Maquila Industry Research Articles

Un-Bordering the Species: Plantationocene Counter-Epistemologies in Sleep Dealer and Maquilapolis

ABSTRACT: Borderlands film has traced throughlines from (neo)colonial regimes of coerced labor and ecocide to modern day, extractive industries like the US/Mexico maquila industry. This essay analyzes two films from distinct generic traditions, the sci-fi film Sleep Dealer (2008) and the documentary Maquilapolis (2006), to explicate how scale and framing in each depict and construct counter-epistemologies for surviving the Plantationocene and its logic of division, separation, and domination. Sleep Dealer utilizes bird's-eye-views and endoscopic camera scales to link a dammed river system to protagonist Memo's Cruz's body, which is similarly drained of its labor-power in an infomaquila , a futuristic cybernetic maquila factory. Maquilapolis captures haunting, timelapse shots of workers and slow-pan, bird's-eye view shots of toxified landscapes to link the back-breaking and dehumanizing labor of the factory with the chemical pollution that transfers invisibly from the maquila to the river and into people's bodies. Yet, the body, as a site of toxification and racial violence, inspires unique forms of coalition between the laborer and the ecosystem as laborers uncover connections between their oppression and the river system's degradation. As a result, both films capture new alliances between self and landscape, including the milpa , a biodiverse dryland farm; the cartolandia , informal housing structures made up of salvaged organic and inorganic materials recycled from river pollution; "aquaterrorism," acts of postcolonial violence against mega dams; and alternative narrative forms that center the river as being, friend, and subject. The essay concludes that being and feeling with the ecosystem is one way to counteract and survive the permanent damages that the plantation has incurred to the individual, the community, and the world's ecosystem.

Un-Bordering the Species: Plantationocene Counter-Epistemologies in Sleep Dealer and Maquilapolis

ABSTRACT: Borderlands film has traced throughlines from (neo)colonial regimes of coerced labor and ecocide to modern day, extractive industries like the US/Mexico maquila industry. This essay analyzes two films from distinct generic traditions, the sci-fi film Sleep Dealer (2008) and the documentary Maquilapolis (2006), to explicate how scale and framing in each depict and construct counter-epistemologies for surviving the Plantationocene and its logic of division, separation, and domination. Sleep Dealer utilizes bird's-eye-views and endoscopic camera scales to link a dammed river system to protagonist Memo's Cruz's body, which is similarly drained of its labor-power in an infomaquila , a futuristic cybernetic maquila factory. Maquilapolis captures haunting, timelapse shots of workers and slow-pan, bird's-eye view shots of toxified landscapes to link the back-breaking and dehumanizing labor of the factory with the chemical pollution that transfers invisibly from the maquila to the river and into people's bodies. Yet, the body, as a site of toxification and racial violence, inspires unique forms of coalition between the laborer and the ecosystem as laborers uncover connections between their oppression and the river system's degradation. As a result, both films capture new alliances between self and landscape, including the milpa , a biodiverse dryland farm; the cartolandia , informal housing structures made up of salvaged organic and inorganic materials recycled from river pollution; "aquaterrorism," acts of postcolonial violence against mega dams; and alternative narrative forms that center the river as being, friend, and subject. The essay concludes that being and feeling with the ecosystem is one way to counteract and survive the permanent damages that the plantation has incurred to the individual, the community, and the world's ecosystem.

Capital psicológico como mediador entre adicción al trabajo y burnout en trabajadoras en la industria de maquila en Guanajuato

El objetivo de este estudio está orientado hacia el entendimiento de las relaciones que existen entre la adicción al trabajo, el capital psicológico y el burnout en una muestra de trabajadoras mexicanas en la industria de maquila en Guanajuato, en el que se buscó identificar si el capital psicológico, media entre las otras dos variables. Para este propósito, se calcularon las correlaciones de Spearman entre las variables de estudio y posteriormente se efectuó un análisis de mediación teniendo como variable independiente a la adicción al trabajo, variable mediadora el capital psicológico y variable dependiente el constructo burnout.
 Para el estudio se integró una muestra de 451 de trabajadoras de la industria maquiladora en Guanajuato, México. Los hallazgos del estudio indican una correlación fuerte y positiva (r = + 0.73) entre la adicción al trabajo y el burnout; así como correlaciones fuertes y negativas entre la adicción al trabajo y el capital psicológico (r = - 0.67), por una parte, y entre el capital psicológico y el burnout (r = - 0.62) por otra.
 En cuanto al análisis de mediación, se pudo corroborar que el capital psicológico, media parcialmente entre la adicción al trabajo y cada dimensión del constructo burnout.

