In what setting does one usually define mixed sheaves and weights for them? In BBD mixed sheaves and weights for them were only defined for ($\overline{\mathbb{Q}_l}$-)sheaves over a variety $X_0$ defined over a finite field $F$. Weights start to behave better when one extends coefficients from $F$ to its algebraic closure i.e. passes from $X_0$  to $X$.
Now, BBD was published in 1982. Are any significant improvements and/or generalizations known in this field now? There is a paper by Huber and a book by Jannsen where mixed sheaves and weights for them are mentioned. Yet these authors were not able to generalize the results of BBD (in fact, an example of Jannsen shows that this is probably impossible). They also didn't extend scalars. So, are there any other papers on this subject?
Upd. There seems to be two basic ways to define weights (for sheaves) explicitly. The first method uses weights of Hodge structures. It seems that this method can work only for something like the category of mixed Hodge modules. Possibly, I will study these categories in the future. Yet at the moment I study motives, and it seems that 'motivic' people usually do not understand mixed Hodge modules (and so did not relate them with motives). 
So, I am currently interested in the second method. It uses the eigenvalues of the  Frobenius action. So, was anything interesting done using THIS approach after 1982?
 A: Admittedly, I'm almost completely ignorant about the $\ell$-adic setting.  But, in case the following at least gets at the spirit of your question: in the de Rham setting, I found an old (1990s) preprint of Saito ("On the formalism of mixed sheaves," now TeXed up and available on the arxiv) useful in understanding the formal structure of (the system of categories of) mixed sheaves.  The book by Peters and Steenbrink ("Mixed Hodge Structures") also has a nice section (14.1, "An axiomatic introduction") in the chapter (14) on mixed Hodge modules that explains the picture well.  
A: I'm not sure if this is the kind of answer that you're looking for. This is an extension of Tom Nevin's answer. Saito's theory of mixed Hodge modules is modeled, to some extent, on BBD. The results are quite similar, but the constructions and proofs are entirely different (and unfortunately rather opaque). In a sense, this follows a general pattern. In the $\ell$-adic world, the weight filtration is determined naturally from the Galois action. In Hodge theory, one usually has to guess what it is based on analogy with it.
Perhaps I can say a few more words to make the formal structure of Saito's theory  a little clearer. A mixed Hodge module consists a filtered perverse sheaf $(K,W)$ over $\mathbb{Q}$, and a bifiltered regular holonomic $D$-module $(M,W,F)$ such that $(M,W)$ corresponds to $(K,W)$ under Riemann-Hilbert. One then needs to impose some axioms in order to get good theory. The first is that over point, this datum defines a mixed Hodge structure.
Before getting to the second, recall that
one knows from BBD (and G I guess) that mixed perverse sheaves are stable under vanishing cycles. Saito takes this as an axiom. However, making that last statement precise takes
over 100 pages.
