CHARACTERISTICS OF MIGRANTS
Some Thoughts on Perceptions and
Policies Mexico-United States
Labor Migration Flows:
Some Theoretical and Methodological
Innovations and Research Findings
Jorge A. Bustamante
Introduction
M
igrations between Mexico and the United States are associated primarily
to the geographical vicinity of the two countries. There was a time when
the concern for undocumented immigrants was in Mexico City in reference to the increasing number of U.S. citizens who were crossing the unprotected
borders of Mexico to enter the states of Texas, California, Colorado and New Mexico
without authorization of the Mexican government. A war resulted from that illegal
flow and Mexico lost lands representing half of its territory. The ink of the Treaty of
Guadalupe-Hidalgo (1848) had not dried out when migrations on the opposite direction began to increase. Labor migrations in massive numbers from Mexico to the
United States were sought after by aggressive recruiters funded by the U.S. Congress
in the first decades of the 20th century, in order to allow the economic expansion of
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the United States southwest. U.S. recruiters of Mexican labor were restless at the
beginning of the century in the states of Guanajuato, Jalisco and Michoacán, attracting Mexican workers for the expansion of railroads, the exploitation of mines and the
opening of new lands for agriculture in the states of California, New Mexico, Colorado and Texas. These recruiting efforts funded by U.S. Congress at the beginning of
the century gave birth to networks of Mexican migrants which even today explain the
predominance of a small number of Mexican states in the totals of migrants who have
interacted with continuous U.S. demands for Mexican labor shaping a de facto international labor markets between the two countries.
This labor market is not recognized as such by the two countries. International
migration from Mexico to the United States is viewed very differently depending on
the side of the border from which this phenomenon is observed and evaluated. It is
difficult to demystify migration between Mexico and the United States, and to explain what it represents for each country. This is particularly the case with undocumented migration. Because of the contradictory visions of undocumented migration
that permeate values and perceptions of the people of these two countries, an effort
of demystification is indispensable if both nations really seek economic integration
as it is assumed in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
The view that predominates in Mexico is that outmigration toward the United
States is basically an economic phenomenon, a labor issue, from which the United
States reaps the benefits since Mexican migrants fill jobs that U.S. workers are
unwilling to take. Thus, the migrant workers are carrying out an activity which is
as legitimate as the profits made by their U.S. employers.
In the United States, in contrast, the predominant view of these same migrants is
that they are in the majority criminals, who transport drugs from Mexico and enter the
United States to subsist on public assistance programs or to take jobs which rightly
belong to U.S. citizens. Supposedly these U.S. workers are forced into unemployment by the influx of Mexican migrants who come to steal their jobs.
In Mexico these individuals are called “migrant workers” and they are viewed
in such a positive light that their family members are openly proud of their
achievements. In the United States, they are called “illegal aliens”; they are viewed
in a very negative light, almost like a plague invading from outside and where the
citizens of the United States are made the victims. Given the respective acceptance
of these contrasting visions in the two countries, the migratory phenomenon also
evokes contrasting perceptions in terms of how the set of migration problems
interjects into the relations between the two countries. Mexico’s view of the problems
associated with migrant workers encompasses things such as the violation of their
human and workers’ rights abroad; this being the case, the Mexican government
seeks a bilateral agreement that would eliminate such abuses. The United States’
view is that the primary problem associated with “illegal aliens” is their violation
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of U.S. immigration law; this being the case, the U.S. government seeks a solution
in anti-crime legislation, part of domestic legislation to govern domestic problems.
It is virtually impossible for these two visions, sustained respectively by the
civil societies of the two countries, to be both correct. One of these two visions
must not correspond to the reality of migration. One of these two visions contains
more myth than truth, although it is very possible that neither of them captures the
full range of cases. This fact makes it imperative to begin a process of de-mythifying
migration as a necessary and sufficient condition that would allow both countries
to come together within the context of bilateral relations and find ways to act jointly
to address the impacts of the issue in both countries.
