Voces en los campos. Trabajadores agrícolas migrantes durante la Covid-19 en España y nuevas formas de activismo por la dignidad

The health crisis has revealed many of the structural and endemic problems that have existed in the agriculture sector in Spain over the last two decades: the high volume of foreigners in an irregular situation, the miserable informal settlements and substandard housing in which they are forced to “reside”, and the extreme physical and social vulnerability of the workers, including those employed under official seasonal labor mobility schemes. These structural problems have traditionally been ignored by the administration, whose policies have focused on managing the mobility of migrants while neglecting the needs of migrant workers present in the territory. During the health crisis the emergence of the narrative on their “essential role”, which was incorporated in the political discourse, together with the visibility of their poor working and living conditions, have generated, promoted or consolidated several struggles based on what we can call the right to live in dignity. In the Spanish case these struggles have been caused by three types of tensions that have become particularly intense during the Covid-19 pandemic: the tension between essentiality and disposability, between temporality and permanence, and between an active and a passive citizenship.La crisis sanitaria ha producido la visibilización de muchos de los problemas estructurales y endémicos de los que ha adolecido el trabajo inmigrante en el sector agrícola en España durante las dos últimas dos décadas: el alto volumen de extranjeros en situación irregular, los míseros asentamientos informales y las formas de infravivienda en los que se ven obligados a “residir” y la extrema vulnerabilidad física y social de los trabajadores que sostienen el sector, incluidos los que se emplean a través de programas de contratación en origen. Estos problemas estructurales han sido, sin embargo, tradicionalmente ignorados por la administración, en una política de la indiferencia, que se ha centrado en la gestión de la movilidad frente a la gestión de la presencia. Sin embargo, durante la pandemia la aparición de una narrativa sobre su esencialidad, incorporada incluso en el discurso político, junto a la visibilización de sus condiciones laborales y de vida, se han configurado como elementos catalizadores que han generado, impulsado o consolidado una serie de demandas y de luchas articuladas en torno a lo que podemos denominar el derecho a una vida digna. Estas luchas han sido resultado de tres tipos de tensiones que se manifestaron de forma particularmente expresiva con la irrupción de la covid-19: la tensión entre esencialidad y desechabilidad, entre temporalidad y permanencia y entre una ciudadanía activa y pasiva

Advanced Exergy Analysis in the Dynamic Framework for Assessing Building Thermal Systems

This work applies the Dynamic Advanced Exergy Analysis (DAEA) to a heating and domestic hot water (DHW) facility supplied by a Stirling engine and a condensing boiler. For the first time, an advanced exergy analysis using dynamic conditions is applied to a building energy system. DAEA provides insights on the components’ exergy destruction (ED) by distinguishing the inefficiencies that can be prevented by improving the quality (avoidable ED) and the ones constrained because of technical limitations (unavoidable ED). ED is related to the inherent inefficiencies of the considered element (endogenous ED) and those coming from the interconnections (exogenous ED). That information cannot be obtained by any other approach. A dynamic calculation within the experimental facility has been performed after a component characterization driven by a new grey-box modelling technique, through TRNSYS and MATLAB. Novel solutions and terms of ED are assessed for the rational implementation of the DAEA in building energy installations. The influence of each component and their interconnections are valuated in terms of exergy destruction for further diagnosis and optimization purposes.BMWi, 03ET1218B, Anwendung exergiebasierter Methoden zur Verbesserung von Gebäudeenergiesysteme

La inmigración irregular en Ceuta y Melilla en 2014: prácticas de control y debate público

En 2014 se ha producido una intensificación de la inmigración irregular que intenta acceder a territorio español a través de los perímetros fronterizos de Ceuta y Melilla. Aunque el vigor de este flujo se mantiene en cuotas inferiores a lo registrado a mediados de la década pasada, y es más bajo que en otras rutas migratorias que tienen Europa como destino, el debate social y político que ha generado tiene tonos muy similares a los de hace casi una década. Este debate ha puesto de manifiesto el enfrentamiento entre el principio de contención, como objetivo de la política del Gobierno español, y el principio de protección, defendido por un número creciente de organizaciones sociales y civiles

Inmigración en tiempos de crisis : dinámicas de movilidad emergentes y nuevos impactos sociales

