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The Changing Profile of Mexican Migrants to the United States: New Evidence from California and Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Enrico A. Marcelli  and
Wayne A. Cornelius
Enrico A. Marcelli
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Boston
Wayne A. Cornelius
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
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Abstract

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Using recent data from southern California and Mexico, we challenge the notion that the demographic profile of Mexican migrants to the United States since 1970 has remained constant. We find that more recent cohorts of migrants are more likely to settle permanently in the United States, to have higher proportions of females, to be younger, to have more education, to be increasingly likely to originate in southern Mexico and the Mexico City metropolitan area, and to be increasingly likely to depart from urban areas within Mexico. Although we find no direct evidence that the legalization programs mandated by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 has led to a stronger propensity to settle permanently in the United States, logistic regression analyses demonstrate the importance of the other three main explanatory factors suggested by Wayne Cornelius in 1992: economic crisis in Mexico, the changing character of U.S. demand for labor, and social networks.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , 2001 , pp. 105 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

This research note was written while the first author was a Research Fellow at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego, and revised while he was a Visiting Scholar at Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. Earlier drafts were presented to the Population Association of America, 25–27 Mar. 1999, in New York City, and to the UCLA Demographic Workshop on 3 May 2000. The authors gratefully acknowledge grants from the James Irvine Foundation, the John Randolph and Dora Haynes Foundation, and the U.S.-Mexico Science Foundation. The field research in Los Angeles County was undertaken jointly by the University of Southern California and El Colegio de la Frontera Norte. We are also indebted to Craig Cornelius and Rafael Vergara for research assistance. Valuable comments on an initial draft were provided by Manuel García y Griego, David Heer, and Pascale Joassart. We also have benefited from conversations with Paul Ong, Robert Mare, Shannon McConville, Manuel Pastor Jr., and Rafael Alarcón as well as from suggestions provided by three anonymous LARR reviewers. The authors bear full responsibility for all interpretations and conclusions in this piece.

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