Mexican Migration Project Research Articles

Bringing Children to the Center of Migration Theory

Migration theory is adult-centric, failing to account for the experiences of children despite their increasingly important participation in migration flows. Using a life-course perspective and findings from research at the intersection of childhood studies and migration, this paper considers whether different migration theories apply to child migration as compared to adult migration. We examine this question using the Mexican Migration Project data to track the cross-border moves of 109,096 individuals relative to their family members. We find that theories from economics best explain migration among young adults, with some participation from older adolescents, while children of all ages are sensitive to educational opportunities and the behavior of their peers and role models. Insights from the cultural turn and feminist theorizing in migration studies explain migration for both groups. We find that adult and child migration is strongly conditioned on migrant networks and family dynamics, including ties to family members in destination and family structure and caretaking arrangements in origin. We argue that child-centered analyses advance migration theory by highlighting the role of age, the life-course, and intergenerational family dynamics as determinants of international migration.

Assessing the Effect of Increased Deportations on Mexican Migrants’ Remittances and Savings Brought Home

Beginning in the 1990s and intensifying after the events of September 11, deportations in the United States increased to record levels under President Obama and continued at high levels under President Trump. Although a growing literature addresses how migrants respond to the shifting context of reception, empirical evidence on how migrants’ remitting and saving behavior changed as a result of immigration enforcement remains limited. Using detailed individual-level data from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP, N = 6787) for the years 1970–2019, this study examines how deportations relate to Mexican migrants’ joint decisions to remit and/or save, and how this relationship differs by documentation status. Results from multinomial logistic regressions reveal that rising deportations are associated with an increase in the transnational economic engagement of undocumented migrants. This is largely due to an increase in remittances; savings brought back decrease with rising deportations, likely because keeping savings in the United States is riskier than sending money back directly. Among documented migrants, the remitting and saving behavior does not appear to change as deportations rise. Analyzing these behaviors together is important to gain a more complete understanding of migrants’ transnational economic ties and links to the country of destination.

Social Ties and Stricter Immigration Enforcement Influencing Mexican Migrants’ Remitting Behavior

This study examines whether Mexican migrants’ remitting behavior during their last U.S. trip changed as policies restricting unauthorized immigration in the U.S. tightened. Using data from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP 150), this study addresses two research questions: 1) does Mexican migrants’ social ties influence their remittance behavior? and 2) does social ties counteract immigrant restriction effects on Mexican migrants’ remittance sending behavior? A Logistic regression model was used to estimate the likelihood that migrants send remittances during their last U.S. trip. An ordinary least squares regression was used to estimate the effect of social ties and immigrant enforcement periods on the logged amount of remittances sent monthly (2010 USD) by Mexican migrants during their last U.S. trip. Findings show that stricter immigration policies and social ties increased their likelihood in sending remittances and quantity sent.

How to model the weather-migration link: a machine-learning approach to variable selection in the Mexico-U.S. context

ABSTRACT A growing body of research investigates how changes in weather shape individual choices about migration, yet highly variable results continue to challenge our understanding of the weather-migration nexus. We use a data-driven approach to identify which weather variables best predicted migration decisions of 54,986 individuals originating in Mexico between 1989 and 2016. Using supervised machine learning, we fit random forests to model migration choices based on individual, household, and community attributes in training data (three-fourths of the sample) from the Mexican Migration Project. We aggregated 36 annual weather variables at the community level and applied k-fold cross-validation to evaluate which models best predicted migration decisions. The top performing models were then applied to the test data (one-fourth of our sample). Three weather variables consistently out-performed others across models: minimum temperature during day, maximum temperature at night, and ‘growing degree days’ – the number of days with optimal growth temperatures for corn (the major crop for most communities). Our results demonstrate that weather is related to individual choices about migration and illustrate the utility of using principled variable selection which revealed that both customized (growing degree days for a particular crop) and generic (max-min temperatures) metrics can be predictive of migration behaviors.

The New System of Mexican Migration: The Role of Entry Mode-Specific Human and Social Capital.

