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Examines a Mexican "culture of migration," in which U.S. migration becomes an expectation for young people. Among approximately 7,000 secondary students surveyed in Zacatecas (Mexico), adolescents from families involved in U.S. migration were more likely to aspire to live and work in the United States, increasing the likelihood they would drop out and eventually migrate. (Contains 25 references.) (Author/SV)

Between 2000 and 2020, undocumented migration declined, temporary labor migration rose, and legal permanent residents arrived at a steady pace--together creating a new system of Mexico--U.S. migration based on the circulation of legal temporary work ers and per ma nent res i dents. Drawing on data from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Mexican Migration Project, we spec ify multinomialevent-history models top redict the likelihood of departure on first and later trips via four entry categories: no documents, noncompliant tourist visas, temporary work visas, and legal residence visas. The models reveal how the accumulation ofen try mode--specific social and human capital powered a system of undocumented migration that emerged between 1965 and 1985, and how that system deteriorated from 1985 to 2000. After 2000, employers took advantage of new visa categories to recruit legal temporary workers, leading to the accumulation of migration related human and social capital specific to that mode of entry and the emergence of a new system of Mexico-- U.S. migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Misguided U.S. policies since 1980 have created a large undocumented population within the United States. Border militarization curtailed circular undocumented migration from Mexico, and Cold War politics precluded the acceptance of refugees from Central America fleeing violence and economic turmoil unleashed by America's intervention in the region. Although undocumented migration from Mexico has ended, resources devoted to border apprehensions and internal deportations continue to rise, pushing an ever larger number of Central Americans into an immigrant detention system that is ill‐equipped to handle them. Although the Trump administration portrays the situation as an immigration crisis, what is really unfolding along the border and within the United States is an unprecedented humanitarian cross that in so many ways is one of our own making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the effects of legal status on wage rates among Mexican migrants. The findings show little wage discrimination against illegal migrants, but their illegal status does reduce the duration of their stay. The total amount of employer capital spent on them is less than that for legal migrants. (VM)

Legal migrants from rural Michoacan, Mexico, tended to migrate in larger groups than illegal migrants and were more likely to be accompanied by wives and children. Legal migrants also spent less time away from home each year and demonstrated greater geographic mobility while in the United States than illegals. (Author/GC)

Migration histories from residents of a rural Michoacan town were used to construct successive migrant cohorts for the period 1940-1978. Analysis indicates that prior to 1965, migration was limited primarily to male agricultural workers. Since 1965, increased numbers of women, children, and legal U.S. residents have made up the migrant population. (Author/GC)

Using data from the Mexican Migration Project and the Latin American Migration Project, we find that undocumented migration from Mexico reflects U.S. labor demand and access to migrant networks and is little affected by border enforcement, which instead sharply reduces the odds of return movement. Undocumented migration from Central America follows primarily from political violence associated with the U.S. intervention of the 1980s, and return migration has always been unlikely. Mass undocumented migration from Mexico appears to have ended because of demographic changes there, but undocumented migration from Central America can be expected to grow slowly through processes of family reunification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Papers: Revista de Sociologia is the property of Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Papeles de Población is the property of Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Mexico and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The authors respond to comments on their article "Family and Migration in Comparative Perspective," published in a prior issue. They state that the new economics of labor migration can help in creating a useful rationale to understanding remittances to Mexico, but that it does not work with other countries. They mentions that the patriarchal family system of Mexico makes it likely that male migrants will send money earned in the U.S. back to relatives in Mexico. They states that the Dominican Republic follows a different gender pattern for remittance flows with migrant daughters more likely to send back money than migrant sons.

