scholarly journals The Weight of Migration: Reconsidering Health Selection and Return Migration among Mexicans

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (22) ◽  
pp. 12136
Author(s):  
Aresha M. Martinez-Cardoso ◽  
Arline T. Geronimus
Keyword(s):  
Return Migration ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
Smoking Behavior ◽  
Cardiometabolic Health ◽  
Positive Health ◽  
Health Selection ◽  
Return Migrants ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
The Us ◽  
Health Profiles

While migration plays a key role in shaping the health of Mexican migrants in the US and those in Mexico, contemporary Mexican migration trends may challenge the health selection and return migration hypotheses, two prevailing assumptions of how migration shapes health. Using data from the Mexican Family Life Survey (2002; 2005), we tested these two hypotheses by comparing the cardiometabolic health profiles of (1) Mexico–US future migrants and nonmigrants and (2) Mexico–US return migrants and nonmigrants. First, we found limited evidence for health selection: the cardiometabolic health of Mexico–US future migrants was not measurably better than the health of their compatriots who did not migrate, although migrants differed demographically from nonmigrants. However, return migrants had higher levels of adiposity compared to those who stayed in Mexico throughout their lives; time spent in the US was also associated with obesity and elevated waist circumference. Differences in physical activity and smoking behavior did not mediate these associations. Our findings suggest positive health selection might not drive the favorable health profiles among recent cohorts of Mexican immigrants in the US. However, the adverse health of return migrants with respect to that of nonmigrants underscores the importance of considering the lived experience of Mexican migrants in the US as an important determinant of their health.

scholarly journals The 2000-2010 Changes in Labor Market Incorporation of Return Mexican Migrants

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 135-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edith Y. Gutiérrez Vázquez
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Informal Economy ◽  
Return Migration ◽  
Migration Rate ◽  
Job Market ◽  
Return Migrants ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Net Migration ◽  
The Past ◽  
Internal Migrants

Mexico-U.S. migration has dramatically changed in the past three decades: the pronounced increasing flow of the 1990s stalled in the 2000s and a zero net migration rate was officially reported in 2010. Deportations and economic crisis have been discussed as the underlying reasons of this change. In the context of involuntary movements, I evaluate the labor market incorporation of return migrants with respect to non-movers and internal migrants in Mexico between 2000 and 2010. Using the Mexican Census samples, I found that the reduction on return migrants’ earnings is associated to changes in both, the characteristics of returnees and in the pay rates. Specifically, changes in their occupations and higher participation in informal economy are the most important differences associated to the earnings loss of return migrants. These findings suggest that return migration in involuntary contexts restrict resources that individuals use to incorporate in the job market upon returning.

scholarly journals Return Migration as an Asset Maximization Strategy in Retirement

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 191-192
Author(s):  
Mara Sheftel
Keyword(s):  
Return Migration ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
Home Equity ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Economic Determinants ◽  
Data Limitations ◽  
The Us ◽  
Aging Study ◽  
Economic Selection

Abstract Mexican immigrants make up an increasing proportion of the US population 65 and older. Estimating outcomes for this population is complicated by return migration. Due to data limitations, theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence fail to provide clear indication of the economic selection mechanism of return migration, especially at older ages making it difficult to estimate economic determinants of return. Here two waves of data from the US based Health and Retirement Study and the Mexican Health and Aging Study are combined to create a novel dataset that enables a comparison of assets at older ages for those who stay in the US, those who return before age 50 and those who return at 50 and older. Unadjusted results show no difference in total net wealth at older ages between the three groups, with higher business assets among returnees and higher concentration of wealth in home equity among stayers. With evidence of higher inequality among stayers, lower median wealth in Mexico, and asset advantages operating through citizenship, older age return can be interpreted as a means to acquire a higher standard of living in retirement for non-citizen immigrants. Comparing assets between 2000 and 2012 reveal the vulnerability of stayers during the US housing crisis. These findings are novel because they point to return migration as a retirement strategy and expose a source of vulnerability among those Mexican immigrants who remain in the US into older ages.

scholarly journals Undocumented Mexican Immigrants in Adult ESL Classrooms: Some Issues to Consider

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 238-250
Author(s):  
Sheri Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mexican Migration ◽  
Student Knowledge ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Adult Esl ◽  
The Us ◽  
American Media ◽  
The Media

