Review of Hernandez Leon: Metropolitan Migrants (Estudios Interdisciplinarios de America Latina y el Caribe, EIAL) (original) (raw)
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.
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