In this article, the authors first give attention to main factors that resulted in the passage of NAFTA and subsequently investigate Mexican migration to the United States during roughly the same period that the bilateral treaty has been in effect. At the center of the relationship between economic liberalization and immigration is the paradox of increasing capital mobility and attempts at controlling more tightly the movement of immigrant workers. Although immigration from Mexico has remained flat over the past ten years, the Mexican population in the United States has grown rapidly, partly as a result of the unanticipated effects of harsh immigration policies since 1986. Prior to that date, Mexicans engaged in cyclical movements, but as security measures became harsher, especially in the 9/11 period, more immigrants and their families settled in the United States hoping to avert the dangers of exit and reentry. This analysis shows the slanted function of borders that have become permeable for capital but increasingly restrictive for immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review census data to assess the standing of five Latin American nations on a gender continuum ranging from patriarchal to matrifocal. We show that Mexico and Costa Rica lie close to one another with a highly patriarchal system of gender relations whereas Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic are similar in having a matrifocal system. Puerto Rico occupies a middle position, blending characteristics of both systems. These differences yield different patterns of female relative to male migration. Female householders in the two patriarchal settings displayed low rates of out-migration compared with males, whereas in the two matrifocal countries the ratio of female to male migration was much higher, in some case exceeding their male counterparts. Multivariate analyses showed that in patriarchal societies, a formal or informal union with a male dramatically lowers the odds of female out-migration, whereas in matrifocal societies marriage and cohabitation have no real effect. The most important determinants of female migration from patriarchal settings are the migrant status of the husband or partner, having relatives in the United States, and the possession of legal documents. In matrifocal settings, however, female migration is less related to the possession of documents, partner's migrant status, or having relatives in the United States and more strongly related to the woman's own migratory experience. Whereas the process of cumulative causation appears to be driven largely by men in patriarchal societies, it is women who dominate the process in matrifocal settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study migrant remittances among households surveyed in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, testing expectations derived from the new economics of labor migration (NELM) and from the historic-structural approach.We applied logistic regression analyses to survey data collected by the Mexican Migration Project and the Latin American Migration Project, focusing on the contrast between Mexico and the Dominican Republic.In Mexico, remittances seem to be associated with the patriarchal traditional family, but in the Dominican Republic we verified the opposite. Receipt of remittances is positively associated with degree of development among Mexican households, but the association is negative in the Dominican Republic. In addition, Mexican remittances are negatively associated with the number of businesses in the local community.In Mexico, as predicted by NELM, the cohesive patriarchal family ensures the flow of remittances as part of a household strategy of risk diversification. Dominican remittances, however, seem to be mostly determined by lack of opportunities and household need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present theoretical arguments and empirical research to suggest that the principal mechanisms of cumulative causation do not function in large urban settings. Using data from the Mexican Migration Project, we found evidence of cumulative causation in small cities, rural towns and villages, but not in large urban areas. With event-history models, we found little positive effect of community-level social capital and a strong deterrent effect of urban labor markets on the likelihood of first and later U.S. trips for residents of urban areas in Mexico, suggesting that the social process of migration from urban areas is distinct from that in the more widely studied rural migrant-sending communities of Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the circumstances and determinants of female migration between Mexico and the United States. Using data from the Mexican Migration Project, we considered the relative timing of males' and females' moves northward. We then estimated logit and probit models to study the determinants of male and female out-migration; among women we also estimated a multinomial logit model to uncover differences in the process of migration for work versus not for work. We found that women almost always followed other family members, either the husband or a parent; only a tiny minority initiated migration independently. Although males also are quite likely to be introduced to migration by a parent, nearly half of all male migrants left for the United States before or without a wife or a parent. Estimates of the determinants of migration suggested that males move for employment, whereas wives generally are motivated by family reasons. Daughters, however, display a greater propensity to move for work, and the determinants of their work-related moves closely resemble those of sons and fathers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this analysis we investigate the degree to which the absence of effective pension systems may generate motivations for international migration as a means of self-financing retirement. Using ethnosurvey data gathered in selected Mexican communities and US destination areas, we estimate models to predict the odds of US migration from indicators of relative wages and whether or not jobs in Mexico were covered by that country's social security system. We find that by holding constant the binational differential in expected wages, the odds of out-migration were much higher for male household heads working in jobs that were not covered by social security compared with those working in jobs that enjoyed such coverage. Subsequent analyses showed that the odds of receiving a pension in old age were systematically higher for former US migrants, and that the likelihood of pension receipt rose steadily as the number of US trips and amount of US experience accumulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the effect of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) on migrants' wages using data gathered in 39 Mexican communities and their U.S. destination areas. We examine changes in the determinants of wages before and after the passage of IRCA, as well as the effects of its massive legalization program. Migrants' wages deteriorated steadily between 1970 and 1995, but IRCA did not foment discrimination against Mexican workers per se. Rather, it appears to have encouraged greater discrimination against undocumented migrants, with employers passing the costs and risks of unauthorized hiring on to the workers. Although available data do not permit us to eliminate competing explanations entirely, limited controls suggest that the post-IRCA wage penalty against undocumented migrants did not stem from an expansion of the immigrant labor supply, an increase in the use of labor subcontracting, or a deterioration of the U.S. labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report examines the process of integration and settlement among Mexican migrants to the United States using data specially collected from four Mexican sending communities. These data indicate that as migrants accumulate experience in the United States, social and economic ties are formed which progressively increase the likelihood of U.S. settlement. Over time, migrants bring family members abroad, make new friends, establish Institutional connections, and obtain more stable, better paying jobs. As a result, less money is remitted home to Mexico, and more is spent in the United States. These trends give rise to a steady, cumulative increase in the probability of U.S. settlement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the process of business formation among international immigrants in Mexico. Prior studies yield the pessimistic conclusion that international migration does not promote entrepreneurial activity and business formation. Through a careful quantitative analysis, the authors seek to show that international migration plays a more positive role in promoting economic development than is generally thought. In this article the authors analyze the process of business formation among international migrants from Mexico. Unlike other researchers, we place entrepreneurial decisions within the context of shifting personal, family, community, and national circumstances. Using retrospective data, the authors follow subjects as they flurry, have children, acquire property, move inter- nationally and repatriate funds. Data come from simple random samples gathered during the winter months of 1982-1983 and 1987-1992 in thirty communities located in the states of Guanajuato, Jalisco, Nayarit and Zacatecas in Mexico.