With anti-immigrant sentiments permeating the media, policy, and public discourse throughout the United States, little room seems to exist for understanding what drives Mexican migrants northward. However, while acknowledging the historical conditions leading to US immigration policy, negative discourses and stereotypes in the American media and public, continuing Mexican migration in spite of great sacrifice, and the choices of individuals to migrate to the US, adult ESL educators need a framework as they encounter these students in the classroom. This framework combines Freire’s “pedagogy of the oppressed” with a transformative pedagogy that relinquishes deficit models and invites student knowledge into the classroom.

scholarly journals Disability and Older Age Return Migration: Evidence Against the Salmon Bias

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 455-455
Author(s):  
Mara Sheftel
Keyword(s):  
Return Migration ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
Functional Limitation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Regimes ◽  
Salmon Bias ◽  
Data Limitations ◽  
The Us ◽  
Aging Study ◽  
And Migration

Abstract Mexican immigrants make up an increasing proportion of the US population 65 and older. Whereas this population has among the lowest rates of disability at working ages, there is growing evidence of high rates of disability at older ages, findings which contradict what mechanisms of selection, namely the “salmon bias,” would predict. However, largely due to data limitations disability rates between those who stay in the US into older ages and those who return to Mexico are rarely compared. Here two waves of data from the US based Health and Retirement Study and the Mexican Health and Aging Study are combined to create a novel dataset that enables an interrogation of the widely held assumption of negative selection on health among return migrants. Investigating three measures of functional limitation and disability, results show higher prevalence of disability for stayers as compared to both younger and older returnees. These results are robust to controls for childhood background, adult socioeconomic status, and migration related variables and hold for those who immigrated during different immigration policy regimes. These findings are novel not only because they stand in opposition to previous assumptions about the direction of health selective return migration, but also because they mean that those remaining in the United States into older ages are among the most vulnerable.

Endurance of Transnationalism in Bolivia’s Valle Alto

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard C. Jones ◽  
Leonardo De la Torre
Keyword(s):  
Random Sample ◽  
Work Experience ◽  
Household Income ◽  
Return Migration ◽  
Ethnographic Interviews ◽  
The Us ◽  
Foreign Work ◽  
Intentions To Return ◽  
Economic Ties

The increasing difficulty of return migration and the demands for assimilation into host societies suggest a long-term cutting of ties to origin areas—likely accentuated in the Bolivian case by the recent shift in destinations from Argentina to the US and Spain. Making use of a stratified random sample of 417 families as well as ethnographic interviews in the provinces of Punata, Esteban Arze, and Jordán in the Valle Alto region the authors investigate these issues. Results suggest that for families with greater than ten years cumulated foreign work experience, there are significantly more absentees and lower levels of remittances as a percentage of household income. Although cultural ties remain strong after ten years, intentions to return to Bolivia decline markedly. The question of whether the dimunition of economic ties results in long-term village decline in the Valle Alto remains an unanswered.   

Editorial: Migration costs

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha W. Rees
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
Food Stamps ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Unemployment Compensation ◽  
The Us ◽  
Mexican Immigrant Men ◽  
Migration Costs ◽  
Immigrant Men

Much has been written about the costs—and benefits--of migration--in terms of the costs to the US (or receiving regions) and of the benefits to migrants. Massey (2005) concludes that because (Mexican) immigrants pay taxes, they are not a drain on public services. In fact, migrants are less likely to use public services, and pay taxes for services they don’t use. Almost two-thirds have Social Security taxes withheld, only 10% have sent a child to public schools, and under 5% or have used food stamps, welfare, or unemployment compensation. They also pay sales taxes. In terms of criminality, Rumbaut and Ewing (2007) refute the myth that migrants bring crime. They find that Mexican immigrant men have a lower rate of incarceration (0.7%) than US born Latinos (5.9%) or for US born males (3.5%).

