Mexican Migrants: The Attractions and Realities of the United States (original) (raw)
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Placing Assimilation Theory: Mexican Immigrants in Urban and Rural America
Assimilation theory typically conceptualizes native whites in metropolitan areas as the mainstream reference group to which immigrants' adaptation is compared. Yet the majority of the U.S. population will soon be made up of ethnoracial minorities. The rise of new immigrant destinations has contributed to this demographic change in rural areas, in addition to already-diverse cities. In this article, we argue that assimilation is experienced in reference to the demographic populations within urban and rural destinations as well as the physical geography of these places. We analyze and compare the experiences of rural Mexicans who immigrated to urban Southern california and rural Montana, demonstrating the ways in which documentation status in the United States and the rurality of immigrants' communities of origin in Mexico shape assimilation in these two destinations.
Placing Assimilation Theory: Mexican Immigrants in Urban and Rural America (with Angela Garcia)
The ANNALS, 2017
Assimilation theory typically conceptualizes native whites in metropolitan areas as the mainstream reference group to which immigrants' adaptation is compared. Yet the majority of the U.S. population will soon be made up of ethnoracial minorities. The rise of new immigrant destinations has contributed to this demographic change in rural areas, in addition to already-diverse cities. In this article, we argue that assimilation is experienced in reference to the demographic populations within urban and rural destinations as well as the physical geography of these places. We analyze and compare the experiences of rural Mexicans who immigrated to urban Southern california and rural Montana, demonstrating the ways in which documentation status in the United States and the rurality of immigrants' communities of origin in Mexico shape assimilation in these two destinations.
THE EXPANSION OF IMMIGRANT NETWORKS AT ORIGIN: A CASE STUDY OF A RANCHO IN JALISCO, MEXICO
Although the theory of cumulative causation posits a ''saturation point'' at which all members of a rural community who are potential transnational migrants will have migrated, in the case of dynamic out-migration centers, this saturation point may never be reached. This is because growth centers – the growth often having been propelled by wages and remittances of prior migrants – attract in-migrants from poorer, less dynamic, surrounding ranchos that eventually become incorporated in transnational migration networks of the more dynamic rancho. It is also due to intermarriage as well as friendship and ritual kinship ties between members of the core rancho and surrounding ranchos.
CHAPTER 6: Modernization, Migration and Enduring Localism in Rural Communities off Central Mexico
Center for Migration Studies special issues, 2003
At the end of 1998, we initiated a research project in the Valley of Atlixco, Puebla, to explore the perception that inhabitants of this region have about their territory. The principal purpose was to study the cultural dimensions of the region, not only in objective terms ("ecological" and ethnographic) but also in subjective terms. Without being conscious of it, we entered the fields of what are today called "Cultural Geography" and "Geography of Perception." We had two objectives. On the one hand, we wanted to explore the actual social traits and physiography of traditional country villages in the center of Mexico by exploring their economic production, their degree of cultural integration, their rules for sociability, and, above all, their subjective link with their regional territory. On the other hand, we wanted to evaluate the impact of urban modernity on these villages in its economic and cultural dimensions. We supposed that this modernizing impact had been produced through three principal channels, without excluding others more diffuse: 1) Urban polarization exerted by the City of Puebla on its surroundings, with its "peri-urbanization"1 and "rurbanization"2 effects. Today it is a commonly accepted fact that modernization, and consequently globalization,, are urban phenomena affecting large metropolises and that these, in turn, tend to produce a rural integrated periphery ("peri-urbanization") characterized by the dissemination of secondary residences, with gardens and private orchards; by intensive commercial horticulture destined for the urban market; by the increase of secondary and tertiary sectors; and, in general, by the diffusion of lifestyles and urban consumption in extremely rural areas ("rurbanization").
Cumulative Causation Unbounded: Network Expansion in Rural and Urban Migration Centers
Anthropological Quarterly, 2012
There is a tendency in the migration literature to see rural communities that send many migrants to the United States as closed communities. The theory of cumulative causation rests on the assumption of bounded communities and posits a saturation point at which no more migration from the community occurs. The implication that eventually there will be no further migration from a given community ignores the existence of networks that bind people from nearby or even distant communities which can be tapped by a potential migrant and the phenomenon of internal migration to dynamic rural centers. Migration networks also expand in urban centers through marriages of a family's offspring that bring people without established ties in the US into intimate contact with people who do have these ties. [Keywords: Transnational migration, cumulative causation, network expansion, non-bounded communities, family based social capital] T he dynamics of family, social, and community networks in transnational migration between Mexican rural communities and the US has been explored in great depth in the migration literature for a little more than two decades (e.g.,
The Limits to Cumulative Causation: International Migration From Mexican Urban Areas
Demography, 2004
We present theoretical arguments and empirical research to suggest that the principal mechanisms of cumulative causation do not function in large urban settings. Using data from the Mexican Migration Project, we found evidence of cumulative causation in small cities, rural towns and villages, but not in large urban areas. With event-history models, we found little positive effect of community-level social capital and a strong deterrent effect of urban labor markets on the likelihood of first and later U.S. trips for residents of urban areas in Mexico, suggesting that the social process of migration from urban areas is distinct from that in the more widely studied rural migrant-sending communities of Mexico.
Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 13(1): 48-78, 2008
This paper examines the emergence and acceleration of international migration in new sending areas of Mexico by analyzing how Zapotitlán Salinas, Puebla, a rural town in south-central Mexico, was rapidly transformed into a migrant sending community over the last 20 years. In the mid-1980s, some individuals from Zapotitlán set out for New York City in order to salir adelante (do well for themselves) in the hopes of improving their standard of living in Mexico. By the mid-1990s the local impact of Mexico's deepening economic crisis, the neoliberal economic policies implemented to counteract the crisis, and other local and regional factors virtually destroyed the town's onyx industry, eliminating most local sources of employment. Increasing levels of consumption and consumption expectations among Zapotitecos along with the lack of suitable local and regional employment options reinforced individuals' decisions to migrate, particularly in the context of worsening economic and social conditions in Mexico. The acceleration of international migration in Zapotitlán Salinas was accompanied by changes in the meaning and experience of migration over time. Este artículo examina el inicio y la aceleración de la migración internacional en áreas recientemente incorporadas por las redes migratorias a través del análisis de cómo Zapotitlán Salinas, Puebla, un pueblo rural en el centro-sur de México, fue rápidamente transformado a una comunidad de migrantes durante los últimos veinte años. A mediados de los ochenta, algunos individuos de Zapotitlán migraron a la ciudad de Nueva York para salir adelante y mejorar su calidad de vida en México. Para mediados de los noventa, el impacto local de la prolongada crisis económica en México, las políticas económicas neoliberales implementadas para contrarrestar la crisis, y otros factores locales y regionales prácticamente destruyeron la industria local del ónix, eliminando la mayoría del empleo local. Los niveles crecientes de consumo y las expectativas del consumo entre Zapotitecos junto con la ausencia de los empleos adecuados local y regionalmente afirmaron la toma de decisión de individuos para migrar, sobre todo en el contexto del empeoramiento de las condiciones económicas y sociales en México. La aceleración de la migración internacional en Zapotitlán Salinas fue acompañada por cambios en el significado y experiencia de la migración a través del tiempo.
Resolving the migrant paradox: Two pathways to coalescence in the late precontact U.S. Southwest
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2018
Migrants are viewed as either disruptive and associated with upheaval or socially and economically beneficial to society. This contradiction constitutes a "migrant paradox" that must be resolved to form sustainable multicultural societies. Social and political scientists view contemporary cosmopolitan societies as successful multicultural organizations, but give little attention to the historical processes through which such societies form. This essay takes a deep historical perspective on migration and resultant multicultural societies, often called coalescent societies by North American archaeologists. We examine four dimensions of migration (scale, organization, and pre-migration conditions in homeland and destination) and the resultant coalescent trajectories in two intensively studied cases from the late pre-contact U.S. Southwest. These are Kayenta migrations into southern Arizona and Mesa Verde migrations into the Northern Rio Grande Valley, which resulted in two different coalescent trajectories that resolved the migrant paradox with variable success. Lessons drawn from these cases have contemporary relevance for resolving and providing perspective on the current migration "crisis." One important finding is that migrant skill and identity persistence, and social distance between migrants and locals are at least as important as the scale of migration in predicting outcomes. Another lesson is that coalescence, especially among socially distant groups, is typically a multigenerational process. Migration crises are often short-term and more perceived than real when viewed from a deep historical perspective. A final lesson is that inclusive institutions and ideologies that foster interaction between migrants and locals with minimal hierarchy greatly facilitate the coalescence process. These institutions and ideologies may already exist within local sociopolitical organizations or may develop within the migrant community as a result of migrant-local interaction. The twenty-first century will be the century of the migrant. At the turn of the twenty-first century, there were more migrants than ever before in recorded history Nail, 2015:187 Daily headlines provide a constant reminder that millions of people are on the move. Changing political and economic conditions across the globe have generated inequalities in wealth and security at such vast scales that large segments of the world's poor and persecuted are embarking on perilous journeys in search of better lives elsewhere. The
Once the violent course of the Mexican revolution subsided, and political stability cemented on a strong state apparatus took hold, Mexico entered a steady path of economic growth. Between about 1940 and 1970 the state intervened forcefully to propel urban industrial development. Those were the golden years of import substitution industrialization (ISI), which for working class manufacturing workers in Mexican cities meant a living wage, subsidized housing and health FDUH VRFLDO VHFXULW\ DQG YDULRXV SHUTXLVLWHV DOO VXSSRUWHG E\ D VWURQJ VWDWH WKDW mediated between industrialists and unions. Since the early 1980s, ISI gave way to export-oriented industrialization (EOI). EOI features a smaller and retreating VWDWH ODERU ³ÀH[LELOL]DWLRQ´ ZHDN XQLRQV LQVXI¿FLHQW ZDJHV DQG WKH ULVH RI WKH informal urban economy as a poor substitute for the relative economic security of the past. The ISI-EOI story is, of course, well known to anyone familiar with twentieth-century Mexico -or, for that matter, with twentieth-century Latin America. But the link between the macroeconomic model and urban Mexican PLJUDWLRQ WR WKH 8QLWHG 6WDWHV LV QRW 5XEpQ +HUQiQGH]/HyQ DGGUHVVHV WKLV FRQQHFWLRQ ,Q D ¿HOG UHSOHWH ZLWK VWXGLHV RI UXUDO 0H[LFDQ PLJUDWLRQ WR WKH U.S., his book is groundbreaking and a refreshing read. Metropolitan Migrants is the result of ten years of research on the Monterrey-Houston migratory circuit. +HUQiQGH]/HyQ ¶V DQDO\WLFDO OHQV ]RRPV LQ RQ D 0RQWHUUH\ LQGXVWULDO ZRUNLQJ class neighborhood, La Fama, and its counterpart in the Summerland section of +RXVWRQ +LV PHWKRGRORJ\ PL[HV TXDOLWDWLYH DQG TXDQWLWDWLYH WRROV ± ZLWK DQ emphasis on ethnography -and keeps a constant dialogue between the macro and the micro and between the two sides of the border.