This article estimates the probability of apprehension among Mexican migrants attempting to cross into the United States without documents. The Mexican community data were supplemented with nonrandom samples of out-migrants located in the United States during the summer following each winter's survey. From the community samples we determined where in the United States the migrants went and sent interviewers to those areas to survey people who had settled abroad permanently. In general. the numerical values of the coefficients tend to decrease over time, indicating a secular decline in the probability of apprehension. This trend is most evident in the Poisson probabilities. Because these figures are estimated from a sample rather than from a complete enumeration of all migrants in the sending communities, some of the year-to-year variation reflects sampling error in addition to other measurement errors. The analysis by the researchers reveals that a strong return flow that substantially offsets the huge inflow of undocumented Mexican migrants. Earlier studies noted this circularity, but ours is the first to document its effect in substantially counterbalancing the high rates of illegal entry. Over the 25-year period under study, of all entries were offset by departures, yielding a net inflow of only 5 .2 million.

Economic arguments, quantitative data, and ethnographic case studies are presented to counter popular misconceptions about international labor ruination and its economic consequences in Mexico. The prevailing view is mat Mexico-U.S. migration discourages autonomous economic growth within Mexico, at both the local and national levels, and that it promotes economic dependency. However, results estimated from a multiplier model suggest that the inflow of migradollars stimulates economic activity, both directly and indirectly, and that it leads to significantly higher levels of employment, investment, and income within specific communities and the nation as a whole. The annual arrival of around $2 billion migradollars generates economic activity that accounts for 10 percent of Mexico's output and 3 percent of its Gross Domestic Product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on international migration and development in Mexican communities. Migrants are likely to channel migradollars into housing if they are well educated, and when they already own a house or lot. The odds of spending on housing are considerably higher among migrants settled in the United States and among those who migrate with a spouse. By providing superior access to high-wage employment, it increases the odds of purchasing, improving, and furnishing a home in Mexico. Migradollars tend to be channeled away from housing and toward consumption when migrants come from communities with high wages. This analysis of migrants' decision making with respect to remittances, savings, and spending produces a picture of conscious economic actors making relatively logical decisions about the disposition of migradollars in response to changing individual and household circumstances, shifting attachments to U.S. society and its labor market, and fluctuating economic conditions in the community and the transnational political economy. U.S. migrants do not engage in unrestrained consumer spending to their own detriment and that of their communities.

