Mexican Immigrant Acculturation: The Impact of Political, Social, and Economic Characteristics of One’s Sending State

Abstract

ABSTRACT Immigration from Mexico has been a politically salient topic for decades and continues to be in the current political landscape. In this paper, we consider the push factors of the sending state that influence return migration, as opposed to much of the literature that focuses on the pull factors of the receiving state. Specifically, we hypothesize that Mexican states’ economic, political, crime, and border contexts influence a Mexican migrant’s position on whether or not to return to Mexico. To test the hypotheses, we utilize the 2006 Latino National Survey (LNS) merged with Mexican sending state socioeconomic, political, crime, and border location data. The findings lend evidence that push factors impact return migration patterns for Mexican migrants, particularly political, crime, and border context.