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In this paper we argue that transnational relations between the Mexican government and Mexican immigrants in the US are not new. However, the characteristics of these connections have varied across time, depending on the evolution and characteristics of migrant organisations, political and economic circumstances in Mexico, and foreign policy considerations involving US-Mexico relations. The historical links between the government and the Mexican population abroad have influenced the development of current organisations of Mexican immigrants in the US as well as the recent creation and development of the Mexican government's institutions to manage this relationship. For more recent years, we identify a change in Mexico's traditional approach to migration issues in the bilateral agenda, as well as a shift in the relationship between the Mexican immigrant communities and the government. The process of institutionalisation of this new relation began with the Program for Mexican Communities Abroad in 1990, and was strongly consolidated in 2003 with the creation of the Institute of Mexicans Abroad (IME). We argue that IME is the first transnational institution dealing with these issues and we explore some of the challenges it faces in order to achieve its objectives and exert a positive influence for Mexican migrants in the US. The paper is in three parts. In the first, we discuss the value of using a historical perspective for the study of transnational politics. The second part offers a historical account of the development of transnational relations between the Mexican government and the organised Mexican immigrant community from 1848 to 2005. In the third and final part we analyse the challenges faced by IME as a transnational institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent trends suggest a decline in the rate of intermarriage between Mexicans and non-Hispanic whites. In this paper, we argue that interpretations of this trend as a decline in preferences for intermarriage are misleading because of the lack of adequate data that captures both spatial and temporal variation in the level of intergroup contact. Using data from the Decennial Census (1980–2000) and the American Community Survey (2008–2011), we employ a novel methodological approach to disentangle the impact of spatial diffusion, ethnic replenishment, and shifts in preferences for homophily on Mexican ethnic intermarriage patterns across 543 Consistent Public Use Microdata Areas (c-PUMA). Once changes in the demographic composition of c-PUMAs are accounted for, multilevel models for repeated cross-sectional data provide no evidence of a change in the marital preferences of Mexicans over time. Trends in intermarriage rates are predominantly explained by compositional and structural changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to review the evolution of Mexican migration to the United States in an historical context, paying due attention to economic factors in both countries and, for more recent analysis, setting the globalisation context. The article is in four parts. Firstly, the profile and trends of Mexican migration to the US are reviewed. Secondly, I present recent evidence and data on the incorporation of Mexicans in the US labour market; this helps to counteract the stereotype of Mexicans as temporary migrants. The third section of the article overviews the structural transformation of the Mexican economy, which helps to explain changing social, gender and geographical origins of Mexican migration in recent years. Fourthly, attention is turned to the US context, with a particular focus on processes of labour flexibilisation, segmentation and polarisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies of wives and young children of migrants to the USA highlight implications of migration for family members who remain behind. This emerging research on transnational families is beginning to address multiple perspectives within the family system, especially beyond the nuclear family. The current phenomenological study explores the perceptions of adapting to familial transnationalism of: parents of migrants, spouses of migrants and return migrants in Mexico. Ten focus groups (N = 51) were conducted focusing on the experiences of transnational families. An inductive, comparative method was used to analyse the data and identify emerging themes. Within the global theme of interpersonal dynamics, three salient subthemes emerged: cohesion, disclosure and criticism. Findings highlight the importance of examining multiple perspectives surrounding familial transnationalism including during and after migration, those who migrate and those who stay behind, as well as immediate and extended family members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the preferred theory for understanding international migration, social capital theory (SCT) structures current debate about Mexican population growth in new US metropolitan destinations. We review this literature to show that SCT does not cover the secondary migration of hundreds of thousands of Mexican migrants from traditional to new US metropolitan destinations. As a complement to previous SCT applications, we develop two hypotheses about this internal migration: one that identifies the increasing growth in secondary migration relative to other Mexican migration streams to new destinations, and one that specifies ethnic economic conditions as one of the factors leading Mexicans to migrate out of traditional destinations. Data are from 140 US metropolitan areas (metros) with 2,000 or more economically active adult Mexican migrants in 1990 and 2000. Two statistical models form the analysis: a contingency table and a multi-level model applied to a specially constructed data file merging metropolitan-level data from the 1990 Census with individual-level migration behaviour in 1995–2000 from 2000 Census data. The results are consistent with existing SCT explanations of Mexican population growth in new US metropolitan destinations since the 1990s and further show that the internal migration of Mexican migrants is a powerful contributor thereto. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tendency for immigrants to evaluate their circumstances in the host country in terms of the life they knew in their native country has been described as a 'dual frame of reference'. Although the immigrant family may be living in crowded conditions and the parents working long hours for a minimum wage, family members can none the less compare their circumstances to those they left in their home country and feel that they are better off in their new land. However, for first-generation Mexican immigrant parents in the United States, for whom the traditional child-rearing values of respect, obedience and family unity form a significant ethnic marker, the dual frame of reference takes on an additional perspective. Although the home country is viewed as a land of economic hardship, it remains a treasured source of core moral values that continue to give coherence to everyday life. This study examines ways in which the twofold nature of the immigrants' frame of reference, in which the host country exemplifies both material good and moral decay, contributes to their differential adoption of US customs and values as well as heightened insecurity regarding their children's futures. The adaptive struggle confronting Mexican immigrants in the United States is played out in moral terms: how does one raise children who surpass their parents economically but do not fall prey to the moral dangers of contemporary American society? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]