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Gendered Selectivity: U.S. Mexican Immigrants and Mexican Nonmigrants, 1960–2000

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Cynthia Feliciano
Cynthia Feliciano*
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
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Abstract

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Previous research suggests that Mexican female migrants face more barriers than their male counterparts. However, few studies examine how the educational characteristics of female migrants differ from those of male migrants and how selectivity may have changed in the context of evolving gender dynamics in both countries. This study uses U.S. and Mexican census data from 1960 to 2000 to compare the educational attainments of recent Mexican immigrants to Mexican nonmigrants. Both male and female immigrants are positively selected—that is, more educated than nonmigrants in Mexico—and that selectivity increased from 1960 to 2000. Women are more highly selected than men throughout the past four decades, but earlier female migrants tended to have more education than more recent female migrants, who tend to come from the middle of the educational distribution.

Resumo

Resumo

Investigaciones previas sugieren que las mujeres emigrantes mexicanas encuentran más desafíos que sus contrapartes masculinas. Sin embargo, pocos estudios examinan las diferencias del nivel educativo entre hombres y mujeres y cómo la decisión de emigrar podría haber cambiado con la evolución de las dinámicas de género en ambos países. Este estudio utiliza datos de los censos de Estados Unidos y México desde los años 1960 al 2000 para comparar los logros educativos de mexicanos que recientemente emigraron y los de aquellos que no emigraron. Los resultados de la investigación muestran que los emigrantes, tanto masculinos como femeninos, tienen mayor nivel de educación que aquellos que no emigraron, y que estas diferencias aumentaron entre el año 1960 y el 2000. Durante las últimas cuatro décadas, la diferencia educativa entre las emigrantes y aquellas que no emigraron fue más grande que la diferencia entre los emigrantes masculinos y aquellos que no emigraron.. Sin embargo, las primeras emigrantes tenían un mayor nivel educativo que las de años recientes quienes en contraste, poseen un nivel educativo intermedio.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , 2008 , pp. 139 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

The author thanks participants at the University of California, Irvine, Immigration Brown Bag Series and the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on previous versions of this work.

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