Dynamics of Exclusion in Migrant Healthcare in Ciudad Juárez
One of the most basic needs of a human being is healthcare. Access to it is difficult for anyone, but it is much more so for migrants who often find themselves in places where their “otherness” and their legal status determine the level and quality of care they qualify for. This paper looks at the dynamics of exclusion of migrants in healthcare services by examining the opinions and actions of healthcare workers in the medical care system in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, where hundreds of thousands of migrants are currently stranded on their way to the United States. A key conclusion in this research is that migrants are not altogether excluded from healthcare. The level and quality of care depends instead on criteria left very much to the discretion of healthcare professionals who often rely on informal criteria to administer care, including legal status and other sociocultural variables.
Private corporations, international standards and public externalities
This chapter considers the evolution of protections enjoyed by private corporations operating in Mexico. The protections enjoyed by a corporation can take many forms, from tax benefits to the enshrinement in legislation of certain business privileges to privatization in the form of transfer from government to corporations of specific administrative functions (which are often quite lucrative). The interest protections here are those derived from foreign direct investment. Foreign investors often insist on loan conditions preferential for them if they want to commit their capital to a certain company; They have a set of precedents and common practices to refer to when they insist. This This chapter will consider whether and how companies receiving such investment adopt aspects of their lenders behavior to the detriment of their national counterparts, governments, employees or civic societies involved. Simply put, do private corporations receiving foreign direct investment function as recipients of creditor regulations, and if so, how? This chapter will consider this question from the perspective of corporate history and the history of international lending.
Dynamics of exclusion and investor-State disputes in Mexico
Magdalena Bas Vilizzio & Laura Gómez-Mera In the midst of a crisis of legitimacy in the investor-State dispute settlement regime, in 2018 Mexico adhered to the Washington Convention establishing the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). The same year, the Treaty between Mexico, the United States and Canada (T-MEC or NAFTA 2.0) was signed with an innovative investor-State arbitration regime that implies differentiated commitments for each State party. Although this agreement follows new international trends regarding restrictions for the initiation of disputes, Mexico continues to be part of an extensive network of international investment agreements, which have determined that until 2021 it will be the third most demanded State in Latin America and the Caribbean. , behind Argentina and Venezuela. The data corresponding to the first half of 2023 present changes that lead to Mexico being the most in-demand State in that period. Lawsuits such as those of Legacy Vulcan or Odyssey against Mexico have captured the attention of public opinion due to their environmental links and social implications. On the other hand, in 2020, the indigenous Zapotec community of Unión Hidalgo, together with the human rights organization ProDESC, filed a civil lawsuit in the Paris court against the EDF company for wanting to establish a wind farm on indigenous lands without prior consultation. . In this context, the logic of exclusion is manifested both in the response of foreign investors to the advance of state regulation in environmental matters, climate action or human rights, and in the exclusion of local and indigenous communities in the enjoy their rights in these areas. Even if the State intends to avoid or stop the registration of an arbitration against it, phenomena such as regulatory freezing also operate as dynamics of exclusion from state regulation and/or conditioning of the public policy space. Our section begins with a description of the legal and regulatory frameworks for the protection of foreign direct investment in Mexico, as well as national and international laws for the protection of human and environmental rights. Then, the tensions between both regulatory frameworks and the consequences they have on the dynamics of exclusion are discussed. In light of the above, we seek to analyze the political, legal and social impacts in three investment disputes involving Mexico (2018-2023) and that manifest tension with public policies for the protection of the environment or human rights. The first two, Legacy Vulcan v. Mexico (2019) and Odyssey v. Mexico (2019) are cases of investor-state disputes filed before the ICSID against Mexico. The third, on the other hand, was promoted by civil society organizations without the support of the Mexican government, against the French company EDF (2020). The analysis of these three cases allows us to differentiate between different logics of exclusion and inclusion.
Dynamics of exclusion and investor-State disputes: situation map in Mexico
In the midst of a crisis of legitimacy in the investor-State dispute settlement regime, in 2018 Mexico adhered to the Washington Convention establishing the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). The same year, the Treaty between Mexico, the United States and Canada (T-MEC or NAFTA 2.0) was signed with an innovative investor-State arbitration regime that implies differentiated commitments for each State party. Although this agreement follows new international trends regarding restrictions for the initiation of disputes, Mexico continues to be part of an extensive network of international investment agreements, which have determined that until 2021 it will be the third most demanded State in Latin America and the Caribbean. , behind Argentina and Venezuela. The data corresponding to the first half of 2023 present changes that lead to Mexico being the most in-demand State in that period. Lawsuits such as those of Legacy Vulcan or Odyssey against Mexico have captured the attention of public opinion due to their environmental links and social implications. In this context, the logic of exclusion is manifested both in the response of foreign investors to the advance of state regulation in environmental matters, climate action or human rights, and in the exclusion of communities from the effective enjoyment of their rights in such areas. Even if the State intends to avoid or stop the registration of an arbitration against it, phenomena such as regulatory freezing also operate as dynamics of exclusion from state regulation and/or conditioning of the public policy space. In light of the above, we seek to analyze the political, legal and social impacts of investor-State disputes involving Mexico (2018-2023), in which tension is manifested with public policies for the protection of the environment or human rights. humans.
“Inclusive exclusion” and “exclusive inclusion” of people in precarious mobility in access to health in Mexico
My work provides a sociological perspective on a topic regularly addressed by the State from the sole point of view of Public Policies: access to health for people on the move. Based on the case of Nuevo León, my objective is to question how the dynamics of inclusion/exclusion are manifested in the field of health in Mexico. Although the discursive objective is “guarantee health for all people”, it seems that foreigners are only partially and unequally included than locals; or in other words, included and excluded at the same time (Luhmann). Beyond a binary distinction between “included” and “excluded” that would impoverish the problem, I try to question the effect of both the functioning of social stratification and individual factors on effective access to health. For example, the health system may formally guarantee access to health “for all”, but the effective enjoyment of the right to health depends largely on other invisible structural dynamics: the othering of migrants, social representations, capacities economic, or current interethnic relations, among others. Faced with this situation of “differential inclusion” (Nielsen and Mezzadra), people on the move develop their own parallel strategies of resistance and “therapeutic assemblages” (Odgers and Olivas).