Информационные системы оценки технологических достоинств пшеницы

В практике пищевой промышленности востребованы высокоточные и экспрессные методики определения технологических качеств пшеницы и прогнозировании будущих потребительских свойств продуктов ее переработки. Перспективным является использование для этих целей комплексного показателя твердозерности, однако на сегодняшний день его определение сопряжено с низкой точностью, высокими трудозатратами, использованием дорогостоящего инструментария. Целесообразны разработки автоматизированных систем анализа размолотого зерна в помольных линиях на мукомольных предприятиях. Такие системы могут использоваться для определения целевого назначения производимой муки. В статье описана автоматизированная система оценки технологических свойств продуктов переработки зерна в процессе помола. В основе системы лежат методики формирования данных о форме и размерах частиц в потоках размола зерна. Для этого производимые цифровой камерой Sony IMX219 микроснимки частиц размола зерна подвергались обработке микрокомпьютером Raspberry Pi 3 разработанным программным обеспечением на основе библиотеки алгоритмов компьютерного зрения OpenCV. Для реализации работы такой системы в помольных линиях производства была сконструирована лабораторная установка. Поскольку для успешного анализа частиц компьютерным зрением необходимо устранение эффекта слипания частиц, пользовались для этой цели совместным влиянием электростатических полей и вибрации. Оптимальные технические параметры подобраны опытным путем - электрическое напряжение около 24 кВ и частота вибраций анализируемых образцов размола зерна муки около 45 Гц. Для получения высокого напряжения использовался генератор коротких импульсов на основе высокочастотных тиристоров ТЧ63. Меняя напряжение питания генератора можно плавно менять напряжение на выходе от 1 до 35 кВ. Один вывод высоковольтного источника питания заземлен, второй вывод подключен к датчику-регистратору частиц размола. Разработан алгоритм оценки твердозерности пшеницы на основе данных о форме и размерах частиц в потоках размола зерна – построено соответствующее регрессионное уравнение. Для оценки точности алгоритма сравнивали результаты оценки твердозерности образцов зерна с референтным методом – по показателю микротвердости - способности зерна сопротивляться деформации (вдавливанию). Микротвердость зерна оценивали на микротвердомере ПМТ-3 с квадратной пирамидкой. Установленные эмпирические зависимости позволяют производить оценку твердозерности зерна - с точностью не менее 3 %. Благодаря экспрессности такой оценки технологических свойств продуктов переработки зерна, имеется возможность вмешаться в процесс помола и скорректировать его для повышения эффективности.

The Role of Green Attributes in Production Processes as Well as Their Impact on Operational, Commercial, and Economic Benefits

This paper reports a second-order structural equation model composed of four variables: the green attributes before and after an industrial production process, the operating benefits, the commercial benefits, and the economic benefits. The variables are related by means of five hypotheses and are validated statistically with information obtained from 559 responses to a questionnaire applied to the Mexican maquila industry. The model is evaluated using the technique of partial least squares and the results obtained indicate that the green attributes before and after the production process have a direct and positive effect on the obtained benefits, mostly on the operational ones. It is concluded that companies that are focused on increasing their greenness level must monitor and evaluate the existence of green attributes in their production process to guarantee benefits and make fast decisions if required due to deviations.

El efecto mediador de la satisfacción laboral en la relación entre la percepción de oportunidades de empleos alternativos y el compromiso organizacional. Un estudio de caso en una maquila tamaulipeca

El artículo tiene por objetivo analizar si la satisfacción laboral ejerce un efecto mediador enla relación entre la percepción de alternativas de empleo y el compromiso organizacional en laindustria maquiladora. Para verificar el modelo estadístico se realizó una prueba empírica con 145 operadores de línea en una maquiladora de insumos electrónicos en Victoria, en el estado de Tamaulipas (México). La base datos fue analizada por medio del programa estadístico SPSS. Entre los resultados, se establece que, aunque la percepción de alternativas de empleo afecta de manera negativa el compromiso organizacional, este efecto es mediado totalmente por la satisfacción laboral. El valor de este trabajo radica en que es la primera investigación de este tipo en el mercado laboral de la industria maquiladora. En conclusión, se determina que el efecto de la percepción de alternativas de empleo no es directo, sino indirecto; esto debe alentar a las gerencias de recursos humanos para esforzarse en reducir los comportamientos opuestos al compromiso organizacional. En otras palabras, aunque la percepción de ofertas externas de otros posibles empleadores influye en la decisión de rechazar el compromiso organizacional, es la satisfacción laboral la que finalmente determina la decisión de establecer o no establecer un compromiso organizacional con el actual trabajo.