This study uses a new source of data to assess the degree to which the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) deterred undocumented migration from Mexico to the United States. Data were collected from migrants interviewed in seven Mexican communities during the winters of 1987 through 1989, as well as from out-migrants from those communities who subsequently located in the United States. We conduct time-series experiments that examine changes in migrants' behavior before and after passage of the IRCA in 1986. We estimate trends in the probability of taking a first illegal trip, the probability of repeat migration, the probability of apprehension by the Border Patrol, the probability of using a border smuggler, and the costs of illegal border crossing. In none of these analyses could we detect any evidence that IRCA has significantly deterred undocumented migration from Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fertility estimates were calculated using own children data from the Mexican migrant town of Guadalupe, Michoacan. In this town, 75 percent of families have a member working in the United States, and wives are often regularly separated from their migrant husbands. Simulations by Menken (1979) and Bongaarts and Potter (1979) suggest that fertility among these women should be depressed. Our results confirmed this hypothesis, showing that the seasonal absence of migrant husbands disrupted both the level and timing of fertility. However, the effect was greater for legal than for illegal migrants, a pattern that stemmed from social factors as well as physical separation. A logistic regression analysis showed that reductions in birth probabilities are greater the longer a couple is separated, and that these reductions are in the range expected from prior simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses international migration and business formation in thirty communities of Mexico, highlighting the authors' response to comments made about an article written by them. A study of international migration and business formation in thirty communities from one country inevitably raises more questions than it answers, and the three commentators have done a good job highlighting the many unresolved issues that remain to be addressed. Our purpose was not to show definitively that international migration spurs entrepreneurial activity and economic development. Through our statistical analysis of reliable quantitative data, we sought to provide an example of how research into this issue might be undertaken. For too long, our thinking on the issue of migration and development has been shaped by case studies of single communities and remittance-use surveys that are analytically incapable of teasing out the complex marginal effects of migration and migra-dollars on economic outcomes. If the field is to advance beyond the unproductive dichotomy of dependency versus development, more sophisticated methods, data and analyses need to be applied.

Abstract: Over the course of the 20th century, Mexico-U.S. migration has emerged as an important facet of both countries, with far reaching economic and social impacts. The health of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. has been well studied, but relatively less is known about the health of returned migrants to Mexico. The objectives of this paper are twofold. Relying on health data pertaining to two stages of the life course, early life health (pre-migration) and adult health (post-migration) from the Mexican Migration Project gathered between 2007 and 2009, we aim to assess disparities in adult health status between male returned migrants and male non-migrants in Mexico, accounting for their potentially different early life health profiles. While we find evidence that returned migrants had more favorable early life health, the results for adult health are more complex. Returned migrants have a higher prevalence of heart disease, emotional/psychiatric disorders, obesity, and smoking than non-migrants but no differences are found in self-rated health, diabetes, or hypertension. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The geography Mexican migration to the U.S. has experienced deep transformations in both its origin composition and the destinations chosen by migrants. To date, however, we know little about how shifting migrant origins and destinations may be linked to each another geographically and, ultimately, structurally as relatively similar brands of economic restructuring have been posited to drive the shifts in origins and destinations. In this paper, we describe how old and new migrant networks have combined to fuel the well-documented geographic expansion of Mexican migration. We use data from the 2006 Mexican National Survey of Population Dynamics, a nationally representative survey that for the first time collected information on U.S. state of destination for all household members who had been to the U.S. during the 5 years prior to the survey. We find that the growth in immigration to southern and eastern states is disproportionately fueled by undocumented migration from non-traditional origin regions located in Central and Southeastern Mexico and from rural areas in particular. We argue that economic restructuring in the U.S. and Mexico had profound consequences not only for the magnitude but also for the geography of Mexican migration, opening up new region-to-region flows.

Flows of people are observed as international migration. Every developed country in the world today has become de facto a "country of immigration" whether the country cares to admit it or not. We have surveyed 99 communities in Mexico and 35 in the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean. The datasets contain basic data on 19,850 U.S. migrants originating in Mexico and 3,322 migrants originating elsewhere in Latin America or the Caribbean. As a result of the contradictions of U.S. policy during the 1990s, what used to be a circular flow of able-bodied male workers has been transformed into a permanent migrant migration of families, which will have profound effects on American society for years to come.