Remesas y agencia económica de las universitarias en el Valle del Mezquital

The article’s objective is to analyze the economic agency acquired by university students through the international remittances support network. During September and October 2019, five indepth interviews were conducted with female law students from the Actopan Higher School of the Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo. Young women’s households receive remittances whose function is to help them economically, a network built through the family connection with their maternal uncles. The student’s mothers are sorors which allows young women to obtain economic agency. This analysis contributes to the knowledge about one of the effects of remittances on households in the Mezquital Valley, Mexico. The results of the study only focus on one region of the country.

Rawls’s Underestimation of the Importance of Economic Agency and Economic Rights

In Rawls’s justice as fairness, the moral powers of democratic citizenship are the capacity for a conception of the good and the sense of justice, and basic rights are those necessary for the development and exercise of these two powers. Since economic agency is not a power of democratic citizenship, economic rights are not basic. To libertarians, this relative devaluation of economic agency and economic rights is a mistake, since economic agency and economic rights are the main concerns of justice. This libertarian critique is correct: justice as fairness underestimates the importance of economic agency and economic rights. Yet libertarian critics mistake how we should care about economic agency and which economic rights are basic. The economic agency that matters for justice as fairness is the capacity to work together with others, and the basic economic rights are those that enable and protect this capacity.

Contesting the Social Contract

This article investigates how Istrian business owners challenged the Croatian government’s motivation for and enforcement of fiskalizacija, an automated VAT reform adopted in 2013 as Croatia prepared for EU membership. Fiskalizacija threatened local economic agency and sowed distrust in government. The analysis of this tax reform demonstrates how Istrians envisage their economic agency, rights, and responsibilities. I argue that it is not just the construction of fiscal systems, but how such a system is projected onto society that is fundamental to the development of state-society relations. The way in which a tax reform is put into effect, including the enforcement practices of state agents, shapes how citizens perceive the social contract to be constituted by fiscal regimes.