Jeffrey Pugh

University of Massachusetts Boston | UMB · Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security and Global Governance

Peace-and conflict-oriented international education and training programs (PCIE) are an increasingly important part of higher education, serving as an opportunity to internationalize curriculum, promote engaged learning, and strengthen students' global citizenship. PCIE can also serve as a source of social capital, representing an opportunity to bu...

Ecuador tiene la reputación de tener instituciones progresistas que protegen a los migrantes, pero traducir estas instituciones formales en garantías efectivas de derechos e inclusión política es desigual en la práctica. La capacidad de los migrantes para integrarse socialmente y participar políticamente está influenciada por estructuras identitari...

The refugee system in the Americas is codified in instruments like the Refugee Convention and Protocol, the Cartagena Declaration, the Mexico Action Plan and Brazil Declaration, and implementing legislation within member states. However, there is a widely recognized gap between institutional protections and implementation in practice. This chapter...

Social norms are shared rules indicating whether a behavior is typical or desirable among one’s reference group. While social norms play a role in shaping peer violence, the evidence of the strength of this influence is mixed. This systematic review synthesizes evidence on the relationship between social norms and peer violence and identifies the s...

The 2021 MACLAS Arthur P Whitaker Award-winning book, The Invisibility Bargain: Governance Networks and Migrant Human Security, is presented by the author at the 2022 conference of the Middle Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies (MACLAS) in New Jersey. Migrants fleeing economic hardship or violence are entitled to a range of protections and...

In an era of mass migration and restrictive responses, this book seeks to understand how migrants negotiate their place in the receiving society and adapt innovative strategies to integrate, participate, and access protection. Their acceptance is often contingent on the expectation that they contribute economically to the host country while remaini...

This article explores how state and non-state actors compete to promote or combat securitizing discourses about migration through different media in a Global South receiving country. Drawing on theories of framing and securitization, the article traces the ways in which migrants in Ecuador are securitized, and the types of actors that are most infl...

Migration within the Global South is increasing. While conflict and xenophobia occurs, Latin America has been relatively welcoming of recent large-scale flows of forced migrants from Colombia and Venezuela, as well as other smaller flows from different countries migrating for economic or political reasons. Ecuador has a reputation for having progre...

Training and capacity building are common peacebuilding interventions that represent potentially powerful platforms for change. However, there is a widespread assumption among many peace practitioners that teaching someone skills and increasing their knowledge of conflict resolution concepts will lead naturally to individual behavioral changes and...

The cruelty is the point. The U.S. government has adopted the practice, manifested across numerous programs and policies implemented by multiple agencies, of using terror, humiliation and fear to strip dignity, due process, and humanity from asylum seekers and other migrants seeking to enter the United States. These practices are designed to short...

Article published in Migration Information Source, available at https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/welcome-wears-thin-for-colombians-ecuador . Ecuador hosts more refugees and asylum seekers than any other country in Latin America. The welcome, once warm, has cooled a bit for Colombians who sought refuge amid a half-century civil war. This art...

Como resultado del conflicto internacional de varias décadas, Colombia produjo más de 7 millones de personas desplazadas. Una gran parte de estas optaron por ir al sur haciendo de Ecuador el país receptor de solicitantes de asilo y refugiados más grande de América latina. Durante dos décadas de experiencia como país anfitrión, Ecuador desarrolló un...

Colombia es uno de los países con más muertes por armas de fuego en el mundo después de Brasil, Estados Unidos, India y México; 82 % de esas muertes tienen lugar en entornos urbanos y no están relacionadas con el conflicto armado (Naghavi et al., 2018). Las lesiones por este tipo de armas causaron más de 520.000 muertes en el país desde 1990, equiv...

The expansion of international trials over the last decades has reinvigorated the debate surrounding the efficacy of retributive justice over restorative justice in response to mass humanitarian crises. This study examines the ways different transitional justice models contribute to stable peace. It suggests that a hybrid utilization of both restor...

Conventional wisdom holds that international education builds cross-cultural capacity, and evaluations of peacebuilding interventions point to significant impacts. Yet, little scholarship links these fields or explores the significance of networks of participants in either area for mobilizing transnational peacebuilding capital. We address this by...

As pressure for change increases in Venezuela, the path to democracy lies in strengthening the broad coalition of Venezuelan activists united against injustice, not in violent shortcuts that will ultimately undermine democracy.

International institutions provide a structure for cooperation among states, but they also insert themselves into national and local political spaces, as conveyors and propagators of international norms in domestic spaces, “third-side” providers of good offices brokering between governments and society, and providers of resources to help address pr...

