Neoliberal Economic, Social, and Spatial Restructuring: Valparaíso and Its Agricultural Hinterland

The analysis of the neoliberal restructuring of Chilean port cities and their hinterland suggests there was a functional coupling of neoliberalisation, precarisation, reterritorialisation, extraction, and logistics. To address this process properly, we expanded the boundaries of our analytical scale to include not only the port city, but also its hinterland, and be able to examine the flow of commodities and labour. The analysis demonstrated that the effects of neoliberal restructuring of Valparaíso and its hinterland has had interconnected ambivalent effects. Although social and economic restructuring of agricultural hinterland and port terminals in Chile increased land and port productivity and economic competitiveness, this pattern of capitalist modernisation benefitted neither the increasing masses of temporary precarious workers in the countryside nor port cities such as Valparaíso, marked by territorial inequality, socioecological damage, urban poverty, and a growing sense of closure of the littoral and reduced access to the ocean. These negative externalities and frictions have triggered local political controversies, commercial and economic disputes, labour strikes, and urban and socio-territorial conflicts

Precariedad, trabajo y reproducción: el trabajo de las mujeres en el sector exportador de uva en Chile y Brasil

The expansion of export agribusiness in Latin America leads to a growing feminization of the workforce. However, women are incorporated in this sector under unfavorable conditions- occupying low-skilled, low-income and temporary jobs. This article intends to investigate the precariousness of the working and living conditions of women who work as wage earners in San Francisco Valley (Brazil) and in Elqui/Limarí Valley (Chile) grape export sector, putting forward an analysis that integrates both the sphere of production and reproduction. The aim of this article is to contribute to identify the existing interconnections between productive and reproductive universes, as well as the main mechanisms implemented by companies for extracting surplus value and outsourcing costs to households.  La expansión del agronegocio de exportación en Latinoamérica ha ido acompañado de una creciente femeinización de la fuerza de trabajo. No obstante, las mujeres han sido incorporadas en condiciones poco favorables, ocupando empleos de baja calificación, bajos ingresos y temporales. El presente artículo propone investigar la precariedad de las condiciones de trabajo y de vida de las mujeres que trabajan como asalariadas en el sector de exportación de uva en el Valle San Francisco (Brasil) y en el Valle de Elqui/Limarí (Chile), proponiendo un análisis que integra tanto la esfera de la producción como de la reproducción. Esto con la finalidad de identificar las interconexiones existentes entre ambos ámbitos así como los principales mecanismos de extracción de plusvalor y de externalización de los costos a los hogares, implementados por las empresas

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements