The Tradeoff of Temporariness: Economic and Social Impacts of H-2A Status on Mexican Migrant Men

2022 ◽  
pp. 019791832110660
Author(s):  
Shelby O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
The United States ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Mexican Migration ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Formal Economy ◽  
Discernible Effect ◽  
Mexican Migrant ◽  
Economic And Social Impacts

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.

scholarly journals Undocumented and Unwell: Legal Status and Health among Mexican Migrants

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 571-601 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda R. Cheong ◽  
Douglas S. Massey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Return Migration ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
The United States ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Undocumented Migration ◽  
Mexican Migration ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Mexican Adults ◽  
Using Data

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.

Specters of Belonging

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrián Félix
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Mexican State ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Mexican Migrant ◽  
Transnational Citizenship

In the context of research on the “thickening” of borders, Specters of Belonging raises the related question: How does transnational citizenship thicken across the political life cycle of Mexican migrants? In addressing this question, this book resembles what any good migration corrido (ballad) does—narrate the thickening of transnational citizenship from beginning, middle, to end. Specifically, Specters of Belonging traces Mexican migrant transnationalism across the migrant political life cycle, beginning with the “political baptism” (i.e., naturalization in the United States) and ending with repatriation to México after death. In doing so, the book illustrates how Mexican migrants enunciate, enact, and embody transnational citizenship in constant dialectical contestation with the state and institutions of citizenship on both sides of the U.S.-México border. Drawing on political ethnographies of citizenship classrooms, the first chapter examines how Mexican migrants enunciate transnational citizenship as they navigate the naturalization process in the United States and grapple with the contradictions of U.S. citizenship and its script of singular political loyalty. The middle chapter deploys transnational ethnography to analyze how Mexican migrants enact transnational citizenship within the clientelistic orbit of the Mexican state, focusing on a group of returned migrant politicians and transnational activists. Last, the final chapter turns to how Mexican migrants embody transnational citizenship by tracing the cross-border practice of repatriating the bodies of deceased Mexican migrants from the United States to their communities of origin in rural México.

scholarly journals Mexico: «the population explosion» and mass migration

2017 ◽  
pp. 56-62
Author(s):  
Nadejda Kudeyarova
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mexican Migration ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Migratory Activity ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
Demographic Processes ◽  
Migration Analysis

The debate over the Mexican migrants issue has been intensi ed by Donald Trump’s election. His harsh statements have provoked a discussion on the US policy for Mexico, as well as on the migration regulation in the United States. However, the mass migration of the last quarter of XX - beginning of XXI centuries may be also readily associated with the social and demographic processes developed in Mexico throughout the 20th century. The dynamics of migratory activity followed the demographic changes. The internal causes of the Mexican migration analysis will allow more clarity in understanding contemporary migration interaction between the two neighboring countries.

Debacles on the Border: Five Decades of Fact-Free Immigration Policy

2019 ◽  
Vol 684 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Durand ◽  
Douglas S. Massey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central American ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Mexican Migration ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Undocumented Mexican Migration ◽  
Trump Administration

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.

scholarly journals Understanding of Mexican Migration to the United States: Rifts and Challenges

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rana Basam Khan ◽  
◽  
Muhammad Nawaz Bhatti ◽  
Ghulam Mustafa ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
El Paso ◽  
Rio Grande ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mexican Migration ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Social Defense ◽  
Basic Segment ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
The U.S

It has been decades since legislative issues have thought about social, defense, and compassionate issues of migration which has become a touchstone in U.S strategy discussion. Mexican migration to the U.S started in 1848. It has proceeded to the present with no critical interference, something that makes this work movement very particular as a basic segment of the American work advertise. Generally started with enormous development, driven by starvation, political problems, open doors in the U.S; that point eased back, tightened, or unexpectedly finished, from 1850 to 1882, similar to the case of the Chinese. The details show that Mexico is a key source of settlers in U.S and has long been a major source of enemy contact with refugees, but so many have been focusing on Mexico and not the other countries which have also become major sources of illegal immigrants. The United States and Mexico are bordered with California, San Diego, and Baja California, Tijuana, and the Pacific Ocean. The boundary stretches eastward to El Paso, Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, Texas, on the Rio Grande. From that point the border continues south-east along the Rio Grande River until the end of it in the Gulf of Mexico. Border stretching of over 1945 miles is insufficiently regulated. Only old solid markers, rusty safety clasp and spoiled dry fence posts can be found in many parts of the place, and the river Grande that over the centuries has continuously changed its course separating both nations. U.S endeavors to control passages and exit adequately have been focused principally along the most profoundly dealt transit courses driving to north. U.S. powerlessness to control all the Mexican boundary has proven that any Mexican involved in operating in the U.S seldom discovers that the frontier is an unlikely trap Through the span of the most recent 170 years, Mexican migrants have to a great extent worked in horticulture, farming, mining, and railroad development.