Little value creation, articulation and propagating forces: A hypothesis for the Mexican manufacturing sector

This paper evaluates the impact of Mexican trade and productive integration processes during the last 20 years. It finds evidence that growing per capita income in Mexico is directly related to its “trade opening”, but is inversely related to the growth of its manufacturing export industry. Specifically, for each point of growth in “trade opening” (as a proportion of GDP) per capita income grew by 0.22%; while each point of increase in the share of industrial exports reduced income per person by 0.09%.To explain this apparent contradiction between the positive effect of “trade opening” and the negative impact of productive manufacturing specialization, we examined the characteristics of Mexico's industry. Results show that although Mexico's export-led industrialization successfully adapted to the world market and transformed its productive, business, organizational and technological structure, it did not translate into adequate macroeconomic benefits due to the absence of strong value dissemination forces over the rest of the economy.In this sense, poor internal linkages in the maquila industry, its high propensity to import, and its limited value added generation, among other elements, led the Mexican industry to operate as an export enclave. In those circumstances, manufacturing does not generates positive externalities nor articulations, nor strong disseminations that increase and multiplies value in other sectors of industry, thus limiting expansion effects and restraining or even reducing–under some specific circumstances–per capita income growth.

Little Value Creation, Articulation and Propagating Forces: A Hypothesis for the Mexican Manufacturing Sector

This paper evaluates the impact of Mexican trade and productive integration processes during the last 20 years. It finds evidence that growing per capita income in Mexico is directly related to its “trade opening”, but is inversely related to the growth of its manufacturing export industry. Specifically, for each point of growth in “trade opening” (as a proportion of GDP) per capita income grew by 0.22%; while each point of increase in the share of industrial exports reduced income per person by 0.09%.To explain this apparent contradiction between the positive effect of “trade opening” and the negative impact of productive manufacturing specialization, we examined the characteristics of Mexico’s industry.Results show that although Mexico’s export-led industrialization successfully adapted to the world market and transformed its productive, business, organizational and technological structure, it did not translate into adequate macroeconomic benefits due to the absence of strong value dissemination forces over the rest of the economy.In this sense, poor internal linkages in the maquila industry, its high propensity to import, and its limited value added generation, among other elements, led the Mexican industry to operate as an export enclave. In those circumstances, manufacturing does not generates positive externalities nor articulations, nor strong disseminations that increase and multiplies value in other sectors of industry, thus limiting expansion effects and restraining or even reducing – under some specific circumstances – per capita income growth.

El empleo calificado y no calificado en la manufactura de México ante la crisis de 2009

El artículo analiza el impacto en el empleo ante los cambios en el producto de las ramas o subsectores manufactureros de México sucedidos a raíz de la crisis del 2009. Con información en datos de panel se aplica el modelo de efectos fijos para captar el impacto que tiene el producto sobre el empleo calificado y no calificado. Los resultados indican que en periodos de crisis o de baja demanda, las empresas tienden a conservar el trabajo calificado y a despedir trabajadores no calificados, siendo más afectadas las maquiladoras y las industrias tradicionales intensivas en trabajo no calificado.

The hidden face of mobbing behavior Survey application of the Cisneros inventory in a maquila facility in Mexico

The importance of this paper lies on the identification of the components of mobbing behavior at the maquila industry. Although the mobbing factor has been widely studied, studies made in the outsourcing industry in Mexico are scarce. The aim of this research was to diagnose the degree of mobbing that the surveyed employees showed as well as individual differences among the employees that suffered this problem. This paper applied the Cisneros inventory. The authors tested the original 43 item version with data collected from a sample of 150 direct employees working at a maquila production center for Radars and GPS Instruments in Ensenada, Baja California. Even though results show low levels of mobbing since only 8% of the surveyed employees experienced high degree of the harassment, 138 of the surveyed employees have suffered at least one of the mobbing behaviors from coworkers in the last six months. Correlations showed high significance between the variables of the model.

Mexico: Value added in exports of manufactures

In the last few decades, Mexico’s export sector has seen extraordinarily robust growth and has undergone sweeping changes, with exports of manufactures, especially intermediate- and high-technology products, leading the way. At the same time, however, the gap between exports and gdp has been widening, which indicates that the export sector is underperforming as a driver of economic growth. This study is based on the idea that the ability of exports to galvanize the economy will be heightened if export activity leads to an expansion of the domestic market. Whether or not it will do so depends on the amount of national income that is incorporated into exports. The authors estimate how much national value added is contained in exports of manufactures, by sector and by category (direct income, i.e., income generated directly by export activity, and indirect income, i.e., income incorporated into the inputs used to produce export goods). This information is provided for total exports of manufactures, exports of the maquila industry and non-maquila exports.

