Mexican Migrant Elite Empresarios: Transnational Entrepreneurship and Elite Formation

Abstract

This essay analyzes an emerging transnational Mexican migrant elite – a new social and economic group that has emerged not from established elites or privileged backgrounds, but from poor campesino families. Most of these (male) entrepreneur migrants entered the United States without documents and worked in unskilled jobs for extended periods. Eventually, they began to establish their businesses in New York and New Jersey and, within 20 years, accumulated unprecedented wealth. The entrepreneurs are successful in the US and Mexico, distinct from other transnational migrant groups. They have constructed transnational forms of class mobility and citizenship and innovative socio-economic, political, and solidarity networks shaped by neoliberalism. The essay examines how these transnational entrepreneurs became part of such a recent emerging elite in the US and Mexico. Furthermore, these entrepreneur migrants have established political relations with local politicians on both sides of the border. They have gone from being undocumented workers to becoming “Tortilla Kings” or millionaire importers of Mexican goods.