Locational Choices of the Legal and Illegal: The Case of Mexican Agricultural Workers in the U.S.1

This paper examines relationships between legal and illegal farmworker migration from Mexico and state‐level labor market, agricultural, demographic, and public policy variables. The study uses a nationally representative farmworker survey providing direct legal status data. Consistent with previous literature, results indicate that personal and community networks are primary determinants of locational choices. Conversely, border enforcement is negatively related to migration to certain areas. Results are strongest for California migrants and for those with previous migration experience. Potential welfare and education program values are uncorrelated with locations of recent Mexican agricultural workers.     

Hearth and Home: The Living Arrangements of Mexican Immigrants and U.S.-Born Mexican Americans

Utilizing data from the nationally representative, 1990 Panel Study of Income Dynamics—Latino Sample, this paper examines the living arrangements of Mexican heritage persons in the U.S., comparing immigrants to U.S. natives. Mexican immigrants are most likely to live with extended kin and unrelated persons upon recent arrival to the U.S. As time in the U.S. increases, such arrangements become less common. Three competing explanations for this pattern are addressed. While economic resources and life course stages are clearly linked to household formation for immigrants and U.S. natives, the findings indicate limited support for an acculturation hypothesis.     

The Revolving Door: A Functional Interpretation*

L'auteur fait l'analyse de la fonction des principaux sys-temes sociaux pertinents dans la vie des personnes accusées d'ivrognerie, afin d'expliquer la récidive qui porte à croire que ceux-ci sont engagés dans un tourniquet dont ils ne peuvent s'échapper. Les droits acquis à la force policière de mettre sous arrêt les personnes ivres s'appuient sur l'utilité de cette mesure pour satisfaire aux désires de la population relatifs au maintien de l'ordre et permettre le contrôle des hommes sans domicile et sans liens familiaux. Bien que la mise en arrestation protège de blessures corporelles l'homme en état d'ivresse, elle fait naître en lui un dépit qui contribue à son aliénation. La fonction de triage s'effectue de façgon rudimentaire dans les cours de justice et elle rend inévitable remprisonnement fréquent des prévenus sans domicile; ceci, bien que l'etude des sentences attribuées refléte certains compromis qui indiquent l'existence d'un conflit entre les notions de maladie et de criminalitéà l'égard de l'ivrognerie. La prison joue un rôle complémentaire à l'endroit de la vie chaotique et non productive de la société des clochards: elle offre certaines des rétributions d'un job régulier, un système stable d'interactions et la possibilityé de se remettre en santé. Elle contribue aussi au maintien de la société des clochards parce qu'elle est un moyen de socialisation et un réseau de renseignements. Les collectivites de clochards, par ailleurs, donnent au buveur une source reguliere d'alcool et des camarades; elles soutiennent ainsi le comportement deviant. L'auteur prétend que le systéme     

The U.S. Destinations of Contemporary Mexican Immigrants1

Although U.S. Latinos continue to be concentrated in particular places, many have shifted to “new” locations around the country. This study employs data from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP107) to examine the relationship between individual‐level characteristics and diverse U.S. destinations chosen by post‐1965 Mexican immigrants. Multinomial logistic regression analyses confirm the importance of human capital, social networks, and temporal context in directing immigrants to particular U.S. sites. The findings also suggest that employing a typology of U.S. destinations is useful for understanding the spatial distributions of contemporary Mexican immigrants.     

Mexican Contract Workers and the U.S. Capitalist Agricultural Labor Process: The Formative Era, 1942–1964*

Abstract Rural sociologists have seemingly moved away from an active interest in the plight of migrant farmworkers and the centrality of their labor in the development of U.S. agribusiness. Answering Pfeffer's (1983) call to analyze the different forms of agricultural production, I focus on the key formative period of what I refer to as the U.S. capitalist agricultural labor process. During the United States‐Mexico Bracero Program, 1942–1964, U.S. agribusiness employed a coercive factory regime, introduced mechanization and increased work hazards, and employed a dual wage structure to keep Mexican contract workers at a serious disadvantage to advance their own collective well‐being. This study relies upon archival and oral history research to challenge the existing theoretical approaches to the labor process in capitalist agriculture and provide a theoretical explanation that more closely relates to U.S. post‐war agricultural production.     