Such a de-mythifying effort must begin with scientific research which can
help us develop a diagnosis of the costs and benefits that labor migration from
Mexico to the United States brings to the two countries. The results of this diagnosis should stimulate a raising of consciousness on the reality of migration and
stimulate a consensus in both countries regarding the need to eliminate undocumented migration through a bilaterally negotiated process that would have to be
concomitant to a formal agreement on labor migration between Mexico and the
United States.
For the de-mythification of migration to succeed in both countries, it is essential that efforts should be undertaken bilaterally by research institutions in both
Mexico and the United States, institutions of such repute in the international scientific community that their conclusions would be credited even if they diverged
from the visions predominating within the two countries’ respective governments
and civil societies.
This paper will attempt to lead the scientific communities of both Mexico and
the United States to the conviction that a bilateral effort to de-mythify undocumented Mexico-U.S. migration is a first and necessary step, and that this first step
may suffice to initiate a rationalization process that eliminates migration as an
obstacle in the relations between these two countries. The complexity of the task
involved in addressing and resolving the issue of migration within a context of
bilateral relations is as great as it is the gap between the actual characteristics of
migration and these characteristics as they are popularly perceived.
If our objective is to build a broad and shared understanding of migration, we
must explain why the gap referred to above is so wide. Toward this purpose this
paper is divided in three parts. The first part consists of a historical approach to the
cultural and economic meaning of the Mexican migration to the United States. The
second part consists of some recent findings from a research project designed to
monitor the undocumented migratory flows from Mexico to the United States. 1
The third part consist of a policy proposal derived from the theoretical approach
discussed in the first two parts.
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The first two parts correspond to a conceptual dichotomy derived from Max
Weber theory of Verstehende soziologie2 (Interpretative Sociology). The first chapter
of the posthumously published work of the German sociologist and, research findings
reported elsewhere,3 led to a methodological distinction between two dimensions
of the phenomenon of Mexican immigration to the United States. One called here
“cultural” and, the other called “interactional.” This distinction is derived from
empirical findings which show a relative independence of changes in U.S. public
perceptions of Mexican undocumented immigrants on one hand; and, hiring practices
by their U.S. employers as well as some economic consequences of the insertion of
these migrants into the U.S. labor market, on the other.
It will be argued in this paper that, in periods of economic recessions, U.S.
public opinion has gone to extremes of negative views about the presence of Mexican immigrants, whereas in periods of economic expansion public opinion has
swung to less negative and even positive views praising Mexican labor.4 These
changes in U.S. public opinion have not impacted significantly the persistent growth
of U.S. demands for Mexican immigrant labor over the century, as one could infer
from data presented by Paul Taylor (1928, 1929a, 1929b, 1930, 1931a, 1931b,
1968, 1971); Manuel Gamio (1926, 1930a, 1930b); Ernesto Galarza (1956, 1958,
1964); Julian Samora (1970, 1971a, 1971b) and Bustamante (1975, 1977, 1978,
1979a, 1979b, 1979c, 1979d, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1988, 1989a, 1989b, 1990, 1992).
The importance of such a distinction is, that these two dimensions not only
behave differently over economic cycles, but, they can not be approached for scientific purposes by the same research methods. What is called here the “cultural
dimension,” corresponds to an epistemological approach which draws from Max
Weber’s notion of “erklarendes Verstehen,”5 one which datum is to be found in the
cultural or intersubjective dimension of social relations. What it is called here the
“interactional dimension” corresponds to a different epistemological approach which
draws also from Weber’s conceptualization of “direct understanding” (aktuelle
Verstehen).6 In this dimension of the phenomenon of undocumented immigration
from Mexico, the more directly observable nature of its datum, allows for more
complex levels of quantitative analysis. This is the level of statistical analysis that
could be made out of actual identification and countings of migrants crossing the
international border without inspection. The fact that there is an observable behavior that occurs under certain objective circumstances,7 allows for a more complex
quantitative analysis than the values or motivations based on which such a person
makes some sense out of such a behavior.