Mexican women in American factories: free trade and exploitation on the border

List of Figures, Tables, and Boxes List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1. American Factories in Mexico Chapter 2. The Border City of Nogales Chapter 3. House to House: The Method of Analysis Chapter 4. The History of the Maquila Industry Chapter 5. Are the Maquilas Sweatshops? Chapter 6. Liberation or Exploitation of Women Workers? Chapter 7. Fancy Factories and Dilapidated Dwellings Appendix 1. Maquilas in Nogales in 2004 Appendix 2. Survey of Maquila Workers Notes Glossary Bibliography Index

Employee Perceptions Of The Environmental Risk: Maquila Industries On The Mexico-U.S. Border

The Mexican maquila (assembly-for-export) industry has been involved in four main environmental risk areas of concern that affect residents of the border; these risks are: water-pollution, waste-management, air-pollution and water-availability. Our study shows a descriptive evaluation for the employees and/or supervisors perceptions of the environmental risk represented by their maquila industries located in the Mexican-U.S. border city of Nuevo-Laredo; where, its expected labor-force for year 2008 (an estimate of 24,480 employees) has been experiencing some reductions mainly due to the high cost of energy supplies and because some maquilas have emigrated to China. Furthermore, an estimate of 61.0% of these maquilas employees perceive an appropriate level of application of environmental laws. Although the majority of the maquila industry (80.5%) at this border city possesses production-quality certifications, merely an estimate of 17.1% of such industrial-units (maquilas) have an international environmental-quality certification (ISO14000). The majority of the interviewed labor personnel agreed that an ISO14000 system in combination with any environmental risk reduction plan is the most effective strategy to prevent and minimize pollution.

Modeling production externalities in the maquila industry

In the past decade, the maquiladora export industry surpassed both tourism and petroleum products to become the number one source of earned foreign exchange for Mexico. The continued growth of the maquila industry suggests that there may be significant production spillovers into the local environments. Dynamic modeling, using STELLA, provides a framework for quantifying the environmental impacts emanating from the growth of the maquila industry, focusing on wastewater treatment consequences and resulting infrastructural policy considerations. Such detailed modeling of industrial, infrastructural, and ecological linkages has not yet been a feature of research on this region, despite the potential for significant human health ramifications. An environmental model is therefore developed for two focal urban communities, Nogales and Mexicali, facing potential wastewater treatment concerns due to the growth of nearby maquila factories. In the former case, the analysis revealed the inadequacy of the capacity planning for the treatment of effluent; in the latter case, conservative projections reveal that the system upgrades should be able to handle demands through 2020.

The Quality of Social Existence in an Indian Community in Mexico due to Globalization

In Mexico, the establishment of the maquila industry has provoked adverse effects and consequences in terms of social and cultural life—that is, the case in the rise of alcohol consumption. There are around 300 maquila industries in and surrounding the city of Teziutlán, Puebla, that produce clothing of different kinds for exportation at low-cost wages. Consequently, it is no longer easy to find agricultural workers because people prefer to work in the maquilas. The author analyzes the effects of globalization via the installation of maquila industries on the sociocultural aspects of the members of an Indian community in Mexico and pays special attention to the transformation of alcohol consumption patterns of the inhabitants of this particular Indian village.

Seeing Through Photographs of Borderlands (Dis)order

The charged geopolitical region of the US–Mexico border has provided a rich source of material for theorists, artists, and filmmakers invested in documenting the material and discursive effects of transnational capitalism in everyday life. The infamous maquila industry, the alarming rate of embodied and structural gendered violence in border cities such as Juarez, and the para-militarization of the border are just a few of the factors that make the border region germane to an analysis of the complex and dynamic relationship between global economic processes and violent transformations in cultural formations. As “Seeing Through Photographs of Borderlands (Dis)Order” illustrates, however, many of the efforts to document that relationship as it plays out on the border are uncritically framed by a discursive narrative of order and disorder, such that contemporary capitalism is seen as wreaking havoc on tradition, community, a liberal notion of “freedom,” and gender relations – all of which are putatively positioned outside of or before capitalism. What are the political implications of this rhetorical strategy, particularly when it is punctuated by the realist tools of documentary evidence, as it is, for instance, in the central text engaged in my essay, Charles Bowden's Juarez: The Laboratory of Our Future? “Seeing Through Photographs of Borderlands (Dis)Order” is centrally concerned to show that while the visual documentation of suffering on the border to tell this story of order and disorder might bring into sharper (and more affective) relief the tangibly devastating effects of uneven processes of globalization, it also lends itself to a reification of the culture of poverty narrative.

