What explains voter attitudes toward immigration in Latin America? This article argues that increased refugee arrivals moderate the impact of social identities on immigration attitudes. We propose that informational cues associated with increased immigration make cosmopolitan identities less important—and exclusionary national identities more important—determinants of immigration preferences. Analyzing 12 Latin American countries from the 2017–2022 wave of the World Values Survey, we demonstrate that cosmopolitanism is positively associated with pro-immigration attitudes, but only in countries experiencing low-to-moderate refugee inflows. Conversely, nationalism is negatively associated with pro-immigrant attitudes, and increasingly so as refugee inflows increase. The uneven distribution of refugee migration has therefore reshaped public opinion in Latin America by moderating the effects of competing social identities (i.e., cosmopolitanism and nationalism). These findings contribute to broader debates on the behavioral impacts of immigration by highlighting an indirect mechanism by which increased immigration may generate anti-immigrant hostility.

The article analyses an original database of 177 Latin American women activists killed that had some connection with feminist social movements from 2015 to 2023. A growing body of literature has focused on the killings of socio-environmental activists in Latin America and where they occurred. However, their activisms are under-researched, precisely because feminist social movements and activists have frequently been killed while advocating for women’s rights in the subcontinent. This article focuses on the circumstances, a few reasons portrayed in newspaper events, and the perpetrators of such violence. Based on a literature review, I argue that taking into account the recent narcodynamics of the region, it is possible to understand such violence within the context of drug-related violence, but also—and more likely—to consider those killings as political feminicides. Political feminicides are then examined largely through transfeminicides and peasant/communitarian activists.

In Latin American comparative politics, a tension exists between North Americanization and parochialism. While certain academic scholarship is published in Scopus-indexed journals that engage with “mainstream” Global North literature, other works are found in non-indexed outlets, focusing solely on their home countries and fostering parochial scientific communities. To assess this tension in graduate program curricula, we compiled an original dataset of comparative politics readings from 21 universities across nine Latin American countries. Our network analysis reveals a centralized structure influenced by mainstream readings, challenging the expectation of parochialism. In addition to the mainstream content, universities tend to incorporate readings from regional journals to facilitate cross-case comparisons. However, these materials are inconsistently shared, resulting in fragmentation of content from Latin American sources. Our findings contribute to and challenge the North Americanization versus parochialism debate, showing that future scholars receive similar mainstream training but encounter diverse regional materials during their PhD studies.

Latin American governments are increasingly adopting mano dura initiatives to combat gangs, organized crime, and insecurity. While mano dura has been a concept of increasing empirical interest, there seems to be limited conceptual clarity about the wide spectrum of strategies developed to combat crime and associated fear. This article proposes a definition of mano dura that has three different dimensions, each of them containing specific elements. The form of mano dura depends on formal, informal, and rhetorical practices. Drawing on 46 scholarly works in the social sciences, we develop our definition anchored in the knowledge of Latin American policing strategies, contributions on responses to crime in the region, and the conceptual development literature. With the purpose of supplementing our effort to standardize the usage of the term with the need to retain a degree of conceptual differentiation, we also offer a stylized model to better classify policing strategies in Latin America. In our stylized model, the numerous ways policies and narratives as well as their implementation (or not) interact can be grouped into four broad categories: full mano dura, institutional mano dura, performative mano dura, and covert mano dura.

Recent research has shed light on the impact of pre-electoral coalitions on government formation in presidential democracies. However, the fact that pre-electoral coalitions are not automatically transformed into coalition cabinets has often gone under the radar. In this article, I argue that the importance of pre-electoral pacts for government formation depends on the degree of legislative polarization. When parties are distant from one another in the ideological spectrum, presidents face more difficulties in breaking away from the pre-electoral pact and rearranging their multiparty alliances. Conversely, when polarization is not pervasive, presidents have more leeway to build coalition cabinets different from the ones prescribed by pre-electoral coalitions. Drawing on a dataset of 13 Latin American countries, the results support my claim and suggest that the relationship between government formation and the concession of office benefits for pre-electoral coalition members is more nuanced than previously assumed.

In this paper, we explore the bases of Mexican national identity construction and use an array of conceptions of nationhood to study contemporary attitudes towards foreigners’ sociopolitical rights in Mexico. Rarely is the study of national identity connected with immigration policy preferences in general, and even less so outside advanced countries. We explore the content of Mexicanness and use this content to understand public opinion preferences towards the integration of diverse groups of foreigners in Mexico. We employ 2016 survey data and a survey experiment and find the persistence of xenophobic attitudes towards the Chinese community in Mexico. We also show that civic conceptions of nationhood cannot counter contemporary anti-Chinese sentiment, in great part because the civic belonging of the Chinese was defined on racial terms. Lastly, we show that these processes of national identity construction, based on the marginalization of certain groups, are persistent and shape todays’ attitudes and preferences towards the incorporation of different groups of foreigners. It remains to be explored whether material interests associated with the recent Chinese “going out” policy may be able to counter deep-seated anti-Chinismo