B I N A T I O N A L S T U D Y

E S T U D I O B I N A C I O N A L

The binational team's agenda for future research includes studies of:

· Demographic issues, including the causes and consequences of differential fertility of Mexican-origin women in the United States and adjustment of their fertility behavior over time; the effects of intermarriage patterns on the assimilation of the Mexican-origin population; and the consequences of differential internal migration patterns by Mexican-born and United States born counterparts. Particular focus also is needed on Mexican immigration trends overall, as well as on: the demographic impacts of the IRCA legalization in both countries; the foreign-born populations' legal composition; modeling transitions among legal statuses; return migration, via surveys of relatives who emigrated from the U.S.; and migration-related interregional demographic changes in Mexico.

· Economic issues, including: whether capital and labor behave as substitutes and/or as complements; the scale effects resulting from concentrations of Mexican migrants in the United States; the reasons for the negative impacts of recent migrants on employment and earnings of earlier migrants; benefits and costs of migrants to particular industries and sectors of the economy; changes in welfare participation and levels of welfare based on duration of residence; the short and long-run fiscal impacts of legal and undocumented migrants from Mexico at the local, state, and national levels; the effects of NAFTA and other economic developments in Mexico on migration patterns and trends; Mexico's economic absorption of immigrants from other countries, including the degree to which new jobs generated in Mexico are taken by immigrants from other countries; better and more consistent estimates of costs of education, health, and social infrastructure related to migrants; the economic impacts of migration in nontraditional sending communities; the extent to which Mexican migrants working in the United States gain skills and capabilities that produce increasing benefits upon return; the contributions of remittances; the effectiveness of particular economic development strategies and programs on reducing migration pressures; and the relation between intensity of migration flow from communities and their economic and social performances over time.

· Social issues, including: the educational gains of the Mexican-born and their offspring compared to other immigrant groups; linguistic

MEXICOESTADOS UNIDOS SOBRE MIGRACION

MIGRATION BETWEEN MEXICO & THE UNITED STATES

assimilation of the Mexican-born population and the implications of Spanish language maintenance; possible bias against female sponsors in the new sponsorship requirements in the U.S.; the impacts and costs of migration to family, culture, and community in Mexico; and Mexico's social absorption of immigrants from other countries.

· Civic and Legal Rights issues, including Mexican immigrants' decisions on whether or not to naturalize; human rights violations of Mexican migrants en route and in the United States and of third-country nationals transiting Mexico; the main obstacles to correcting human rights violations in both countries; and the advocacy efforts of industry, agricultural, environmental, human rights, ethic, and other groups on immigration legislation.

There appear to be substantial changes occurring in the U.S. occupations of migrants since 1988. There are notable gender differences in occupation. For example, Mexican-born male migrants appear to have shifted out of agriculture to some degree from 1988 to 1997 and into manufacturing occupations. Women migrants, however, remain unlikely to have been employed in agriculture and women are more likely than men to work in manufacturing and increasingly likely to find employment in service occupations.

These observations are based on the following graphs that draw upon question-

naires systematically administered from September 1988 to the present. The surveys were done in the cities of Tijuana, Mexicali, Ciudad Juárez, Nuevo Laredo, and Matamoros. Unauthorized migration through Tijuana alone makes up an estimated 50 percent of the total flow from Mexico to the United States.

To determine the occupations in which migrants worked, the following questions were asked:

(1) Have you had a job in the United States?

(2) When did you leave your last job in the United States?

(3) What type of occupation did your last job involve?

B. Migrant

Occupations,

United

States

Labor

Demand,

& Border

Crossers

B I N A T I O N A L S T U D Y

E S T U D I O B I N A C I O N A L

MEXICOESTADOS UNIDOS SOBRE MIGRACION

MIGRATION BETWEEN MEXICO & THE UNITED STATES