The rural exodus in Mexico and Mexican migration to the United States

"During the 1950s, labor conditions in the United States attracted Mexican migrants, mostly from rural areas, in sharply fluctuating patterns of active recruitment, laissez-faire or repatriation. Because [the rural exodus and migration to the United States] have varied simultaneously and because they are interrelated, it has been assumed that the rural exodus in Mexico generally explains the flow of migrants across the border to the United States. This article argues that they must be analyzed instead as two distinct movements. Data presented show that most of the migrants created by the prevailing conditions in Mexican rural villages settle within Mexico and that only specific types of migrants are attracted over the border."     

The political and socioeconomic context of legal and illegal Mexican migration to the United States (1942-1984)

The US manpower shortage in industry and agriculture during World War II, combined with Mexico's burden of an excess number of unemployed laborers, provided the basis for serious labor negotiations between the US and Mexico. The result was the Bracero Agreement of 1942, a bilateral agreement involving annual quotas for the temporary hiring of Mexican braceros. On the surface the program worked well. However, there were points of contention between the 2 countries: 1) in opposition to Mexico's policy of placing recruitment centers in the interior of the country, US policy called for placing the centers near the border, to reduce transportation costs; 2) Texas, which received no braceros because of racial discrimination, relied upon illegal aliens for manual labor; 3) Texas flagrantly violated a 1948 agreement when the Border Patrol welcomed aliens across the river despite Mexican officials' threats to close the border; 4) legal braceros were confronted with competition from illegals who were willing to work for a lower wage; 5) in 1954, the Border patrol physically helped aliens across the border, while Mexican policy were physically restraining them; 6) with the conclusion of a new Bracero agreement in March 1954, illegal aliens were no longer needed, so more than 1 million were apprehended and deported to Mexico's interior. The termination of the Bracero Program in 1964 gave new impetus to illegal trafficking and the number of illegals apprehended began to increase steadily in 1965. The migration flow after 1964 was influenced by the following socioeconomic conditions in Mexico: 1) unemployment, 2) very large disparities in income distribution, 3) a discrimination of the rural sector in favor of the urban in the allocation of government funds, and 4) a dependency on foreign capital and technology. Also, it was cheap labor for the US. Neither the US nor Mexico has adopted policies related to either economic development or immigration that would systematically curtail or regulate the flow of Mexican migrants to the US. However, conflicting pressures limit the policy-making process. President Carter was limited in his policy options by the needs of large-scale commercial agriculture. President Reagan's idea of a guest-worker program did not develop into legislation. Mexico's Lopez Portillo administration counted on migration to the US as a substitute for redistributive land reform in its handling of rural political pressures; the migratory flow functioned as an "escape valve" helping to dilute the effects of rapid demographic increase and preserving the status quo.     

Cultural competence in the assessment of poor Mexican families in the rural southeastern United States

Increasing numbers of poor Mexican immigrant families are settling in the rural southeastern United States. Most of these families are from isolated agrarian communities in Mexico and are headed by unskilled laborers or displaced farm workers with little education. Child welfare workers and other service providers in rural communities may be poorly prepared to address the needs of this population. This article provides an overview of the cultural, social, and family dynamics of first generation, working class Mexicans to promote cultural competency among helping professionals. An ecological perspective is used to examine the strengths that poor Mexicans bring from their culture of origin, stresses of the migratory experience and ongoing adaptation, shifts that may occur in family structure and functioning, disruptions in the family life cycle, the role of social supports in family adaptation, and effect of institutional discrimination on family well-being. Suggestions also are made for essential components of adequate in-service education.     

