Currently, economic and commercial integration processes characterize the relationships between regions and countries of the world, without exception. With that in mind, in 2011 in Latin America, the creation of the so-called Pacific Alliance (PA) was formalized, conformed by Mexico, Chile, Colombia, and Peru. With this alliance, these four countries sought to increase their mutual trade and investment flows, to encourage their production of goods and services. The objective of this article is to analyze from the creation of the PA, the factors that explain the evolution of trade and investment between the four countries, using the exploratory method. The results indicate that to this moment, the PA is far from achieving its objective of greater integration and economic growth in each country, this being its main contribution: contrast the objectives that the theory of economic integration postulates versus the results achieved in practice by the PA.

El propósito de esta investigación es comprender las políticas de educación superior y empleo, y el mercado de trabajo de profesionistas en un contexto volátil, incierto, complejo y ambiguo (VUCA, por sus siglas en inglés). Ante ello se sugiere retomar la estrategia, en tanto concepto que dio origen a VUCA, como herramienta idónea para atender un punto de la agenda pública no resuelto. En este sentido, las políticas de educación superior y empleo se colocan como el eje articulador para atender el problema de la insuficiencia de empleos para egresados que, en el mejor de los casos, muestran ingresos exiguos. Ciertamente el artículo presenta limitaciones, como es el caso de información definitiva sobre los resultados de las Universidades del Bienestar (UBBJ), debido a su reciente creación. Por otro lado, resulta notoria la relevancia de la educación superior como un elemento de resiliencia ante un mundo VUCA que debe ser fortalecido con un mayor nivel de participación tipo cinco hélices.

Transpacific relations (RT, for its acronym in Spanish) as a construct for the analysis of the most active economic region of the 21st century, represent an analytical instrument that has been shaped to improve knowledge of the Pacific Basin. In the present article, geo-economics as well as geopolitical aspects of insular order are incorporated. Neocolonialism, national security, exploitation of natural resources with respect for the environment, supported in historical facts, are concepts that are added to strengthen the knowledge of RT in general by taking as a reference the multi-named Medanos Island-Clipperton Island-Île de la Passion, located to 10˚17'38''N/109˚13'02''W, geographically belonging to the Revillagigedo Islands, Colima, Mexico, but under French ownership.

If one looks for a representative emerging economy to examine the different effects of labor reforms, Mexico provides an important case study. In order to boost economic recovery, the government promoted infrastructure spending, transfers to development banks, support to small and medium-sized enterprises, and to the export sector. As usual labor-management relations are uneven in Mexico and union issues can be complex, to reduce the negative consequences related to the sharp increase of unemployment, the government tried to focus more on the generation of employment introducing several measures such as training and temporary jobs to facilitate the withdrawal of savings from the mandatory individual pension accounts, coverage of the medical insurance and maternity benefits for dismissed workers, among others. But, challenges such as the informal economy, minimum wage convenience, flexible labor contracts, entrepreneur vulnerability, and higher education labor market have to be faced.

The articulation of higher education and employment acquires special relevance due to its impact to the youth labor market. Some of the tendencies in the Mexican economy during the sixties and seventies and the beginning of the eighties until the 21st century are the following: the expansion of educational coverage, the urbanization of development and labor market, as well as the middle-class consolidation and graduate exclusion of the labor market. These factors oriented the higher education predominantly to human resources generation, firstly, for the industrial sector and, secondly, for the tertiary sector of the knowledge society with a large unemployment and underemployment of graduates.