A household's decision to send migrants is based on information it has on the entry costs, expected returns, and risks of migration. Information and assistance flow from both family migrant networks and community migrant networks. Using data from a national survey of rural Mexican households, we show the importance of networks in both the decision to migrate and the level of migration. We find that community and family networks are substitutes in assisting migration, suggesting that, once migration is well established in a community, family networks become less important. In addition, the development of strong community networks erases the role of household characteristics in migration, allowing those initially least favored to also participate in migration. Finally, we show that network density at points of destination in the United States strongly affects where individuals choose to migrate.
In an important new application of sociological theories, Nadia Y. Flores-Yeffal offers fresh insights into the ways in which social networks function among immigrants who arrive in the United States from Mexico without legal documentation. She asks and examines important questions about the commonalities and differences in networks for this group compared with other immigrants, and she identifies “trust” as a major component of networking among those who have little if any legal protection. Revealing the complexities behind social networks of international migration, Migration-Trust Networks: Social Cohesion in Mexican US-Bound Emigration provides an empirical and theoretical analysis of how social networks of international migration operate in the transnational context. Further, the book clarifies how networking creates chain migration effects observable throughout history. Flores-Yeffal’s study extends existing social network theories, providing a more detailed description of the social micro- and macrodynamics underlying the development and expansion of social networks used by undocumented Mexicans to migrate and integrate within the United States, with trust relationships as the basis of those networks. In addition, it incorporates a transnational approach in which the migrant’s place of origin, whether rural or urban, becomes an important variable. Migration-Trust Networks encapsulates the new realities of undocumented migration from Latin America and contributes to the academic discourse on international migration, advancing the study of social networks of migration and of social networks in general.
Why do Mexicans migrate to the United States? Is there a typical Mexican migrant? Beginning in the 1970s, survey data indicated that the average migrant was a young, unmarried man who was poor, undereducated, and in search of better employment opportunities. This is the general view that most Americans still hold of immigrants from Mexico. On the Move argues that not only does this view of Mexican migrants reinforce the stereotype of their undesirability, but it also fails to capture the true diversity of migrants from Mexico and their evolving migration patterns over time. Using survey data from over 145,000 Mexicans and in-depth interviews with nearly 140 Mexicans, Filiz Garip reveals a more accurate picture of Mexico-U.S migration. In the last fifty years there have been four primary waves: a male-dominated migration from rural areas in the 1960s and '70s, a second migration of young men from socioeconomically more well-off families during the 1980s, a migration of women joining spouses already in the United States in the late 1980s and ’90s, and a generation of more educated, urban migrants in the late 1990s and early 2000s. For each of these four stages, Garip examines the changing variety of reasons for why people migrate and migrants’ perceptions of their opportunities in Mexico and the United States. Looking at Mexico-U.S. migration during the last half century, On the Move uncovers the vast mechanisms underlying the flow of people moving between nations.
"The first decades of the twentieth century were a crucial era for the development of Mexican circular family migration, a process shaped by family and community networks as much as it was fashioned by labor markets and economic conditions. Even the Women are Leaving explores the bidirectional migration across the U.S.-Mexico border from 1890 to 1965 and centers the experiences of Mexican women and families. Highlighting migrant voices and testimonies, author Larisa L. Veloz depicts the long history of family and female migration across the border and elucidates the personal experiences of early twentieth century border-crossings, family separations, and reunifications. The book offers a fresh analysis of the ways that female migrants navigated evolving immigration restrictions and constructed binational lives through the eras of the Mexican Revolution, the Great Depression, and the Bracero Program"--
First Published in 1999. This book evaluates the influence of migration networks and human capital accumulation on Mexican migration to the United States. Because these two factors directly affect the costs and benefits of migration, they have a tremendous impact on Mexican migration. They shape its composition, determine its size, and regulate its pace.
