers the implications of the ACT-LA case for reformulating participatory policy-making and planning around transportation and land use to further equity and climate goals.

The production of the ‘good life’ or the ‘less bad-life’ (Berlant, 2007, 2011), especially among generations of the Marcos dictatorship and the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue revolutions (henceforth, EDSA revolutions) in the Philippines, is animated by the ‘mobility imperative’ (Farrugia, 2016). The mobility imperative includes processes that encourage or demand mobility (Farrugia, 2016) for individuals and institutions. It figures in various ‘systems of practice’ (Levitt, 1998, 2001) among families in migrant-sending communities, government and corporations that magnify how migration is the ticket to better life (McKay, 2012) or its glorification as a heroic act (de los Reyes, 2013, 2014). Among the generations of the Martial Law and the EDSA revolutions, therefore, the ‘good life’ is hinged upon departure as professionals (e.g. nurses and engineers), workers in elementary occupations (e.g. construction and domestic workers) or mail-order brides or pen pals. Put simply, the good life in these generations is a function of remittances.

This chapter examines how the contemporary generation of young people construct the ‘good life’ in differential and new terms (de los Reyes, 2023; McKay & Brady, 2005) from previous generations. Using interviews and vision boards of left-behind children (15–18 years old), it argues that left-behind children critically appraise the ‘mobility imperative’. The chapter shows that there is a growing imagination of alternatives to the migration-induced good life among left-behind children, and therefore, they gradually refuse the ‘mobility imperative’. For them, the aspired good life consists of potentially being employees or entrepreneurs in their own villages and living a life with their own families (de los Reyes, 2019, 2020).