Background of INCASI Project H2020-MSCA-RISE-2015 GA 691004. WP1: Compilatio

La invariación acústica en las nasales del castellano

El objetivo de este estudio consiste en analizar el papel que desempeñan el murmullo y las transiciones vocálicas en la percepción de las consonantes nasales castellanas a partir de secuencias de habla natural. Los estímulos incluidos en el test de percepción representan diferentes ventanas (cinco en total) de distinta duración y composición a partir de la deternúnación del punto de discontinuidad de onda en el oscilograma entre la consonante y la vocal que integran cada secuencia. También se ha estudiado la percepción del timbre vocálico en cada uno de los estímulos del test. Dado el carácter especial de la nasal palatal, en los resultados obtenidos hemos realizado un segundo experimento para intentar determinar si [ JI ] parece comportarse como un segmento simple o como un segmento complejo. En suma, la condición mixta, salvo en la nasal palatal, es la que proporciona mejores resultados, con lo cual podemos pensar que los índices invariantes hay que buscarlos probablemente en el seno de la silaba antes que en los elementos aislados

Non-State Actors and Migration Control in Spain. A Migration Industry Perspective

Until recently research on controlling irregular migration flows has been heavily biased toward what can be defined as an excessive state determinism that obviates the role of non-state institutions and organizations in this sphere of action. Although this state determinism (state-centric approach) has been academically contested by research that has focused on reactive actions and resistance by immigrants to migration control (migrant-centric approach), the state-centric approach has obviated the role that other non-state actors play in the sphere of migration control. The objective of this paper is to analyze and define the ways that have been adopted to control irregular immigration to Spain over the past decade by employing an approach that transcends and complements the state-centric/migrant-centric approaches by incorporating non-state actors to the analysis (a polycentric approach). The analysis of the role of non-state organizations in controlling irregular immigration in Spain will be carried out with a focus on what has come to be refered to as “Migration Industry”, a concept that has gained a great deal of attention in migration studies as an analytical perspective that incorporates intermediate actors. Focusing on the analysis of the Spanish case, and on the so called "Control Industry and Rescue Industry", the paper will explore the role of private companies, NGO´s and other non-state actors as agents which facilitate and constrain irregular migration flows to Spain and influence the shaping of border and internal control policies and flows.MIND Research Project (grant number CSO2014-53680) funded by the Spanish National Research Program, 2015–2017Peer reviewe

A comparison of parametric models for mortality graduation. Application to mortality data of the Valencia Region (Spain)

The parametric graduation of mortality data has as its objective the satisfactory estimation of the death rates based on mortality data but using an age-dependent function whose parameters are adjusted from the crude rates obtainable directly from the data. This paper proposes a revision of the most commonly used parametric methods and compares the results obtained with each of them when they are applied to the mortality data for the Valencia Region. As a result of the comparison, we conclude that the Gompertz-Makeham functions estimated by means of generalized linear models lead to the best results. Our working method is of additional interest for being applicable to mortality data for a wide range of ages from any geographical conditions, allowing us to select the most appropriate life table for the case in hand.La gradualització paramètrica de dades de mortalitat té com a objectiu l'estimació correcta de taxes de mort a partir de les dades de mortalitat mitjançant una funció que depèn de l'edat, els paràmetres de la qual s'ajusten a partir de les taxes "brutes" de mortalitat obtingudes directament de les dades. Aquest article presenta una revisió dels models paramètrics més habituals i la seua aplicació a les dades de mortalitat del País Valencià. Com a conseqüència de la comparació dels resultats obtinguts amb els diferents models, es conclou que les funcions de Gompertz-Makeham estimades mitjançant models lineals generalitzats condueixen als millors resultats. El mètode de treball que es presenta té interès suplementari per ser aplicable a dades de mortalitat per a un ampli rang d'edats i per a qualsevol àmbit geogràfic, permetent en cada cas seleccionar la millor taula de vida

Design and Operation of a Polygeneration System in Spanish Climate Buildings under an Exergetic Perspective

This work defines and analyzes the performance of a polygeneration system in five different locations in Spain to maintain the thermal comfort and air quality of an office building. The facility is based on a chiller and a CHP engine with PV panels that provide almost all the electricity demand of the chiller. According to the energy performance analysis results, the installation working in Bilbao is a full polygeneration system since no electricity needs to be imported from the grid in summer. To quantify the energy savings related to a separated production facility, polygeneration indicators (percentage of savings PES/PExS and equivalent electric efficiency EEE/EExE) have been calculated in energy and exergy terms. The main motivation for using exergy is based on the ambiguity that can arise from the point of view of the First Law. As expected, the exergetic indicators have lower values than the energetic ones. In addition, an in-depth analysis was conducted for the air-handling unit components. The study shows the behavior of components over the year and the efficiency values from both an energy and exergy point of view. From these facts, the need arises to develop methodologies based on exergy