Most scholarship addressing implementation gaps of violence against women (VAW) laws focuses on countries with high levels of violence in the lives of women—accompanied by weak policing and judicial responses. These studies tend to argue that the most egregious forms of political or social violence explain this gap. However, there has been little attention to countries with lower levels of gender-based violence and relatively responsive state institutions. We analyze the application of VAW laws in Costa Rica, with a focus on the impact of adjacent laws, or laws that are seemingly unrelated to VAW laws but are applied in tandem with and often in conflict with VAW laws. Based on a decade of fieldwork in Costa Rica, we argue that adjacent laws on land, labor, and immigration can be leveraged in ways that undermine the interpretation and implementation of VAW laws. These failures constitute legal violence: the normalized but cumulatively injurious effects of laws that can result in various forms of violence. While legal violence causes implementation gaps in almost every country, our case study reveals that the underlying sociolegal system upon which these laws rest contributes to a significant gap between VAW laws and practice.

It's a Wednesday, March 14 th , and I'm talking to René Flores. Thanks for joining us. I spent some time reading through your papers last night. So, you've covered effects of antiimmigration legislation in Arizona, gun sales, racialization of immigrants in Spain, racial disparities in health care. I'm interested to hear how you describe your sociology and what are the main themes that kind of run through it all, that connect your research agenda. FLORES:First of all, thank you for inviting me here. I think that's a great question. I try to focus on the social boundaries that emerge around particular populations. In this case, I'm interested in immigrants, but also in ethnic and racial minorities. I want to understand how these boundaries emerge, what explains them, and what they are made of. But also, what are the consequences of these boundaries? I think that's the guiding principle in all my research. Some of these boundaries could be legality, which I think it's a huge factor that is shaping the lives of millions of individuals in the U.S.,

The personal futures of older adults are continually in mind, motivating goals, desires and plans. People approach the near and long term with differing agentic traits and dispositions, and they face forward, as well, from differing standpoints according to socio-economic position. This is a study of how persons who are economically privileged diverge in their future thought from persons of modest means, asking how income level qualifies the capacity to imagine, and foresee affecting, the future. We draw upon interviews conducted with 42 older, community-dwelling individuals in the Midwestern United States of America, a sample that was partitioned into two groups, one with below-median incomes versus one with incomes above 200 per cent of median. Interviews disclosed various foci of future thought with common contents among the two groups. Three foci, however, confirmed between-group differences in confidence about handling possible material and support needs, and also in enacting idealised norms of retirement. The underlying theme of these foci – financial security, long-term supports and services, and trips and travel – was the perceived affordability of the future. We conclude that there is indeed a material basis for imagination of and proactivity toward the future. When paradigms about later life set expectations that idealise lifestyle choice, consumption and prudential preparation for the future, these are prospects towards which some can reach more readily than others.

Cumulative advantage theory sees inequality extending into later life. Does inequality also extend to the imagination of one’s future and desires for life yet to come? We draw from semi-structured interviews with 55 individuals residing in Midwest cities to explore differences in talk about finances and expectations for longevity, fulfillment, and “active” pursuits. Addressing personal futures, participants’ desires for longevity varied. Lower SES individuals discussed not having expected to live to their current age (or much beyond it) and not wanting to live a long time. Higher SES individuals, by contrast, expressed confidence that they could afford care no matter how long they lived. Higher SES participants often described future leisure goals whereas lower SES participants tended not to name leisure goals, or they named activities they desired but could not afford. For low SES individuals, active pursuits also were limited by diseases disproportionately affecting poor Americans, such as diabetes.