The Strategic Role of Mexican Labor under NAFTA: Critical Perspectives on Current Economic Integration

This article aims to reveal the precise meaning of Mexico's export platform by focusing on maquiladoras and the disguised maquila industry. In both sectors, imported components account for 75 to 90 percent of export value. As a result, benefits for the Mexican economy are basically restricted to wages, that is, the value of the labor incorporated into the exports. The authors argue that what is actually taking place is the disembodied exportation of labor or, alternatively, that the workforce is being exported without requiring Mexican workers to leave the country. The authors thus demystify the purported orientation of Mexican exports toward high-value-added manufactured goods and reveal the regressive movement of the export platform.

Corporate responsibility and the US–Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA): Are they compatible?

The global garment-manufacturing industry will confront significant changes from 2005, when the system of quotas established under the Multi-Fibre Arrangement comes to an end. These changes pose serious threats to jobs in the Central American assembly plants, or maquila industry. One possibility, however, is that ‘politically correct’ consumption could provide a niche market for firms that are committed to corporate social responsibility and the respect for human rights, and that this might even be a way to improve working conditions in the region. In this sense, notwithstanding the grave risks it represents for the very poorest, the market could serve to bring about changes favourable to working people.

Spillovers from MNCs through worker mobility and technological and managerial capabilities of SMEs in Mexico

SummaryAt international level, there is a consensus that the Multinational Corporations (MNCs) can function as a channel of diffusion of knowledge and technology, and that they can contribute to accelerate the economic development processes in the countries where they are established, by means of technological spillover effects. The spillovers are beneficial if they are captured by the firms linked to the MNCs.Human capital spillovers are associated with the continuous training of employees by MNCs and the mobility of these employees toward domestic firms. These spillovers, can contribute to the development of technological and managerial capabilities of the local firms, which in turn increase their absorptive capacity,This paper explores the spillovers from the MNCs through worker mobility toward small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and discusses to what extent the firms created by former employees of the MNCs have larger technological and managerial capabilities than those whose owners did not have this previous experience. This paper focuses on the case of the MNCs that operate under the maquila regime in Mexico and on the machine shops industry, a sector of SMEs that is a supplier of these MNCs. The source of information is a census carried out between August and October 2002 on this sector in a Mexican locality. A classification of the firms in terms of their technological and managerial capabilities was carried out by means of two multivariate statistical methods: multiple correspondence analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis. Then, a comparison of the capabilities of these firms in each cluster is carried out, differentiating between those firms whose owners have had previous work experience in the maquila industry from those that have not.The evidence shows an heterogeneous sector, grouped in 6 different clusters according to the technological and managerial capabilities of the firms. A positive relationship was found between the previous experience of the SMEs’ owners in the maquilas, and between the specific job position occupied by the firms’ owners, and the technological and managerial capabilities of the firms. The owners that occupied managerial job positions seem to have acquired technical and managerial skills that are required for their new firms.

Technological capability accumulation in the 'maquila industry' in Mexico

From the mid-1960s, 'maquila' plants were established in the Mexican Northern border. The Mexican model was based on foreign firms establishing their own assembly plants. Even though this model was less successful than that of East and South East Asian in terms of several techno-economic indicators, it has largely contributed to employment generation. However, as a result of internal learning process and changes in the global firms strategies, several 'maquilas' operating in Mexico have undergone important qualitative changes. During the 1990s there was a change in the nature of their productive and technological activities towards more complex products and more innovative technological activities. In contrast, other dimensions have evolved slowly, such as the engagement of Mexican suppliers in global supply chains. The aim of this paper is to discuss an analytical framework to help study the technological capability accumulation in the 'maquila' industry in Mexico. Based on that the paper seeks to examine levels of technological capability accumulation of three maquilas, and to bring to light some stylized facts of the accumulation process in this industry. The analytical framework proposed draws on the taxonomy of technological capabilities proposed by Bell & Pavitt (1995) for the manufacturing industry in developing countries and its further adaptations and applications carried in Figueiredo (2001) and Ariffin & Figueiredo (2003, 2004). This paper adapts it to the particularities of the 'maquila' industry in Mexico. The new taxonomy includes technical functions that are relevant to this industry and redefines activities that correspond to various levels of accumulation. This paper is based on a case study methodology. The cases are the business lines of three maquilas in Ciudad Juarez: Thomson Multimedia, Philips Corp. and Delphi Corp. Two business lines correspond to the consumer electronics industry and the third is specialized on electronic products for the auto-parts industry. The evidence was collected between April 2001 and October 2002 in Ciudad Juarez. The main source of information are interviews conducted on the personnel of different hierarchical positions within each 'maquila'.