Between 2000 and 2020, undocumented migration declined, temporary labor migration rose, and legal permanent residents arrived at a steady pace-together creating a new system of Mexico-U.S. migration based on the circulation of legal temporary workers and permanent residents. Drawing on data from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Mexican Migration Project, we specify multinomial event-history models to predict the likelihood of departure on first and later trips via four entry categories: no documents, noncompliant tourist visas, temporary work visas, and legal residence visas. The models reveal how the accumulation of entry mode-specific social and human capital powered a system of undocumented migration that emerged between 1965 and 1985, and how that system deteriorated from 1985 to 2000. After 2000, employers took advantage of new visa categories to recruit legal temporary workers, leading to the accumulation of migration-related human and social capital specific to that mode of entry and the emergence of a new system of Mexico-U.S. migration.

Self-Employment and Migration: Evidence from Mexico

Mexico has one of the highest self-employment rates in the OECD. I study the relationship between business ownership and migration from Mexico to the United States using longitudinal data from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP). I find that the self-employed have a substantially lower probability of moving north, either legally or illegally. Although running a business could allow a person to finance a costly trip to the US, it also raises the opportunity costs of leaving and the nonpecuniary benefits of staying at home. The findings highlight the role of self-employment in a developing country in the likelihood of emigration.

Transnational Social Stratification? Legal Status of Immigrant Parents and the Educational Achievements of Mexican Children

Although there is evidence documenting the impacts of Mexican parents’ migration to the United States on the educational attainment of the children they leave behind, the potential role of parents’ legal status in stratifying their children's educational achievement is poorly understood. Using data from the Mexican Migration Project, I estimate the educational effects of parents’ documentation status for the children left behind in Mexico. I utilize coarsened exact matching and entropy balancing, alongside community fixed effects, in a counterfactual regression framework to address the endogeneity of parental migration decisions. I find that parental migration's effectiveness as a mechanism for securing educational gains among children left in Mexico differs by parents’ legal status. Documentation allows migrant parents to translate their experiences in the United States into relatively greater educational achievement for their children in Mexico. In the post-1986 period, the non-immigrant children of undocumented parents experienced a significant education penalty. These findings elucidate the effect of US immigration policy on social stratification in Mexican society.

The Tradeoff of Temporariness: Economic and Social Impacts of H-2A Status on Mexican Migrant Men

As the H-2A visa program expands to become a core component of contemporary Mexican migration to the United States, questions emerge about the tradeoffs migrants face between temporary and undocumented statuses. This article employs propensity score matching of participants in the Mexican Migration Project—an extensive binational survey of Mexican migrants and their families—to compare economic and social outcomes of H-2A visa recipients vis-à-vis undocumented migrants. Findings indicate that although H-2A visas offer benefits like a lower cost of living while abroad, they do not produce a discernible effect on wages relative to wages earned by undocumented migrants. While H-2A migrants are more likely to work in the formal economy, they are also less likely to build social capital or language proficiency in the United States than undocumented migrants, indicating a degree of social isolation that can be exploited by employers. This comparison contributes to a growing literature on the proliferation of temporary migratory statuses and the marginality experienced by migrants within these statuses.

Does Parental Migration During Childhood Affect Children's Lifetime Educational Attainment? Evidence From Mexico.

Existing scholarship reveals important and competing influences of parental migration on children's educational trajectories. On the one hand, in the short term, left-behind children commonly take on additional housework and sometimes place less emphasis on education if they aspire to follow in their parents' migratory footsteps. On the other hand, parental migration often leads to monetary transfers (remittances), which reduces financial pressure on sending households and can strengthen educational aspirations among children left behind. Because previous studies examined these effects on children still completing their educations, the cumulative impact of parental migration on children's educational attainment remains uncertain. In this study, we use retrospective life history data from the Mexican Migration Project to link parental migrations occurring during childhood with children's educational attainment measured in adulthood. Using a novel counterfactual approach, we find that parental migration during childhood is associated with increased years of schooling and higher probabilities of completing lower-secondary school, entering upper-secondary school, and completing upper-secondary school. These associations were strongest among children whose parents did not complete primary school and those living in rural areas. Results from a placebo test suggest that these positive associations cannot be attributed to unobserved household characteristics related to parental migration, which supports a causal interpretation of our main findings. Thus, our analysis suggests that, on average, and particularly among more-disadvantaged households, the long-term educational benefits associated with parental migration outweigh short-term disruptions and strain associated with parental absence.

