Evolution of the Mexico-U.S. Migration System: Insights from the Mexican Migration Project

Author(s):  
Jorge Durand ◽  
Douglas S. Massey

Since 1987, the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) has collected and disseminated representative survey data on documented and undocumented migration to the United States. The MMP currently includes surveys of 161 communities, which together contain data on 27,113 households and 169,945 individuals, 26,446 of whom have U.S. migratory experience. These data are used here to trace the evolution of the Mexico-U.S. migration system from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century, revealing how shifts in U.S. immigration and border policies have been critical to the formation of different eras of migration characterized by distinctive patterns of migration, settlement, and return in different legal statuses. The current era is characterized by the repression of the large population of undocumented migrants and their U.S. citizen children by an ongoing regime of mass detention and deportation and the simultaneous recruitment of Mexican workers for exploitation on short-term temporary visas. As the dynamics of Mexican migration to the United States continue to change, they will be monitored and analyzed in subsequent waves of data collection by the MMP.

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 571-601 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda R. Cheong ◽  
Douglas S. Massey

Using data from the Mexican Migration Project, we evaluate the effects of documented and undocumented migration on the health of Mexican adults. Results suggest that documented and undocumented migrants are positively selected with respect to health in migrating to the United States and health status does not strongly predict selection into return migration back to Mexico. Among returned migrants, health deteriorates as the number of trips to the United States increases, with undocumented migrants experiencing an extra health penalty. While there is no continued decline on return to Mexico for undocumented migrants, they fare worse than returned documented migrants.


Author(s):  
Donna Kornhaber

The year 1929 is often seen as marking the end of silent film. “The secret afterlife of silent film” questions this date, demonstrating how that year only signaled the end of production in major studios in the United States. Once the technology for synchronization and amplification became available, the transition to sound in the motion picture industry was smoother than is often depicted. Silent film production continued in pockets around the globe until nearly the middle of the century, as did silent film exhibition. Elements of silent film persist even in the early twenty-first century, from avant-garde to animated films. Silent film is still beloved by critics and cinephiles, and the innovations of the silent period arguably contribute to the ongoing appeal of cinema itself.


Author(s):  
Jorge Durand ◽  
Douglas S. Massey

Since 1987, the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) has compiled extensive data on the characteristics and behavior of documented and undocumented migrants to the United States, and made them publicly available to users to test theories of international migration and evaluate U.S. immigration and border policies. Findings based on these data have been plentiful, but have also routinely been ignored by political leaders, who instead continue to pursue policies with widely documented, counterproductive effects. In this article, we review prior studies based on MMP data to document these effects. We also use official statistics to document circumstances on the border today, and draw on articles in this volume to underscore the huge gap between U.S. policies and the realities of immigration. Despite that net positive undocumented Mexican migration to the United States ended more than a decade ago, the Trump administration continues to demand the construction of a border wall and persists in treating Central American arrivals as criminals rather than asylum seekers, thus transforming what is essentially a humanitarian problem into an immigration crisis.


Author(s):  
Deepak Nayyar

This chapter analyses the striking changes in the geographical distribution of manufacturing production amongst countries and across continents since 1750, a period that spans more than two-and-a-half centuries, which could be described as the movement of industrial hubs in the world economy over time. Until around 1820, world manufacturing production was concentrated in China and India. The Industrial Revolution, followed by the advent of colonialism, led to deindustrialization in Asia and, by 1880, Britain became the world industrial hub that extended to northwestern Europe. The United States surpassed Britain in 1900, and was the dominant industrial hub in the world until 2000. During 1950 to 2000, the relative, though not absolute, importance of Western Europe diminished, and Japan emerged as a significant industrial hub, while the other new industrial hub, the USSR and Eastern Europe, was short lived. The early twenty-first century, 2000–2017, witnessed a rapid decline of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan as industrial hubs, to be replaced largely by Asia, particularly China. This process of shifting hubs, associated with industrialization in some countries and deindustrialization in other countries in the past, might be associated with premature deindustrialization in yet other countries in the future.


2022 ◽  
pp. 019791832110660
Author(s):  
Shelby O'Neill

As the H-2A visa program expands to become a core component of contemporary Mexican migration to the United States, questions emerge about the tradeoffs migrants face between temporary and undocumented statuses. This article employs propensity score matching of participants in the Mexican Migration Project—an extensive binational survey of Mexican migrants and their families—to compare economic and social outcomes of H-2A visa recipients vis-à-vis undocumented migrants. Findings indicate that although H-2A visas offer benefits like a lower cost of living while abroad, they do not produce a discernible effect on wages relative to wages earned by undocumented migrants. While H-2A migrants are more likely to work in the formal economy, they are also less likely to build social capital or language proficiency in the United States than undocumented migrants, indicating a degree of social isolation that can be exploited by employers. This comparison contributes to a growing literature on the proliferation of temporary migratory statuses and the marginality experienced by migrants within these statuses.


2010 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 468-523
Author(s):  
Rob Schorman

In 1906, a writer declared that it remained an “unsolved problem whether the automobile is to prove a fad like the bicycle, or a lasting factor in the industry of the country.” A few years later, concerned with the possibility of overproduction and market saturation, auto executives and other commentators were writing articles for the advertising trade press with titles like “Why Auto Production Must Be Curtailed” and “The Fading of the Automobile Rainbow.” Considering that by the early twenty-first century, the United States had a population of nearly 300 million people and an average of 2.1 registered motor vehicles per household, it is difficult to appreciate how uncertain the industry’s status seemed in its early years. Yet although contemporary observers may not have known it, in many ways by the end of 1908 the foundation stoneswere already in place for a hundred years of automotive economic and cultural preeminence in the United States. Two events from that year are well known as harbingers of the industry’s future. In September, General Motors was established, and in October, Ford introduced its Model T to the nation's auto dealers. In time, these developments had a profound impact on American automobile manufacture and management.


Author(s):  
Richard Alba ◽  
Nancy Foner

This chapter examines the challenges faced by the children of low-status immigrants in education and the labor market. While youth in general face more challenges in the early twenty-first-century than their parents and grandparents did, many of these second-generation youth face a special set of hurdles because of their disadvantaged immigrant origins. In education, the second generations originating from low-status groups suffer “ethnic penalties.” One reason is that many adults in positions of authority in school systems and workplaces hold prejudices that lead to subtle or occasionally blatant discrimination against these second-generation youth. The problems in the educational system are compounded by those these youth face when they enter the labor market. In general, they are less likely to be employed than native youth with comparable educational attainment, and sometimes, as in France and Germany, these employment penalties are large.


2017 ◽  
Vol 98 (12) ◽  
pp. 2579-2592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard R. Heim

Abstract The United States experienced a severe drought that peaked in 2012 and was characterized by near-record extent, record warmth, and record dryness in several areas. For some regions, the 2012 drought was a continuation of drought that began in earlier years and continued through 2014. The 1998–2014 drought episode is compared to the two other major drought episodes of the twentieth century in terms of duration, areal extent, intensity, and spatial pattern using operational datasets produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Centers for Environmental Information. It is characterized by more short-term dryness, more concurrent (regional) wetness, and warmer temperatures than the other two drought episodes. The implications of these differences for water resource managers and decision-makers are discussed.


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