Research on violence in Mexico and Latin America suggests that, in part, due to state attempts to fight organized crime and the widespread availability of firearms, violence and homicides in general have experienced a recent shift from expressive to instrumental. Despite this transformation, however, socioeconomically disadvantaged young males continue to be overwhelmingly present in homicide events. We argue that both the use of a firearm and demographic and traditional socioeconomic factors should independently predict instrumental homicide; however, the association between the use of a firearm and instrumentality should be moderated by the level or category of these traditional characteristics (i.e., socioeconomic status, age, and gender). Our findings are broadly consistent with these claims. We show that the relationship between the use of a firearm and instrumental homicides is larger for homicides involving disadvantaged males as victims because this group is more at risk of suffering homicidal violence to begin with, despite the fact that independently (i.e., with no interactions), higher socioeconomic status, age, and female victimhood are positively associated with instrumentality. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on Latin American violence and the expressive/instrumental distinction.

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This essay analyses how Mexican presidents have interpreted the concepts of drug trafficking and national security and how these particular connotations have redefined national sovereignty and the specific role of the armed forces in protecting this sovereignty. A qualitative technique of discourse analysis is used to examine public speeches by Zedillo (1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000), Fox (2000Fox ( -2006 and Calderón (2006Calderón ( -2012. The conclusions suggest that drug trafficking and US omnipresence are the two main issues that shaped Mexico's national security threats during this period, with qualitatively distinct trajectories.

Pre-trial detention is used extensively in Latin America as a systematic practice implemented by courts. Despite this fact, few empirical studies have analysed the role of defence attorneys in pre-trial incarceration. This paper attempts to describe the actions taken by lawyers in order to free their clients during the judicial process, using new empirical evidence collected from the incarcerated population in Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Chile, Mexico and Peru. Results suggest that public defenders request conditional release less frequently but do so more effectively than their private counterparts.

Scholarship on the Mexican state's role in migration to the United States has been hampered by a lack of comprehensive engagement with meaning. We address this shortcoming by examining a data set of Mexican presidents' public speeches (1994–2012). We argue that increased engagement with migration has been accompanied by more expansive conceptualisations of migration and willingness to politicise the issue. We identify a discourse of reaction characterised by a defence of Mexican migrants in the United States that is sometimes expressed defiantly; and a discourse of construction, defined by a more measured approach that allows for long‐term policies to be enacted.