This article argues that an “invisibility bargain” constrains migrants’ identities and political participation, demanding their economic contributions plus political and social invisibility in exchange for tolerance of their presence in the host country. In response, migrants negotiate their visible identity differences, minimize social distance fr...

Latin America has been a laboratory for innovative strategic nonviolent action to confront oppression, corruption, human rights violations, and authoritarianism. One of the most salient explanations for why some movements achieve greater scale and effectiveness in meeting their objectives is the skills of movement organizers in unifying the populat...

Introduction to the MARLAS special issue on Contention & Nonviolent Action in Latin America

América Latina ha sido por décadas un escenario primordial para la creación de innovadoras estrategias de la no violencia con el fin de confrontar la opresión, corrupción, violaciones a los derechos humanos y el autoritarismo. Una de las explicaciones fundamentales del éxito de ciertos movimientos en términos de alcance y efectividad en el logro de...

This article argues that an “invisibility bargain” constrains migrants’ identities and political participation, demanding their economic contributions plus political and social invisibility in exchange for tolerance of their presence in the host country. In response, migrants negotiate their visible identity differences, minimize social distance fr...

This article investigates political opportunities and constraints associated with incorporating the concept of universal citizenship into migration debates. Analyzing the speeches of Ecuador's president Rafael Correa over eight years, the article argues that Correa strategically crafted a narrative of universal citizenship to undergird politically...

This article addresses the challenges of using mediation in conflicts involving immigrants and refugees by examining the case of Colombian migrants in Ecuador. It proposes ways to adapt the community mediation model to better serve migrants in conflict, enhancing mediators? awareness and capacity to navigate cross-cultural differences, power imbala...

This article investigates political opportunities and constraints associated with incorporating the concept of universal citizenship into migration debates. Analyzing the speeches of Ecuador's president Rafael Correa over eight years, the article argues that Correa strategically crafted a narrative of universal citizenship to undergird politically...

The peace deal between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group was rejected by less than a 0.5 percent margin in a referendum on Oct. 2. This outcome shocked the world and defied the expectations of most external observers. The signed agreement to end the violence seemed all but complete, so it...

This article explores the factors that contribute to the effectiveness of peacebuilding initiatives in border regions where refugees and citizens coexist and sometimes come into conflict. It does so by comparing two programmes seeking to build conflict resolution capacity among youth in Ecuador near the Colombian border. The initiatives were funded...

Este resumen ejecutivo describe los resultados de un estudio llevado a cabo por medio de 360 encuestas en Quito, Lago Agrio, y Esmeraldas durante el año 2013. Los encuestados son personas que viven en Ecuador pero nacieron en algún otro país. La gran mayoría son migrantes forzados que huyeron de la violencia en su país de origen, 95% eran colombian...

The conventional wisdom about political science international education assumes that students choose between short “island” study abroad programs that are accessible but have only superficial impact, and longer immersion programs, achieving a greater effect. This article argues that well-designed study abroad programs can combine the best of both m...

In order to improve security for both Colombian forced migrants and Ecuadorians in the communities where they live, an approach that takes advantage of governance networks can allow residents to negotiate access to resources and rights that they otherwise would not be able to enjoy. It can also improve relations between the two groups.

International trusteeship of post‐conflict territories by multilateral institutions or foreign states received renewed attention in the wake of its application in Kosovo and East Timor during the 1990s. Subsequently, interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have contributed to the intensity of critical discussion over post‐Westphalian sovereignty appr...

This paper explores the provision of security within refugee-receiving countries, in which tensions between refugees and the host population may create instability and occasionally violence, and the state’s lack of political incentive to protect basic human rights for refugees (who do not vote) increases the vulnerability of this population. Even w...

During more than a decade of violent conflict (1980–1992) involving the military, rebel forces, and paramilitary “death squads,” El Salvador suffered some 75,000 casualties, mostly civilians. After three years of negotiations, the government and the largest rebel group signed a historic comprehensive peace accord that brought an end to the war and...

This article critically analyzes the relationships among resource scarcity, conflict, and the transformation of the environment, positing several conceptual tools that provide a nuanced explanation for environmental transformation through human conflict and which overcome some of the limitations of the existing literature of political conflict. Aft...

In a developed democratic party system, the party is perceived as a channel for popular contestation of policies. If an individual or group is unsatisfied with the performance or policies of those in power, they can seek a change in these policies or of the governing regime itself by supporting opposing parties who seek to block the regime’s polici...

Critical review of the democratic peace theory and its discontents.

  The city of Quito, Ecuador, began working in 2000 to protect the ecologically fragile watershed area for its drinking water. In order to protect the Papallacta watershed, the independent Fund for the Conservation of Watersheds (FONAG) was launched to finance and manage economically sound sustainability projects in the area. FONAG is funded in par...