Snapshot Models of Undocumented Immigration

Accurately estimating the size of the undocumented immigrant population is a critical component of assessing the health and security risks of undocumented immigration to the United States. To provide one such estimate, we use data from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP), a study that includes samples of undocumented Mexican immigrants to the United States after their return to Mexico. Of particular interest are the departure and return dates of a sampled migrant's most recent sojourn in the United States, and the total number of such journeys undertaken by that migrant household, for these data enable the construction of data-driven undocumented immigration models. However, such data are subject to an extreme physical bias, for to be included in such a sample, a migrant must have returned to Mexico by the time of the survey, excluding those undocumented immigrants still in the United States. In our analysis, we account for this bias by jointly modeling trip timing and duration to produce the likelihood of observing the data in such a "snapshot" sample. Our analysis characterizes undocumented migration flows including single-visit migrants, repeat visitors, and "retirement" from circular migration. Starting with 1987, we apply our models to 30 annual random snapshot surveys of returned undocumented Mexican migrants accounting for undocumented Mexican migration from 1980 to 2016. Scaling to population quantities and supplementing our analysis of southern border crossings with estimates of visa overstays, we produce lower bounds on the total number of undocumented immigrants that are much larger than conventional estimates based on U.S.-based census-linked surveys, and broadly consistent with the more recent estimates reported by Fazel-Zarandi, Feinstein, and Kaplan.

International Migration Experience and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Mexico.

This study investigates the effect of international migration experience on entrepreneurship in sending areas. To identify prosperous businesses that create jobs and encourage economic development, this study isolates businesses other than street-vending enterprises with non-family employees. Retrospective life history data from the Mexican Migration Project (N = 11,789 persons & 146,372 person-years) was used to estimate the annual probability of becoming an entrepreneur across 170 Mexican communities between 1975-2017. This study found that (1) any prior migration experience increases the probability of entrepreneurial entry relative to non-migrants; (2) accumulated months of migration experience are positively associated with the probability of entrepreneurial entry; (3) undocumented status is associated with a lower probability of entrepreneurial entry. The positive effect of accumulated migration experience on entrepreneurship suggests that international migrants can accumulate human and financial resources that are essential to early stage entrepreneurship. Thus, entrepreneurship represents an important pathway through which international migration can encourage economic development in less developed regions. At the same time, the results suggest that that immigration policies in receiving countries can undercut migrants' capacities to mobilize resources and contribute to economic development upon return. These findings suggest that target migration creates a win-win by addressing labor shortages in receiving countries, while transferring resources to sending areas that enable economic mobility and development.

Migration, Family Formation and Fertility in the Americas

In many low- and medium-income countries that are the traditional sources of international migrants, total fertility rates have dropped to levels at or near replacement. In this context of low fertility, we expect migration’s effects on fertility to operate primarily through marital timing and marital stability. We examine the effects of international migration on age at first marriage, union dissolution, timing of first birth, and completed fertility, using retrospective life-history data collected in Mexico and eight other Latin American countries by the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) and the Latin American Migration Project (LAMP). Using discrete-time hazards and Poisson regression models, we find clear evidence that early migration experience results in delayed marriage, delayed first birth, and a higher rate of marital dissolution. We also find evidence among women that cumulative international migration experience is associated with fewer births and that the estimated effects of migration experience are attenuated after taking into account age at union formation and husbands’ prior union experiences. As fertility levels in migrant origin and destination countries continue on their path toward convergence, migrant fertility below native fertility may become more common due to migration’s disruptive effects on marital timing and marital stability and the selection of divorced or separated adults into migration.

