Search

This paper finds that minimum wages of the United States and Mexico measured carefully in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) help explain the well-documented post-2010 fall in Mexico-U.S. migration. Declining inequality also plays a role since the purchasing power of the minimum wage increased relative to the average wage in Mexico. Using time-series data, we find two positive partial correlations between minimum wages and net migration: one driven by wage differentials between the two countries and the other by wage inequality in Mexico. However, these results are found to be mediated through migrant social networks. Though relative wages are a classic migration driver, this paper is the first to explore the full minimum-average wage nexus. One clear policy implication of these results is that maintaining the real purchasing power of minimum wages helps reduce migration. An in-depth analysis is needed to demonstrate the causality of these correlations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to determine the effect of labor income prior to migration on the income obtained by migrants in the destination economy, in the case of temporary Mexican migrants in the United States. The data used comes from the Emif Norte survey conducted between 1999 and 2009. High relative and absolute mobility is observed. Hourly income is multiplied by a factor of four in the destination economy, while the effect of a 10 % increase in labor income in Mexico results in less than a 1 % increase in labor income in the United States. The results show that labor income in Mexico has little predictive power for the job performance of Mexican migrants in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the migratory experience of a group of Chiapanecan youngsters of Tojolabal origin from the municipality of Las Margaritas, Chiapas, who migrated to the United States between 2003 and 2006. These young people were the irst people to engage in the a migration adventure, which enables us to what gives us the possibility of closely observe the emergence of a transnational migration process from an area where this kind of phenomenon had not previously existed. The main objective of this paper is to show how Chiapanecan youngsters have managed to build up their migration processes on their own within a context characterized by unstable and fragmented social conditions-typical of the present capitalist system-that have obliged them to change their living and working places continuously, as well as living with uncertainty and at risk. In other words, the author is interested in showing the personal and collective solutions that these new migrants have found in order to adapt to and work in a context deined by what Richard Sennet has called the culture of new capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1990s, the U.S. border led the nation in the decline of property-related crimes, while violent crime rates fell twice as fast in the U.S. as in the median border county. This paper asks how changes in undocumented immigration and border enforcement have played a role in generating these divergent trends. We find that migrant apprehensions are correlated with violent crime and that increased border enforcement has not had a deterrent effect on such crime. Rather, increased border enforcement in a sector has led to more violent crime in neighboring sectors. In contrast to the results for violent crime, property crime is not correlated with migrant apprehensions, and while there is some evidence that border enforcement has lowered property crime rates, this result is sensitive to the model's specification. Our findings also indicate that the improved border economy over this period, specifically rapid job growth, played a significant role in lowering property crime rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes how, although the emigration of Chiapas residents to the United States is a recent phenomenon, it has its roots in internal migrations to increasingly distant places. The author traces its development from 1925 to 2003, describing some of the salient characteristics of these migrants: such as the means of transport used to reach the northern border, sources of financing for carrying out the trip, the migratory experience, crossing points, municipalities of origin and places of destination, using data from the Survey on Migration from Mexico's Northern Border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]