Undocumented Migration to the United States and the Wages of Mexican Immigrants

Prior work has documented the remarkable decline in the real wages of Mexican immigrant workers in the U.S. over the past several decades. Although some of this trend might be attributable to the changing characteristics of the migrants themselves, we argue that a more important change was the circumstances under within Mexican immigrants competed for jobs in the U.S. After 1986 a growing share of Mexican immigrants was undocumented, discrimination against them was mandated by federal law, and enforcement efforts rose in intensity. We combined data from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) with independent estimates of the percentage undocumented among Mexicans living in the U.S. to estimate a series of regression models to test this hypothesis. Controlling for individual characteristics helps to explain the decline in the wages of immigrants, but does not eliminate the trend, which is only explained fully when the percentage undocumented is added to the model. A key date is 1986, confirmed by a Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition analysis, when undocumented hiring was criminalized and undocumented migration revived after IRCA's legalization programs ended. As the percentage undocumented rose to new heights in the face of employer sanctions, immigrant wages fell below what we would have observed under the former policy regime. Using newly available data from Warren and Warren (2013), we examined how variation in the percentage undocumented by state and year from 1990 through 2009 affected immigrant wages and confirmed a strong negative effect, but the addition of an interaction term to the model indicated that the negative effect was confined largely to undocumented migrants, whose wage penalty rose from 8 to 18 percent as the percentage undocumented rose from its observed minimum to maximum.     

Family reunification and Philippine migration to the United States: the immigrants' perspective

This article focuses on the impact of the family reunification provisions in the US immigration policy for legal immigration from the Philippines. Immigration and Naturalization Service data on the changing pattern of Philippine immigration to the US between 1971 and 1984 show an increase of nearly 2 1/2 times in the number of immediate family members exempt from numerical limitations, a doubling in the number of immigrants entering under family preference categories, but a marked decline in the number of occupational preference immigrants. Immigration-related plans, behavior, and characteristics from the immigrants' perspective are also analyzed. A family unification policy-based typology has been constructed to categorize intended and actual immigrants to the US. Using this typology, systematic differences are reported for out-migration plans, family contacts, the immigration process, and the characteristics of intended and actual immigrants. While political and economic system competition and inequality are contextual factors for international migration, from the immigrants' perspective, joining family members by means of the family reunification provisions of the US immigration policy is the dominant explanation for legal immigration to the US in a sample of 1340 adults in Philippine households in 1982.     

Determinants of English proficiency among Mexican migrants to the United States

"We replicate prior research into the determinants of English language proficiency among immigrants using a dataset that controls for potential biases stemming from selective emigration, omitted variables, and the mismeasurement of key constructs. In general, we reproduce the results of earlier work, leading us to conclude that despite inherent methodological problems, research based on cross-sectional censuses and surveys yields fundamentally accurate conclusions. In particular, we find unambiguous evidence that English proficiency rises with exposure to U.S. society, and we reaffirm earlier work showing a clear pattern of language assimilation among Mexican migrants to the United States."     

Dual chain migration: post-1965 Filipino immigration to the United States

In analyzing Filipino migration to the United States since 1965, the authors identify two distinct chains of immigrants. One derives from the Filipinos who entered the country prior to 1965; the other comes from the flow of highly trained professionals who immigrated during the late 1960s and early 1970s. "To establish the historical basis for the two patterns of immigration that unfolded in the post-1965 period, the article begins with a brief examination of Filipino immigration to the United States. An analysis of the modes of entry used in both chains follows this overview. The study concludes with a discussion of the degree of convergence in these two chains and the consequences of each for contemporary Filipino-American community development." Data are from published U.S. census material and from Immigration and Naturalization Service reports and tapes dating from 1972 to 1985.     

The Mexico of "the other side": Mexican immigrants in the United States

"The purpose of this work is to explore the advantages and disadvantages of... Mexican immigrant workers for the economy and the political and cultural status quo of the United States. The Mexican immigrant workers pose a dilemma for the United States. On the one hand, the United States needs them for a better functioning of its economy. On the other, the Mexican immigrant workers represent a racial, cultural and political challenge to the American 'establishment'.... Given the magnitude of the problem which the Mexican immigrants represent and the intense debate surrounding it, the cheap labour they represent for the economy of the United States and the unsolved conflicts this provokes, are fertile ground for the analysis of the economic, political and cultural interests competing for the degree of flexibility or the amount of policing the Mexican border should have." (SUMMARY IN ENG AND FRE)     

Pathways to El Norte: origins, destinations, and characteristics of Mexican migrants to the United States

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.     