The nature of the datum for an analysis of such values or motivations is less
ready for a direct observation with the instruments currently available for the
scientific observer of such an individual’s behavior. In other words, the difference
between the “aktuelle Verstehen” and, the “erklarendes Verstehen” of the
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undocumented immigration from Mexico can be illustrated by the difference between
asking ourselves how many are crossing the border and, why they are crossing it.
This difference does not allude to the scientific quality of the datum in one, versus
the other dimension of reality. It alludes to the method of scientific analysis pertaining
to one in contrast to the most appropriate for the other. Both basic datum are
respectively, equally grounded in the empirical reality. They differ however, in its
respective susceptibility of quantitative measurability and statistical analysis. Not
because of difference in its empirical nature but because of the available scientific
tools for the analysis of one in contrast to the other dimension.
This “cultural-interactional” dichotomy suggested here, is meant to be operational of the weberian concept of “verstehende Soziologie.” 8 Such an
operationalization is meant to emphasize a crucial epistemological distinction made
by Weber between, a)the world of values, ideas, beliefs or myths, susceptible of a
scientific understanding through a systematic procedure of “Verstehen” or interpretation rendered “adequate at the level of meaning” (Sinnhaft adaquat); 9 and, b)
the world of directly observable behavior, more susceptible of being counted and
thus, subjected to statistical analysis rendered adequate (Kausal adequate) 10 at the
level of causal associations.11
The basic premise of the theoretical framework proposed here for the study of
migration from Mexico to the United States is that this migration occurs within a
context of interaction processes between people of two different countries and within
a space which encompasses the two sides of the international border. This is especially true for undocumented migration. In general terms, Mexican migration to
the United States can be conceptualized as the outcome of the interaction between
U.S. employers and Mexican workers. This social interaction occurs within a labor
market which is by nature international, because the actors who personify demand
constitute a demand from within the United States, actualizing this demand when
they hire undocumented migrants and; because the actors who personify supply do
this from Mexico when they make a decision to migrate to the United States in
search of jobs.
For this conceptual frame I continue drawing from the basic sociological
concepts introduced by the sociologist of Erfurt. Beginning with the cultural
dimension implied in the concept of “Gemeinter Sinn,” it could be suggested that
the social relations of migration between Mexico and the United States sprung out
from the conceptualization of a certain option by the would-be migrant, that is, to
migrate to the United States in search for a job. That option was taken because it
was part of his or her culture. As such, it is learned in a process of socialization
which is both a necessary and sufficient condition for the behavior that involves
migration to the United States from some point in Mexico. That option and the
corresponding behavior of migration would not be rational from the part of the
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migrant if it were not for a corresponding behavior of a stranger in all cultural
senses except one. That of the “Gemeinter Sinn” of a labor related interaction,
which is shared by the would-be migrant from a distant place in one country, with
a would-be-employer from another country. That would-be employer is some body
with a different background and from a different country than the migrant who has
also conceptualized an option: to hire a Mexican migrant. Such an option is also an
element of his culture as it is shown below reflected in the quotations from Vice
President Nance Garner and Senator McCarran respectively. The would-be U.S.
employer has learned the socially constructed meaning of hiring a Mexican migrant
as a part of a socialization process without which the social relations of migration
between Mexico and the United States as we know them would not take place.
That shared “Gemeinter Sinn” of a labor interaction is the necessary condition for
the social relation of undocumented migration in which the Mexican actor and the
American actors recognize their respective behaviors as mutually addressed to each
other, as they become engaged in a social relation of labor giving birth to the micro
dimensional instance of what we know as Mexican undocumented immigration to
the United States. In the sharing of a “Gemeinter Sinn” of labor it is implied a
complex dimension of history. A history of how such a meaning became an element
in the respective cultures of the Mexican migrant and U.S. employer.
That historical dimension requires a special method of scientific inquiry which
is different than the one it is required for the study of the interactional dimension
implied in the actual experience of hiring and been hired implied in the phenomenon of the undocumented immigration from Mexico. In such an experience is
where one finds the objective dimension of migration as a social relation. In this
structural context the Mexican migrant embodies a labor supply that interacts and
corresponds in a rational way to the behavior of the U.S. employer who embodies
a labor demand. In the understanding of what this conceptual formulation implies,
lies the theoretical understanding of undocumented migration from Mexico to the
United States as a social relationship.
