Driven by the pressures of poverty and civil strife at home, large numbers of Central Americans came to the Los Angeles area during the 1980s. This title examines the forces in Central America that sent thousands of people streaming across international borders. It discusses economic, political, and demographic changes in the Los Angeles region.

Understanding worldwide gangs through the lens of globalization

Against the backdrop of demonstrations in Seattle, Porto Alegre and Genoa and within the context of growing resistances to free trade and the current global trends, Global Tensions takes a close look at the challenges posed by the processes of globalization at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Composed of original essays by renowned scholars, this volume explores controversial topics such as free trade, women's rights, labor standards, the World Trade Organization and global tensions.

This study was the first systematically to cover those cities beyond the core that most clearly can be considered world cities: Bangkok, Cairo, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Mexico City, Moscow, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, and Singapore. Fourteen leading authorities from diverse backgrounds bring their expertise to bear on these cities across four continents and consider the major regional and global roles they play in economic, political, and cultural life. Conveying how these cities have followed various pathways to their present position, they offer multiple perspectives on the interplay of internal and external forces and demonstrate that any comprehensive discussion of world cities has to engage a multiplicity of perspectives. With an introduction by Josef Gugler and an afterword from Saskia Sassen, this substantial volume makes a major contribution to the world cities literature and provides an important impetus for further analysis.

Publisher Description

′The contributions of Woodiwiss, Lister and Sassen are outstanding but not unrepresentative of the many merits of this excellent collection′- The British Journal of Sociology From women′s rights, civil rights, and sexual rights for gays and lesbians to disability rights and language rights, we have experienced in the past few decades a major trend in Western nation-states towards new claims for inclusion. This trend has echoed around the world: from the Zapatistas to Chechen and Kurdish nationalists, social and political movements are framing their struggles in the languages of rights and recognition, and hence, of citizenship. Citizenship has thus become an increasingly important axis in the social sciences. Social scientists have been rethinking the role of political agent or subject. Not only are the rights and obligations of citizens being redefined, but also what it means to be a citizen has become an issue of central concern. As the process of globalization produces multiple diasporas, we can expect increasingly complex relationships between homeland and host societies that will make the traditional idea of national citizenship problematic. As societies are forced to manage cultural difference and associated tensions and conflict, there will be changes in the processes by which states allocate citizenship and a differentiation of the category of citizen. This book constitutes the most authoritative and comprehensive guide to the terrain. Drawing on a wealth of interdisciplinary knowledge, and including some of the leading commentators of the day, it is an essential guide to understanding modern citizenship. About the editors: Engin F Isin is Associate Professor of Social Science at York University. His recent works include Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship (Minnesota, 2002) and, with P K Wood, Citizenship and Identity (Sage, 1999). He is the Managing Editor of Citizenship Studies. Bryan S Turner is Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. He has written widely on the sociology of citizenship in Citizenship and Capitalism (Unwin Hyman, 1986) and Citizenship and Social Theory (Sage, 1993). He is also the author of The Body and Society (Sage, 1996) and Classical Sociology (Sage, 1999), and has been editor of Citizenship Studies since 1997.

Cities in a World Economy examines the emergence of global cities as a new social formation. As sites of rapid and widespread developments in the areas of finance, information and people, global cities lie at the core of the major processes of globalization. The book features a cross-disciplinary approach to urban sociology using global examples, and discusses the impact of global processes on the social structure of cities. The Fifth Edition reflects the most current data available and explores recent debates such as the role of cities in mitigating environmental problems, the global refugee crisis, Brexit, and the rise of Donald Trump in the United States.