Gendered disparities in Mexico-U.S. migration by class, ethnicity, and geography

Abstract

AbstractBACKGROUNDMen are more likely than women to migrate from Mexico to the United States. This disparity has been shown to vary by level of education, suggesting that gender may interact with other forms of social status to inform the relative risk of Mexico-U.S. migration for men and women.OBJECTIVEThis study examines whether and how the gender disparity in migration from Mexico to the United States varies by class, ethnicity, and geography.METHODSData from two waves of the Mexican Family Life Survey are used to estimate the rate of migration to the United States for men and women across class, ethnic, and geographic groups.RESULTSThe gender disparity in Mexico-U.S. migration varies systematically by class, ethnicity, and geography. The gender disparity in migration is largest among those with the least education, with the least in the workforce, in the most impoverished households, who both identify as indigenous and speak an indigenous language, and who live in the southern region of Mexico. It is smallest among those with the most education, in the least impoverished households, with the highest occupational status, who do not identify as indigenous, and who live in the northern regions of Mexico.CONCLUSIONSSocial privilege equalizes the gender disparity in Mexico-U.S. migration and social disadvantage exacerbates it. This pattern may arise because social status allows women to overcome constraints on mobility, or because the meaning of gender varies by social status.1. IntroductionDespite increasing participation of women in migration from Mexico to the United States, men still predominate among Mexico-U.S. migrants (Riosmena and Massey 2012), a pattern that has inspired substantial research and debate (Cerrutti and Massey 2001; Curran and Rivero-Fuentes 2003; Donato 1993; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994; Kanaiaupuni 2000). Scholars have argued that this gender disparity in migration is evidence that migration is gendered; that is, patterns of migration reflect norms and understandings, which, in the case of Mexico-U.S. migration, result in the relatively constrained spatial mobility of women (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994).The gender disparity in migration masks substantial heterogeneity in the risk of migration among Mexican men and women (Donato 1993; Cerrutti and Massey 2001). This heterogeneity may be structured by gender, meaning that gender may interact with other forms of social status to pattern men's and women's relative risk of migration in systematic ways. For example, female migrants are more positively selected for education than are male migrants (Feliciano 2008; Kanaiaupuni 2000; Rendall and Parker 2013). As a result, the gender disparity in migration is largest among the least educated and smallest among those with the most education.Like education, other forms of social status may also interact with gender to influence men's and women's relative risk of migration, but we lack studies of how the gender disparity in migration varies across social groups. Mahler and Pessar (2001) propose that scholars consider the gendered geographies of power that shape and constrain the relative mobility of women and men along hierarchies created through economic, social, and geographic processes. In this paper, I examine how the gender disparity in Mexico-U.S. migration varies by class, ethnicity, and geography.2. DataData for this study come from the first two waves of the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS), the first national data source from Mexico to track U.S. migrants between survey waves, which means that migration is observed prospectively, all social characteristics of migrants are measured prior to migration, and U.S. migrants in the second wave of data are representative of Mexicans who were living in Mexico in 2002 and who migrated to the United States by 2005 (Teruel, Rubalcava, and Arenas 2012). …