The momentous influx of Mexican undocumented workers into the United States over the last decades has spurred new ways of thinking about immigration. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo's incisive book enlarges our understanding of these recently arrived Americans and uncovers the myriad ways that women and men recreate families and community institutions in a new land. Hondagneu-Sotelo argues that people do not migrate as a result of concerted household strategies, but as a consequence of negotiations often fraught with conflict in families and social networks. Migration and settlement transform long-held ideals and lifestyles. Traditional patterns are reevaluated, and new relationships—often more egalitarian—emerge. Women gain greater personal autonomy and independence as they participate in public life and gain access to both social and economic influence previously beyond their reach. Bringing to life the experiences of undocumented immigrants and delineating the key role of women in newly established communities, Gendered Transitions challenges conventional assumptions about gender and migration. It will be essential reading for demographers, historians, sociologists, and policymakers. "I've opened my eyes. Back there, they say 'no.' You marry, and no, you must stay home. Here, it's different. You marry, and you continue working. Back in Mexico, it's very different. There is very much machismo in those men."—A Mexican woman living in the United States
Over the last three decades, migration from Mexico to the United States has moved beyond the borderlands to diverse communities across the country, with the most striking transformations in American suburbs and small towns. This study explores the challenges encountered by Mexican families as they endeavor to find their place in the U.S. by focusing on Kennett Square, a small farming village in Pennsylvania known as the "Mushroom Capital of the World." In a highly readable account based on extensive fieldwork among Mexican migrants and their American neighbors, Debra Lattanzi Shutika explores the issues of belonging and displacement that are central concerns for residents in communities that have become new destinations for Mexican settlement. Beyond the Borderlands also completes the circle of migration by following migrant families as they return to their hometown in Mexico, providing an illuminating perspective of the tenuous lives of Mexicans residing in, but not fully part of, two worlds.
Mexican immigration to the United States—the oldest and largest immigration movement to this country—is in the midst of a fundamental transformation. For decades, Mexican immigration was primarily a border phenomenon, confined to Southwestern states. But legal changes in the mid-1980s paved the way for Mexican migrants to settle in parts of America that had no previous exposure to people of Mexican heritage. In New Destinations, editors Víctor Zúñiga and Rubén Hernández-León bring together an inter-disciplinary team of scholars to examine demographic, social, cultural, and political changes in areas where the incorporation of Mexican migrants has deeply changed the preexisting ethnic landscape. New Destinations looks at several of the communities where Mexican migrants are beginning to settle, and documents how the latest arrivals are reshaping—and being reshaped by—these new areas of settlement. Contributors Jorge Durand, Douglas Massey, and Chiara Capoferro use census data to diagram the historical evolution of Mexican immigration to the United States, noting the demographic, economic, and legal factors that led recent immigrants to move to areas where few of their predecessors had settled. Looking at two towns in Southern Louisiana, contributors Katharine Donato, Melissa Stainback, and Carl Bankston III reach a surprising conclusion: that documented immigrant workers did a poorer job of integrating into the local culture than their undocumented peers. They attribute this counterintuitive finding to documentation policies, which helped intensify employer control over migrants and undercut the formation of a stable migrant community among documented workers. Brian Rich and Marta Miranda detail an ambivalent mixture of paternalism and xenophobia by local residents toward migrants in Lexington, Kentucky. The new arrivals were welcomed for their strong work ethic so long as they stayed in "invisible" spheres such as fieldwork, but were resented once they began to take part in more public activities like schools or town meetings. New Destinations also provides some hopeful examples of progress in community relations. Several chapters, including Mark Grey and Anne Woodrick's examination of a small Iowa town, point to the importance of dialogue and mediation in establishing amicable relations between ethnic groups in newly multi-cultural settings. New Destinations is the first scholarly assessment of Mexican migrants' experience in the Midwest, Northeast, and deep South—the latest settlement points for America's largest immigrant group. Enriched by perspectives from demographers, anthropologists, sociologists, folklorists, and political scientists, this volume is an essential starting point for scholarship on the new Mexican migration.
