Explores the way writers address the formation and fate of the contemporary American working class in an age of neoliberal globalization. Specifically, the essay examines Russell Banks's 1985 novel Continental Drift, which interweaves the stories of two characters who pull up stakes and head to Florida in search of a better life: an oil furnace repair man from New Hampshire and a young, single mother from Haiti.
Newly arrived from Cuba, Angelica, Dora, Marina, and Damaris attempted to negotiate new surroundings and immigrant identities, building a sense of home for themselves and their families. Data from qualitative interviews, classroom observations, and focus group conversations revealed hopes that by acquiring English language skills, they would improve their quality of life in their new country. Struggles included personal factors situated in their pasts in Cuba and their new surrounds in the Miami Cuban exile enclave, contexts that were further complicated by uncertain expectations of new lives in Miami and the overwhelming task of learning a new language at a local adult education center.
With stark income inequalities rooted in its dual currency economy, Cuba is taxing down high and unearned incomes, while trying to raise national productivity and official salaries through performance-related pay and labor restructuring. Such measures are portrayed as an abandonment of socialism, but in Cuba are discussed in terms of historic socialist debates about distribution and the balance of moral and material incentives at work, in a society still characterized by common ownership, social protection, and collective debate.
Examines the extent to which publicly-listed Caribbean companies provide social and environmental disclosures, and the factors related to their disclosure practices. It is motivated by the dearth of studies of social and environmental disclosures among publicly listed Caribbean firms.
Tests for the relationship between foreign direct investment and economic growth among some developing countries distributed between three geographic areas, over the period 1990-2005. Findings show that foreign direct investment do positively affect economic growth in Africa and Latin America/the Caribbean.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
230 p., For almost five decades, the United States has maintained a comprehensive economic embargo on Cuba. U.S.-based travel to the island is severely restricted, and most financial and commercial transactions with Cuba are illegal for U.S. citizens. In the 1990s the United States tightened the embargo further, seeking to promote change in Cuba by depriving the Castro government of hard currency revenues. And yet the stalemate remains. This book argues that the embargo has not been particularly effective in achieving its primary goal. The United States has not only been unable to stifle the flow of foreign investment into Cuba but has actually contributed to the recovery of the Cuban economy, particularly from the deep recession it entered following the demise of the Soviet Union.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Updates year-end economic and banking statistics presented in: Bank of Guyana. Annual report and financial statement of accounts. Continues: Half year report and statistical bulletin
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Updates year-end economic and banking statistics presented in: Bank of Guyana. Annual report and statement of accounts, and: Bank of Guyana. Annual report and financial statement of accounts./ Includes the June issue of: Statistical bulletin (Bank of Guyana); Title from cover. Continued by: Half year report (Bank of Guyana : 2004), 7 vols.