Contesting the “Bad Hombres” Narrative: U.S. and Mexican Media Diplomacy and Presidential Strategic Narratives about Immigrants

Diplomatica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-73
Author(s):  
Vanessa Bravo ◽  
María De Moya
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Transnational Media ◽  
Strategic Narratives ◽  
National Media ◽  
Mexican Migrant

Abstract During the candidacy and following the election of U.S. president Donald Trump, there was an emphasis on framing the Mexican immigrant as a criminal and on building a wall between the United States and Mexico. This narrative revived the debate on the treatment of immigrants and immigration in cross-national media. Within this context, this study analyzes the construction of the image of the Mexican migrant to the United States by both (former) President Enrique Peña Nieto and President Donald Trump during the first 100 days of the latter’s presidency, through news stories published in two U.S newspapers and two Mexican newspapers. Findings show that news stories describe Mexican migrants in contrasting ways, ranging from criminals (in the U.S. framing) to good migrants (in the Mexican efforts), and both frames are picked up by the transnational media, hindering long-standing public diplomacy efforts in both countries.

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

2019 ◽  
Vol 684 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Durand ◽  
Douglas S. Massey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Large Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Undocumented Migration ◽  
Mexican Migration ◽  
Migration System ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Migratory Experience

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.

Banking on Remittances? How opening a bank account in the United States affects Mexican migrants sending money back to Mexico

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-190
Author(s):  
Benjamin W. Barrett ◽  
T. Elizabeth Durden
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Community Control ◽  
Mexican Migration ◽  
Control Variables ◽  
Bank Account ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Mexican Community ◽  
The U.S

Data from 154 different Mexican communities, housed within the Mexican Migration Project (mmp), is used to explore the influence of U.S. assimilation on a Mexican migrant’s propensity to remit money back to Mexico. A migrant opening a U.S. bank account is employed as a proxy for assimilation. Sociodemographic, U.S. migration, and Mexican community control variables are included. It is found that a migrant opening a bank account during the last U.S. migration is associated with a reduced probability of remitting money back to Mexico, suggesting a shift in social and economic activity from Mexico to the U.S. for migrants abroad. Los datos de 154 comunidades mexicanas, agrupados en el Mexican Migration Project (mmp), se utilizan para explorar la influencia de la asimilación a Estados Unidos sobre los migrantes mexicanos, tomando en cuenta su propensión a enviar remesas de vuelta a México. La apertura de una cuenta bancaria en Estados Unidos por parte de un migrante se emplea como una forma subsidiaria de asimilación. Se incluyen variables sociodemográficas, de migración a Estados Unidos y de control de las comunidades mexicanas. Los hallazgos dicen que la apertura de una cuenta bancaria por parte de un migrante durante la última ola de migración a Estados Unidos se asocia a una menor probabilidad de enviar remesas de vuelta a México, lo cual sugiere un cambio en la actividad social y económica de México hacia Estados Unidos por parte de los migrantes en el extranjero.

Emigrants Get Political

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael S. Danielson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Field Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Political Outcomes ◽  
Mexican Migrant ◽  
Return Home ◽  
Multi Method Approach ◽  
Original Survey

Migrants who live abroad or who return home after many years have become an important constituency throughout the world. This book examines Mexican migrant engagement in origin communities and finds that at times migrants powerfully impact political dynamics there, both from abroad and upon their return. Migrant hometown engagement, the subject of the book, can result in a range of different political outcomes in migrant-sending municipalities. However, these do not uniformly enhance local democracy. This is the central contention of the book and explaining what causes variation in migrant impact is the principle goal. The findings challenge the arguments of scholars, policy makers, and migrant politicians themselves who expect migrants to learn democracy in the United States and bring it back with them when they return home. Not only do migrants remit dollars, the argument goes, they remit democracy. The book employs a multi-method approach to answer these questions, providing two statistical chapters—including analysis of an original survey of more than 400 mayors from the state of Oaxaca—with two qualitative chapters based on field research in 12 Mexican municipalities and their satellite communities in the United States. The project began with an expectation that the engagement of millions of Mexican migrants in their home towns would result in thousands of political earthquakes. Instead, what may be most noteworthy is the ability of the Mexican political system to incorporate these new actors without instituting fundamental changes to the way that politics are done.

The Precarious Position of Latino Immigrants in the United States

2016 ◽  
Vol 666 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas S. Massey ◽  
Jorge Durand ◽  
Karen A. Pren
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
The United States ◽  
Latino Immigrants ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Mexican Migrant ◽  
Wage Penalties ◽  
The U.S

A majority of Mexican and Central Americans living in the United States today are undocumented or living in a marginal, temporary legal status. This article is a comparative analysis of how Mexican and non-Mexican Latino immigrants fare in the U.S. labor market. We show that despite higher levels of human capital and a higher class background among non-Mexican migrants, neither they nor Mexican migrants have fared very well in the United States. Over the past four decades, the real value of their wages has fallen across the board, and both Mexican and non-Mexican migrant workers experience wage penalties because they are in liminal legal categories. With Latinos now composing 17 percent of the U.S. population and 25 percent of births, the precariousness of their labor market position should be a great concern among those attending to the nation’s future.

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