Every 4 years, during election season, we witness continuously growing appeals from Democrats and Republicans to the Latino electorate with the purpose of gaining enough of their vote to tilt the election to their respective advantage. Although Latinos regularly vote Democratic, Republicans assume that because of their continuing upward mobility and long-standing social conservatism, Latinos are in fact Republicans but just don't know it yet. In this article, we test how likely Latinos were to abandon their historic attachment to the Democratic Party and identify with the Republican Party in 2000 and 2004. Our conclusion is that although Latinos may have increasingly voted for the Republican candidate in 2004 and over time may change their partisan preferences, the Hispanic electorate was far from abandoning its partisan attachment to the Democratic Party.

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Migration theories often ignore the role that states play in stimulating migration through public assistance policies. Using the case of Mexico, this article explores the role of the state as a migrantproducing actor by examining the relationship between migration and social assistance policies in the form of monetary cash transfers. It argues that direct, unconditional cash transfers, like those provided by agricultural programs such as Procampo, rather than providing the incentives needed to retain individuals in their home country, may instead be providing the resources needed to migrate, particularly if the amount of the transfer is insufficient to spur investment. Instead of discouraging migration by enhancing economic opportunities and reducing poverty, such policies can actually make it easier and more appealing for its beneficiaries to migrate.

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Using data from eight focus groups and two household surveys conducted in the cities of Tirana, Albania and Quito, Ecuador, this paper finds that migration from at least one parent has a negative impact on the life satisfaction of children and adolescents left behind relative to that of children and adolescents who live with both parents who have never migrated. The results of this paper suggest that the impact of migration goes beyond traditional ones (e.g. remittances), which is useful for understanding how different components of international migration in general, and parental migration in particular, relate to outcomes that not only affect the full development prospects of children and adolescents, but also have important implications for policy initiatives that seek to address both the positive and negative impacts of migration on sending countries.