Current Mexican Immigrants Provide Key Link For Future Migrants

WASHINGTON,D.C. (Hispanic PR Wire)  May 22, 2004 - Young, unmarried Mexican men with male relatives or close family friends already living in the United States are more than twice as likely to migrate than men without connections, according to a new study published in the May issue of the journal Demography.

According to a study conducted by Sara Curran and Estela Rivero-Fuentes, demographers with Princeton University's Office of Population Research, such ties are even more important to Mexican women. The odds that a young unmarried Mexican woman with a female contact in the United States will cross the border are almost four times higher than those of a similar young woman without contacts in the United States.

Based on interviews from 52 Mexican villages between 1982 and 1997, Curran and Rivero analyzed the characteristics and migration patterns of 6,000 17-to-25-year-old single Mexicans. Almost 60 percent of the household heads surveyed had a personal tie to an immigrant living in the United States. The researchers focused on the unmarried adult children in the households to ensure that the migration was for economic reasons and not the result of family reunification.

Connections to Mexican immigrants provide potential migrants with information, social support, financial assistance on arrival, and – perhaps most important -- links to jobs, the researchers said.

The jobs immigrants take tend to be segregated by gender – unskilled farm, restaurant, or construction work for males; domestic work for women. The researchers find that having a female contact in the United States increased the odds that a Mexican female would immigrate but did not increase the odds for a male to migrate. Similarly, ties to males living in the United States increased the chances a male would migrate; ties to a female did not.

Historically, Mexican men were encouraged to migrate to the United States for work, but women were discouraged, according to Curran and Rivero.

"Mexicans believe that migration is riskier for women, so more barriers exist," the authors wrote in the report. "While a family might allow a young man to cross the border without a solid network in the U.S., women must do more to convince their families that they have sufficient connections before they leave."

The researchers speculate that the rate of female migration to the United States from Mexico may increase in coming years, as Mexican-born women already in the United States through recent legalization and family unification programs help facilitate the moves of young women from their original communities.

Their hunch is also based on long-standing patterns of internal migration. "For 40 years, Mexican parents have allowed their daughters to migrate within Mexico for jobs -- domestic work in urban areas and factory work in export industries."