Legacies of Inequity: How Local Mexican Political Development Shapes Migrants’ Opportunities in U.S. Destinations

• In Event: 321 - Section on International Migration Paper Session. International Migration and Development

Abstract

This paper traces how hometown political histories shape Mexican communities’ opportunities as migrants to the United States. Sociologists have drawn attention to the ways receiving-end factors differentiate migrant streams, and they have shown how networks channel individual migrants to particular sites, conditioning their patterns of migration and occupational niches. Still, they do little to explain the opportunities or constraints on the early migrants who select these destinations. Here, I use comparative community case studies to develop a hypothesis about how long-term, hometown political development shapes migrant insertion. I compare two villages that migrated from rural Oaxaca, Mexico to California at similar times. I find that hometown political institutions, forged through long-term processes of Mexican state building, shaped each community’s internal migration path, and, in turn, its exposure to job recruitment in rural or urban destinations. In one case, participatory community organization encouraged members to seek education in urban Mexico, where they forged links to service work in Los Angeles. By contrast, in the second case, hierarchical organization and land dispossession forced migrants into internal migration for farm work, limiting their employment options within both Mexico and in the U.S. In sum, while rural villages may erode in the face of emigration, their political institutions - structured by historical processes of state building - have long-term implications for migrants’ economic and social marginality, compounding the effects of receiving-end factors.

Author

• Abigail Andrews, University of California-Berkeley