Why hasn’t Uruguay enfranchised emigrants yet? This study examines an underresearched case of nonenfranchisement and engages with debates on external voting, diaspora politics, and citizenship beyond borders. Building on qualitative and participatory methods, the analysis unveils the obstacles to franchise reform despite significant progress from 2004 to 2019. Although external voting was not enacted legally, emigrants’ voting rights were debated, formally acknowledged, and encouraged. It is not the lack of norm entrepreneurs but the cumulative effect of indecisive actions that perpetuates a counterproductive dynamic and de facto uneven access to this right. An unresolved debate simultaneously advances conversations but precludes compromises, turning resolution deferral into an implicit form of regulating emigrants’ political inclusion or exclusion. Presenting original evidence, this study expands existing accounts, highlights the interaction between institutional and social drivers of change, and invites further research on the role of policy diffusion, domestic politics, and timing.

This study examines the relationship between personal experience with intimate partner violence (IPV) and political attitudes. I argue that by adopting salient legislation on violence against women, the state enables survivors to evaluate government performance on the basis of their ability to access resources for victims. As such, when survivors are unable to reach specialized public services, they might downgrade their evaluations of government performance. Focusing on Brazil and using survey data and qualitative interviews, this study finds that IPV survivors who have not used specialized services hold more negative views of government performance compared to nonvictims. Further analysis, including a series of placebo tests, lends additional support to the main results. This study has an intersectional component, as it also examines the relationship between race and access to services. These findings have implications for victims’ democratic rights and access to justice.

Comparative political economists often divide Latin American labor markets into those with secure employment (insiders) and those without it (outsiders). Yet this division misses an increasingly important class of contract workers, who hold formal labor contracts but often lack labor stability, welfare benefits, and organizing rights. When do unionized and contract workers share preferences and engage in joint organizing? And when do their efforts result in policy change? Drawing on case studies of Chile and Peru, I argue that unionized workers mobilize contract workers when they see their own membership under threat and when they share physical workplaces with contractors. Labor coalitions succeed in policy reform when they leverage divisions within the business community and upcoming elections to build support. This article thus pushes scholars to move beyond dichotomies of formal versus informal workers and study how contract workers matter for collective action and labor policy outcomes.

This article examines the interplay between transnational criminal actors (essentially human smugglers), local crime groups, and drug cartels in the phenomenon of trafficking in persons coming from Central America along Mexico’s eastern migration routes. The analysis focuses on sex trafficking, compelled labor for criminal activities, and other forms of labor trafficking. Through qualitative research that involved 336 semistructured interviews with migrants, activists, and other persons familiar with the subject, this work describes and maps trafficking trends throughout Mexico’s eastern migration routes. It also sheds light on the role of drug cartels and other crime groups (local and transnational) in these activities.

In many Latin American countries, social policy preferences among economically vulnerable citizens seem largely unpolarized. However, current studies rarely confront citizens with realistic policy options and often lack the required detail to capture the heterogeneity of economic vulnerability. Drawing on the dualization debate, we expect individuals facing different degrees of vulnerability to show distinct social policy preferences. Using original survey data from Mexico and a conjoint experiment, our findings reveal a complex divide, where the most economically vulnerable are least supportive of public solutions. Sharing the home with a formal labor market participant does not seem to mitigate social policy skepticism among the vulnerable. In contrast, magnified vulnerability via household composition reduces support for welfare policy expansion. Social policy preferences become much less distinct when policy design alternatives are introduced, suggesting reduced expectations about the state’s role and a lack of clarity about the tangible benefits of social policy reform.