The Metropolitan Dispersion of Mexican Immigrants in the United States, 1980 to 2000

Abstract

When networks coordinate a protracted, high-volume influx of low-wage immigrants, they focus on vulnerable people within a handful of reception localities. As a result, immigrants gradually saturate the high-volume network destinations, causing immigrants’ rents to rise and their wages to fall. Deteriorated rent-to-wages ratios then impel the immigrants to disperse their settlement to non-traditional destinations where more favourable economic conditions still exist. This article investigates this hypothesis through an examination of Mexican immigration to the United States, 1980 to 2000. We find that Mexican immigrant influx caused a deterioration of their rent-to-wages ratios in the 1980s, which deflected many to non-traditional destinations in the 1990s. By contrast, their high wages protected Asian Indian immigrants in the United States from hardship-level rent-to-wages ratios in the 1980s. As a result, Asian Indians did not disperse in the 1990s as did Mexicans. These results support the hypothesis.