The choice of migration destination: Dominican and Cuban immigrants to the mainland United States and Puerto Rico

"Puerto Rico provides an alternative destination for immigrants from the Spanish-speaking Caribbean because the culture is similar to that in the source country. In this study, we use the 1980 [U.S.] Census of Population to examine the importance of relative earnings and culture in the choice of destination. The main finding is the similar pattern of choice of location for immigrants from the Dominican Republic and Cuba. The more educated and more professional immigrants are found in either Puerto Rico or outside the enclave on the [U.S.] mainland. Within this group, those with less time remaining in the labor market and lower English ability are found in Puerto Rico. We find that not all differences in location decision are attributable to differences in reward structure by location."     

Economic internationalization: the new migration in Japan and the United States

"The general proposition argued in this paper is that international migrations are embedded in larger social, economic and political processes.... The first section of the paper addresses the impact of economic internationalization on the formation of new immigration flows into the U.S. during the last 25 years. The second section examines both the magnitude and forms of Japan's recent economic presence in South and Southeast Asia. The third and fourth sections briefly review questions of policy in the U.S. and Japan during the last few years.... The fifth section conveys evidence of illegal immigration to Japan. The sixth section discusses conditions in receiving countries that make possible the adaptation of immigrants with a view to understanding how illegal immigrants in Japan could become part of the Japanese economy involving Japanese employers deeply steeped in an anti-immigration culture." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

Real earnings and human migration in the United States

"The present article offers an alternative [to Rabianski's] empirical analysis of the migration impact of living cost differentials and deals with net (as opposed to gross) [U.S.] migration to some 25 (as opposed to just 11) SMSAs over the 1960-70 rather than the 1955-60 time period. The results...indicate that...living cost differentials do significantly affect geographic mobility, i.e., improve the regression results."     

Rural gentrification and linked migration in the United States

Although gentrification is a process commonly associated with urban landscapes, rural areas in advanced economies have also experienced gentrification over the past two decades. Largely based on case study approaches, the Rural Studies literature describes transformations in the housing market, changed cultural attitudes toward the environment, political conflicts surrounding land-use planning, and heightened class polarization as outcomes of rural gentrification. The analysis in this paper extends our understandings of rural gentrification in two fundamental ways. First, drawing on US census data from 1990 and 2000, the paper systematically examines gentrification in nonmetropolitan counties across the United States and develops a methodology for identifying areas with similarly strong evidence of gentrification. The second section of the analysis compares the geographic distribution and socioeconomic change in gentrifying counties with the rest of nonmetropolitan America emphasizing the changes in the baby boomer and Latino populations. In so doing, the analysis opens up new possibilities for comparative analysis of gentrification both between and within countries, connects our understandings of rural gentrification to other processes of globalization playing out within rural space, and argues for work on rural gentrification to more explicitly integrate questions surrounding race and ethnicity alongside questions of class.     

West Indian migration to the United States Virgin Islands: demographic impacts and socioeconomic consequences

"This article examines the movements of British West Indians to the United States Virgin Islands. It emphasizes the demographic impact on the host society and the underlying socioeconomic forces and legal framework."     

Five decades of Mexican public relations in the United States: from propaganda to strategic counsel

This article describes U.S. public relations for Mexico through a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 940 Foreign Agents Registration Act listings from 1942 to 1991.The research delineates the shift from government to industry representation, the move from press agentry and public information to more research and counsel, centralization trends, and the evolving roles of U.S. public relations from technicians to public relations managers. The continuing robust technician role is confirmed.