Pathways to Legalization: Undocumented Mexican Immigrants in the US/Mexico Borderlands, 1942–1956

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Elizabeth Rosas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
Mexican Immigrants ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mexican Immigrant ◽  
Agricultural Laborers ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Contract Laborers

In the 1940s, curbing undocumented Mexican immigrant entry into the United States became a US government priority because of an alleged immigration surge, which was blamed for the unemployment of an estimated 252,000 US domestic agricultural laborers. Publicly committed to asserting its control of undocumented Mexican immigrant entry, the US government used Operation Wetback, a binational INS border-enforcement operation, to strike a delicate balance between satisfying US growers’ unending demands for surplus Mexican immigrant labor and responding to the jobs lost by US domestic agricultural laborers. Yet Operation Wetback would also unintentionally and unexpectedly fuel a distinctly transnational pathway to legalization, marriage, and extended family formation for some Mexican immigrants.On July 12, 1951, US president Harry S. Truman’s signing of Public Law 78 initiated such a pathway for an estimated 125,000 undocumented Mexican immigrant laborers throughout the United States. This law was an extension the Bracero Program, a labor agreement between the Mexican and US governments that authorized the temporary contracting of braceros (male Mexican contract laborers) for labor in agricultural production and railroad maintenance. It was formative to undocumented Mexican immigrant laborers’ transnational pursuit of decisively personal goals in both Mexico and the United States.Section 501 of this law, which allowed employers to sponsor certain undocumented laborers, became a transnational pathway toward formalizing extended family relationships between braceros and Mexican American women. This article seeks to begin a discussion on how Operation Wetback unwittingly inspired a distinctly transnational approach to personal extended family relationships in Mexico and the United States among individuals of Mexican descent and varying legal statuses, a social matrix that remains relatively unexplored.

Negotiating Masculinity across Borders

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Cho Suh
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Return Migration ◽  
Hegemonic Masculinity ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Korean American ◽  
Return Migrants ◽  
A Site ◽  
Ethnic Return Migration ◽  
Over Time

Recent studies of ethnic return migration have explained why (economic, political, and affective) and where (Asia and Europe) this phenomenon has primarily occurred. Of the research available, however, few have examined the manner in which framings and practices of gender impact the experiences of those who participate in these transnational sojourns. This study fills this void by examining how Korean American male ethnic return migrants understand and negotiate their masculine identities, as they “return” to their ancestral homeland of South Korea. Utilizing data from in-depth qualitative interviews, this study finds that respondents initially configure South Korea as a site where they may redeem their marginalized masculine identities by taking advantage of the surplus human capital afforded to them by their American status. Over time, however, “returnees” come to realize the fluidity of masculinity and its ideals, exposing the tenuousness of their claims to hegemonic masculinity even in South Korea.

Rust Belt Boomerang: The Pull of Place in Moving Back to a Legacy City

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Ann Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Return Migration ◽  
Knowledge Workers ◽  
Population Decline ◽  
Rust Belt ◽  
Return Migrants ◽  
Young Professionals ◽  
Legacy Cities ◽  
Depth Interviews

Research and journalistic accounts on the Rust Belt consistently focus on population decline and its consequences. As a result, we know little about the growing trend of return migration of young professionals and knowledge workers to the region. Why have these individuals chosen to return to a place that they once left? I answer this question using in–depth interviews with young professionals who have moved back to Youngstown, Ohio. Results indicate that return migrants chose to return despite reporting alternative and perhaps more economically rational work opportunities elsewhere. While some reasons can be anticipated from the literature, such as family need, I emphasize how place–specific considerations worked in combination with economic and social factors to pull them back. Findings hold implications for the literatures on place and return migration and for city planners who believe that return migration presents an opportunity for economic growth of legacy cities.

“We are not ignorant”: Transnational migrants’ experiences of racialized securitization

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Ybarra
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Central American ◽  
Immigration Enforcement ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Legal Violence ◽  
Life Chances ◽  
Mexican State ◽  
The Us ◽  
Transnational Migrants

This paper examines the dynamics of racialized securitization for transnational migrants across multiple borders—from Central America toward Mexico and the United States. Rather than a singular process where US policies, funding, and attitudes toward border security direct Mexican immigration enforcement, I argue that Mexican state collaboration redirects US xenophobia away from Mexican migrants and toward Central American migrants. Migrants’ testimonies point to the ways that US and Mexican discourses are mobilized in different—but complementary—ways that shape them as racialized subjects with differential life chances. This is clearest through a crude mapping of people onto nationalities for deportation based on hair, language, and tattoos. Beyond legal violence, deported migrants describe their vulnerability as constructed within tacit networks of collaboration between actors in the US and Mexico, both licit and illicit, in an effort to extort migrants and their families. While race is a key signifier in border securitization, the differences between these racial states have material consequences in the differential state violence in immigration enforcement.

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