Documentation status, gender, and health selection of immigrants: Evidence from Mexican–US migration

AbstractRecent research has revealed an epidemiologic paradox within immigrants: undocumented immigrants often exhibit similar or even better health outcomes than documented immigrants despite their socio‐economic disadvantages. The present study examines whether this paradox partly reflects heterogeneity in immigrant health selection by documentation status and gender. We examine the case of Mexico–US immigration using data from the Mexican Migration Project, which provides premigration health and detailed migration histories. Results demonstrate notable diversity in immigrant health selection. Undocumented Mexican immigrant men are especially positively selected on health. Better premigration health also increases recurrent undocumented migration trips. Documented Mexican immigrant men, in contrast, do not exhibit a significant level of positive health selection. For Mexican women, both documented and undocumented migrants are positively selected on the basis of health, and the degree of health selection is irrespective of their documentation status. These findings suggest that immigrant health selection can operate differently depending on the risks and maturity of migration. Taking into account both documentation status and gender is essential for a more accurate understanding of immigrant health selection and has important implications for investigating the impact of undocumented status on immigrant health.

How do U.S. visa policies affect unauthorized immigration?

How would increasing the number of visas available to potential migrants affect unauthorized immigration from Mexico to the U.S.? Current U.S. policy bans people who are deported from receiving legal status for a period of time. This policy aims to serve as an additional deterrent to unauthorized immigration, but may be ineffective given that most potential Mexican migrants have an extremely low probability of ever being able to legally move to the U.S. We develop a dynamic discrete location choice model, which we estimate using data from the Mexican Migration Project, and consider various counterfactual policies that vary the intensity of enforcement and access to work visas. We find that legal entry bans for deported individuals are ineffective at current rates of legal immigration, but that increased legalization rates would amplify the deterrent effects of deportation. We also show that a temporary work visa program would yield similar deterrent effects as an increase in permanent legalization without resulting in very large increases in the total stock of migrants residing in the U.S. These findings have important implications for structuring future immigration reforms.

Lethal Violence and Migration in Mexico: An Analysis of Internal and International Moves.

We analyze the effect of homicide in Mexico on patterns and processes of internal and international migration. Linking municipal-level homicide rates from 1990 through 2018 with data from the Mexican Migration Project, we estimate a series of multinomial discrete time event history models to assess the effect that exposure to lethal violence has on the likelihood of migration within Mexico and to the United States without documents. Statistical estimates indicate that the homicide rate negatively predicts the likelihood of taking a first undocumented trip to the United States but positively predicts the likelihood of taking a first trip within Mexico. Among those undocumented migrants who have already taken a first U.S. trip, lethal violence also negatively predicts the likelihood of taking a second undocumented trip. Among returned internal migrants whose first trip was to a Mexican destination, the odds of taking a first U.S. trip were also negatively predicted by the municipal homicide rate. We conclude that rising violence in Mexico is not a significant driver of undocumented migration to the United States. Instead it contributes to the decline in undocumented out-migration observed since 2007, in combination with the rising age of those at risk of migration and the growing access of Mexicans to legal entry visas.

The limits to cumulative causation revisited: Urban-origin Mexico‒US migration in an era of increased immigration restrictions

Background: Cumulative causation ‒ the self-reproduction of migration through community social ties ‒ is a phenomenon central to the continuation of Mexico‒US migration, particularly for flows originating in rural areas. A debate has emerged over whether this self-reproducing process also occurs in large urban areas. Objective: I aim to determine whether cumulative causation explains US-bound migration from metropolitan areas in Mexico. Methods: Data comes from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP), which covers 154 origin communities in Mexico (30 of which are in metropolitan areas) and spans the period 1970‒2015. Event-history models are used to estimate the association between community ties and taking a first and last US trip in rural areas, small cities, and metropolitan areas. Results: The findings support the contention that the migration process from metropolitan areas in Mexico is self-reproducing. Differences in the strength of community ties for predicting international repeat migration between rural and metropolitan areas have declined in recent decades. Contribution: Previous studies that found no evidence in support of the self-reproduction of migration in metropolitan areas were limited by either the small number of communities assessed or inadequate measurement of community ties. Using a larger sample of communities and better measurement, this study shows that social ties in large cities can play a role similar to that played by rural ties in facilitating and perpetuating international migration. The results suggest that metropolitan migrants from more recently surveyed localities use community ties to reduce the costs and risks of migration.