The Revolving Door to Gold Mountain: How Chinese Immigrants Got Around U.S. Exclusion and Replenished the Chinese American Labor Pool, 1900–19101

This study provides a quantitative perspective on the Chinese American migratory system of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including the magnitude of various means for evading the U.S. embargo on Chinese immigration. Three sources are explored, including federal immigration summaries, census microdata, and a sample of person‐voyage records for steamship arrivals at the port of San Francisco (n = 5,707). Whereas parameter estimates vary among the sources from nearly twofold (gross migration) up to fourfold (net migration), all results are consistent with a revolving‐door system in which young male workers arrived as replacements for departing older male workers.     

The Importance of Ownership Arrangements in U.S. Agriculture1

Abstract According to a number of observers of the U.S. economy, large publicly traded corporations can be viewed as a social problem primarily because of their association with the concentration of wealth and power. In agriculture, nine states have laws which restrict or proscribe public corporations from engaging in farming. Also, groups and individuals have attempted to preserve non-corporate production enterprises in agriculture through the establishment of direct markets such as farmers' markets. Proponents of such efforts believe public corporations have negative economic impacts; opponents of such efforts, especially efforts to establish and retain anti-corporate farming laws, argue that corporations can provide economic benefits to rural areas. These debates beg the question of whether ownership and direct marketing arrangements have important influences on economic outcomes such as levels of cash returns from farming and increases in the number of farms realizing cash gains. Using multi-year, county-level data from the Census of Agriculture, this study finds that, even when holding a number of important variables constant, ownership arrangements, as well as the (interaction between the percentage of total sales which are direct sales and the percentage of farms selling directly, are important determinants of both net cash returns and the percentage of farms realizing cash gains.     

Job insecurity and coworker support among U.S. Workers

Abstract

The negative outcomes associated with job insecurity have been well established in the literature. Yet, scholars know very little about how job insecurity is related to coworker relationships in the workplace. Informed by the life stress perspective, this study examines the relationship between job insecurity and coworker support among U.S. workers. It also considers whether relationships diverge by gender. We use data from a nationally representative sample of U.S. workers (N?=?2,822) to examine these relationships. The results showed that job insecurity was negatively related to coworker support among both men and women, with no evidence of gender disparities. Altogether, the findings suggest job insecurity is damaging to the workplace environment, creating barriers to supportive coworker relationships among both men and women.     

The Changing Structure of U.S. Agriculture: Dualism Out,Industrialism In

Abstract Between 1982 and 1992, trends in farm structural change resumed patterns that had existed from the Great Depression to the 1970s. That is, farms became fewer and larger. By 1992, the number of American farms declined below two million for the first time since the Civil War. Also, the trend toward dualism noted in the 1970s is over, as the number of small farms again declined rapidly during the 1980s. The trend toward large-scale agriculture is most prominent in the most important agricultural counties.     

Divorce among European and Mexican Immigrants in the U.S

Review of Economics of the Household - This paper analyzes the status of being currently divorced among European and Mexican immigrants in the U.S., among themselves and in comparison to the native...     

Correction to: Divorce among European and Mexican immigrants in the U.S.

The original version of this article unfortunately contained few errors in tables. In Tables 2a, 2b, 3a and 3b, the “Percent of sample” and “Percent spouse absent” should be in decimal in order to be consistent. In Tables 4 and 5, the first row should read as “Age at marriage” instead of “Percent of sample” and the “Sample size” was incorrect.     

Commodity Agriculture,Civic Agriculture and the Future of U.S. Farming*

Abstract Commodity agriculture and civic agriculture represent two distinct types of farming found in the U.S. today. Commodity agriculture is grounded on the belief that the primary objectives of farming should be to produce as much food/fiber as possible for the least cost. It is driven by the twin goals of productivity and efficiency. Civic agriculture, on the other hand, represents the rebirth of a more locally oriented agriculture and food system. Using data from the 1992 and 1997 Censuses of Agriculture and other secondary data sets, we examine factors and conditions associated with the presence and growth of both types of agriculture. Our findings show that civic agriculture is associated with particular commodities and with specific social, economic and demographic characteristics of localities. Commodity agriculture, on the other hand, is more sensitive to the classic economic factors of production, namely, land, labor, and capital.     

Attitudes toward homosexuality among U.S. residents of Mexican descent

This study examined attitudes toward lesbians and gay men in a sample of northern California residents of Mexican descent (N = 616), using 3‐item versions of the Attitudes Toward Gay Men (ATG) and Attitudes Toward Lesbians (ATL) scales presented simultaneously in Spanish and English. Males’ attitudes toward homosexual men were significantly more negative than females’ attitudes, whereas females expressed relatively negative attitudes toward lesbians. Overall, respondents expressing negative attitudes endorsed more traditional gender attitudes than respondents with positive attitudes, tended to be older and less educated, had more children, were more likely to belong to a fundamentalist religious denomination and to attend religious services frequently, were more conservative politically, and were less likely to have personal contact with gay people. Further analyses revealed that associations between attitudes and education, number of children, personal contact, and religious attendance occurred mainly among respondents who spoke and read English (rather than Spanish) or identified with U.S. culture (rather than Mexican culture).     

Attitudes toward homosexuality among U.S. residents of Mexican descent

This study examined attitudes toward lesbians and gay men in a sample of northern California residents of Mexican descent (N = 616), using 3-item versions of the Attitudes Toward Gay Men (ATG) and Attitudes Toward Lesbians (ATL) scales presented simultaneously in Spanish and English. Males attitudes toward homosexual men were significantly more negative than females attitudes, whereas females expressed relatively negative attitudes toward lesbians. Overall, respondents expressing negative attitudes endorsed more traditional gender attitudes than respondents with positive attitudes, tended to be older and less educated, had more children, were more likely to belong to a fundamentalist religious denomination and to attend religious services frequently, were more conservative politically, and were less likely to have personal contact with gay people. Further analyses revealed that associations between attitudes and education, number of children, personal contact, and religious attendance occurred mainly among respondents who spoke and read English (rather than Spanish) or identified with U.S. culture (rather than Mexican culture).     

History and trends in U.S. bound migration from a Mexican town

The authors examine "historical trends in U.S. bound migration from a rural Mexican town. The data consist of detailed migration histories collected for all town residents in 1978. From these histories, successive migrant cohorts were constructed for the period 1940-1978." Changes in the age and sex composition of migrants over time are analyzed     

Older Workers: Who are the working poor in the U.S.?

With data from the 2000 Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the purpose of this study was to provide a profile of older workers who live poverty, and to compare the demographic, financial, employment, and health attributes of such individuals to similar persons not living in poverty. This study found that 3.5% of employed individuals between the ages of 51 and 61 belonged to the class of working poor. The results of the multivariate logistic regression analyses indicated that the older working poor were more likely to be non-White, less educated, non-married, and had lower levels of net worth than the working non-poor. They were more likely to be employed part time and were less likely to be covered by employee-sponsored health insurance.     

Occupational and spatial mobility of temporary Mexican migrants to the U.S.: a comparative analysis

"U.S. job and spatial mobility are compared here for recent returnee migrants from two Mexican areas--Rio Grande, Zacatecas, in the interior; and Nueva Rosita-Muzquiz, Coahuila, near the U.S. border. Results suggest that the interior migrants fit a hierarchical migrant model: they move up the urban hierarchy from U.S. rural areas to towns and cities, experiencing substantial job mobility at first, but little after reaching the urban sector. Border migrants fit a shuttle migrant model: they return to the same job and place year after year, experiencing little or no spatial and occupational mobility, although they tend to hold somewhat higher status jobs."     

A Tale of Two Contexts: U.S. Migration and the Labor Force Trajectories of Mexican Women

Even though women have long participated in Mexico–U.S. migration studies assessing the labor market implications of international mobility for women are rare. Especially lacking are studies that follow a life‐course approach and compare employment trajectories across contexts and in connection with other transitions. Using life‐history data collected in Mexico and the U.S., we explore the impact of migration on women's employment, focusing on how the determinants of employment vary across contexts. We show that U.S. residence eliminates or even reverses the employment returns to education found in Mexico and that the constraints imposed on women's work by marriage are actually stronger in the U.S. context. We also explicitly connect migration to other life‐course events, documenting how the impact of context varies not only by marital status but also by where women's unions were formed.