Jorge Durand

Return to Aztlan: The Social Process of International Migration from Western Mexico

This book examines Mexican migration to the US. Chapter 1 introduces the study. Chapter 2 presents the rationale for the ethnographic survey and chapter 3 undertakes a comparative demographic social and economic profile of the 4 sample communities--2 rural and 2 urban Mexican communities. Interviews took place in 1982-1983. Chapter 4 examines the historical origins of US migration within each of the 4 communities under study explaining how and why migration grew from very modest beginnings to become the mass phenomenon it is today. Chapter 5 contains a detailed analysis of current migration patterns within each sample community. Chapter 6 shows how migrants social networks develop and grow over time and how they gradually support migration on a continuously widening scale. Chapter 7 analyzes the role that US migration plays in the household economy studying how it is manipulated as part of a larger strategy of survival. Chapter 8 considers the impact of US migration on the socioeconomic organization of Mexican communities. Chapter 9 shifts attention north of the border to analyze the process of US settlement in some detail. Finally chapter 10 summarizes the insights of the prior chapters by estimating 4 statistical models that measure how different factors determine key events in the migrant career. Chapter 11 briefly capitulates the findings and makes some concluding remarks.

Continuities in Transnational Migration: An Analysis of Nineteen Mexican Communities

Researchers working in Mexican communities have observed both regularities and inconsistencies in the way that transnational migration develops over time. This article presents a theory that accounts for these uniformities and discrepancies and proposes a method to compara the process of migration across communities. It also argues that studies must report and control for the prevalence of migration within communities. Data from 19 Mexican communities show that predicable demographic, social, and economic changes accompany increases in migratory prevalence. Although international migration begins within a narrow range of each communitys socioeconomic structure, over time it broadens to incorporate other social groups.

International Migration and Development in Mexican Communities

The theoretical and empirical literature generally regards international migration as producing a cycle of dependency and stunted development in sending communities. Most migrants’ earnings are spent on consumption; few funds are channeled into productive investment. We argue that this view is misleading because it ignores the conditions under which productive investment is likely to be possible and profitable. We analyze the determinants of migrants’ savings and remittance decisions, using variables defined at the individual, household, community, and macroeconomic levels. We identify the conditions under which U.S. earnings are repatriated to Mexico as remittances and savings, and indicate the factors leading to their productive investment.

Migradollars and development: a reconsideration of the Mexican case.

Economic arguments, quantitative data, and ethnographic case studies are presented to counter popular misconceptions about international labor migration and its economic consequences in Mexico. The prevailing view is that Mexico-U.S. migration discourages autonomous economic growth within Mexico, at both the local and national levels, and that it promotes economic dependency. However, results estimated from a multiplier model suggest that the inflow of migradollars stimulates economic activity, both directly and indirectly, and that it leads to significantly higher levels of employment, investment, and income within specific communities and the nation as a whole. The annual arrival of around

Stemming the tide? Assessing the deterrent effects of the immigration reform and control act

2 billion migradollars generates economic activity that accounts for 10 percent of Mexicos output and 3 percent of its Gross Domestic Product.

New World Orders: Continuities and Changes in Latin American Migration

This study uses a new source of data to assess the degree to which the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) deterred undocumented migration from Mexico to the United States. Data were collected from migrants interviewed in seven Mexican communities during the winters of 1987 through 1989, as well as from out-migrants from those communities who subsequently located in the United States. We conduct time-series experiments that examine changes in migrants’ behavior before and after passage of the IRCA in 1986. We estimate trends in the probability of taking a first illegal trip, the probability of repeat migration, the probability of apprehension by the Border Patrol, the probability of using a border smuggler, and the costs of illegal border crossing. In none of these analyses could we detect any evidence that IRCA has significantly deterred undocumented migration from Mexico.

Changing conditions in the US labor market

Although migration from Mexico to the United States is more than a century old, until recently most other countries in Latin America did not send out significant numbers of migrants to foreign destinations. Over the past thirty years, however, emigration has emerged as an important demographic force throughout the region. This article outlines trends in the volume and composition of the migrant outflows emanating from various countries in Latin America, highlighting their diversity with respect to country of destination; multiplicity of destinations; legal auspices of entry; gender and class composition; racial, ethnic, and national origins; and the mode of insertion into the receiving society. The review underscores the broadening of international migration away from unidirectional flows toward the United States to new streams going to Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan, as well as to other countries in Latin America itself.

Why border enforcement backfired

In this paper, we assess the extent to which the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 affected US labor market conditions facing Mexican migrant workers. Using data gathered from migrants in ten Mexican communities, as well as out-migrants from those communities located in the USA, we examined whether and how IRCA affected US wages, hours worked, and the terms of employment. Estimated period effects did not indicate a clear break in most of these variables following IRCAs passage in 1986, except for hours worked and monthly income. Our analyses did reveal a fairly consistent pattern of deterioration in the labor market conditions facing undocumented migrants, however. Compared to illegal migrants working in the USA before IRCA, those migrating afterward worked fewer hours and were less likely to have taxes withheld from their pay. We also found evidence that undocumented migrants were pushed from the agrarian to the urban economy by the increase in labor supply occasioned by the SAW program.

Border Enforcement and Return Migration by Documented and Undocumented Mexicans

In this article the authors undertake a systematic analysis of why border enforcement backfired as a strategy of immigration control in the United States. They argue theoretically that border enforcement emerged as a policy response to a moral panic about the perceived threat of Latino immigration to the United States propounded by self-interested bureaucrats, politicians, and pundits who sought to mobilize political and material resources for their own benefit. The end result was a self-perpetuating cycle of rising enforcement and increased apprehensions that resulted in the militarization of the border in a way that was disconnected from the actual size of the undocumented flow. Using an instrumental variable approach, the authors show how border militarization affected the behavior of unauthorized migrants and border outcomes to transform undocumented Mexican migration from a circular flow of male workers going to three states into an 11 million person population of settled families living in 50 states.

Migration and environment in the context of globalization

Using data from the Mexican Migration Project we compute probabilities of departure and return for first and later trips to the USA in both documented and undocumented status. We then estimate statistical models to analyse the determinants of departure and return according to legal status. Prior to 1986, Mexico–US migration was characterised by great circularity, but since then circularity has declined markedly for undocumented migrants but increased dramatically for documented migrants. Whereas return migration by undocumented migrants dropped in response to the massive increase in border enforcement, that of documented migrants did not. At present, the Mexico–US migration system has reached a new equilibrium in which undocumented migrants are caged in as long-term settlers in the USA while documented migrants increasingly range freely and circulate back and forth across the border within rising frequency.