Evolution of the Mexico-U.S. Migration System: Insights from the Mexican Migration Project.

Since 1987 the Mexican Migration Project has collected and disseminated representative survey data on documented and undocumented migration to the United States. The MMP currently includes surveys of 161 communities, which together contain data on 27,113 households and 169,945 individuals, 26,446 of whom have U.S. migratory experience. These data are here used to trace the evolution of the Mexico-U.S. migration system from the late 19th to the early 21st century, revealing how shifts in U.S. immigration and border policies have been critical to the formation of different eras of migration characterized by distinctive patterns of migration, settlement, and return in different legal statuses. The present era is characterized by the repression of the large population of undocumented migrants and their U.S. citizen children by an ongoing regime of mass detention and deportation and the simultaneous recruitment of Mexican workers for exploitation on short term temporary visas. The future of Mexican migration to the United States will be revealed by subsequent waves of data collection by the Mexican Migration Project.

Mexico-U.S. Migration in Time: From Economic to Social Mechanisms

This article adopts a mixed-methods approach to illustrate how economic, political, and social mechanisms work across time to shape individuals’ migration decisions. First, using large-scale survey data from the Mexican Migration Project, we show that economic, political, and social factors all matter for migration decisions but that social factors come to matter most for migration over time. Second, drawing on 120 in-depth interviews with migrants and their family members in four Mexican communities, we find that communities’ migration histories shape how economic, political, and social factors contribute to migration decisions at different points in time. In communities with limited migration histories, individuals migrate to relieve economic pressures on themselves or other household members. In communities with more established migration histories, information and assistance from current or returned migrants help to overcome potential barriers to making the journey. Finally, in communities with a high incidence of migration, social factors act as independent causes of migration—apart from economic needs. These findings provide a deeper understanding of the processes underlying Mexico-U.S. migration, which is crucial for anticipating future flows and crafting policy responses.

Debacles on the Border: Five Decades of Fact-Free Immigration Policy.

Since 1987 the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) has compiled extensive data on the characteristics and behavior of documented and undocumented migrants to the United States and made them publicly available to users to test theories of international migration and evaluate U.S. immigration and border policies. Findings based on these data have been plentiful, but have also routinely been ignored by political leaders who instead continue to pursue policies with widely documented, counterproductive effects. In this article we review prior studies based on MMP data to document these effects. We also use official statistics to document circumstances on the border today, and draw on articles in this volume to underscore the huge gap between U.S. policies and the realities of immigration. Despite that net positive undocumented Mexican migration to the U.S. ended more than a decade ago, the Trump administration continues to demand the construction of a border wall and persists in treating Central American arrivals as criminals rather than asylum seekers, thus transforming what is essentially a humanitarian problem into an immigration crisis.

Temporary Workers in the United States and Canada: Migrant Flows and Labor Outcomes

This article analyzes migratory flows and labor outcomes for temporary migrants from Mexico who participate in the H-2A visa program in the United States and the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program in Canada. Using data from the Mexican Migration Project, we analyze the determinants of taking a first trip to each country with temporary work documents, the financial and labor circumstances that migrants experience while working abroad, and the factors that determine the likelihood and amount of money sent home to Mexico as remittances or held onto and brought home to Mexico as savings. We find that temporary agricultural workers migrating to both countries come from rural backgrounds, but those working in the United States earn higher wages and experience shorter workdays than those in Canada. Nevertheless, total annual work hours and earnings are quite similar for both groups of migrants. We observe few differences between the two groups in remittance amounts sent home, but find that temporary workers in the United States return home with more savings than do those working in Canada.