State Action and Labor Structure Change in Mexico

Abstract

Third World “development” often is characterized by rapid growth in trade and service jobs, not in manufacturing employment. Prior explanations emphasize materialist conceptions: a widening division of (white-collar) labor is required to match technological complexity. Or the central state pushes investment of capital-intensive industry, and resulting urban immigration outpaces growth in labor demand. This article focuses on how the central state's penetration into rural hinterlands sparks growth in trade and service jobs. The Mexican state not only employed rising numbers of service workers; it also legitimated socially constructed forms of work, urbanlike knowledge and forms of status. We find that variation in state penetration across 299 rural and urban counties, especially the sanctioning of written literacy and mass schooling, is related to growth in white-collar and informal-sector jobs (1900–1940), net the influence of counties' wealth and demographic features.