Theoretical Foundations for the “Interactional
Dimension of a Labor Market”
The concept of “interaction” is understood here as it was used by Weber. The
importance of this concept lies in how it relates to the concept of an “international
labor market.” I am not speaking here about the concept of “market” as it is used in
classical and neoclassical economics, but in the sense that it is used by sociologists,
and developed out of Max Weber’s theory of social interaction.
In this theoretical context, Weber distinguishes between the idea of a “perfect
market,” which would resemble that understood by classical economic theory, and
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the idea of an “imperfect market,” which diverges from the assumptions of a perfect
market. Weber’s vision of an “imperfect market”12 can be applied to structural
conditions in which processes of interaction based on money exchanges occur
between actors who tend to occupy differential or asymmetric power positions.
The primary difference between these two types of “market” lies in the fact
that the “perfect market” assumes a relationship between actors that is sufficiently
symmetrical to foster a dynamic that tends toward equilibrium between the elements in the relationship. I do not propose to determine whether this idea does or
does not apply to the international labor market from which the phenomenon of
undocumented migration from Mexico to the United States emerged. Rather, my
objective is to use the concept of an “imperfect market” as developed from Max
Weber’s formulations for two reasons: First, this concept permits the introduction
of the element of “power asymmetry” into the relationship between the principal
actors of the “labor market,” and second, it allows a virtual dissection of the interaction processes that make up this relationship. These processes range from the
cultural elements that shape intentions in a reflective motion. Those elements which
go, from what George Herbert Mead found in his notion of “mind” as a social
construct at a microdimensional level of analysis, to the macrodimensional levels
of the interactions between the economies of the United States and Mexico through
the process of labor migration, including the objective elements that characterize
international migration, such as an exchanged labor relationship for money.
Levels of Analysis
Within this theoretical context, undocumented migration from Mexico to the
United States is understood as a phenomenon that occurs within a) the respective
cultures of the actors involved which implies a historical dimension of the migratory
phenomenon and, b) the structure of an international labor market that spatially extends to cover both sides of the border. Interactions occur at various levels within this
structure. The most important is the interaction that takes place between a labor
demand, personified by U.S. employers, and a labor supply, personified by Mexican
migrant workers. We speak of the personification of supply and demand because both
supply and demand include “structural conditions” that go beyond the behavioral
interaction between an individual employer and the worker he employs.
Another level at which these processes of interaction occur involves the
interaction between the “structural conditions” of demand and the “structural
conditions” of supply in the country where the migration flows originate and the
country that receives them. The term “structural conditions” refers here to somewhat
abstract notions, such as the state of the respective national or regional economies
or, the respective national states, as either of them become imposed on the
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international labor market outcomes. That labor market is where the Mexican
migrants and their U.S. employers interact. These “structural conditions” are
operationalized respectively as “factors.” These are the set of elements (“factors”)
that comprise everything causally related to labor demand or labor supply, including
migratory behaviors. Hence, the term “factors” refers to the elements that make up
labor demand and labor supply in the international market in which migrants
participate. It is the “factors” that allow or make possible or necessary the presence
of a labor supply or a labor demand. The set of “factors” that makes up the “structural
conditions” of labor supply may be partially or totally independent from the “factors”
that make up the “structural conditions” of labor demand.
An Operationalization of
the Levels of Analysis
Although we can envision other levels of interaction—to explain cultural influences or changes, for example—for the research that I propose here, only three
levels of analysis need to be used; these are outlined below:
A) The level of interaction between specific actors, where we seek to explain
their observed and inferred behavior and behavioral change. Each of
these actors directs or orients his behavior toward the other in a
relationship that exists because both actors share or understand in the
same way the meaning of the other’s behavior. In the case of the migrants
of one country and the employers of another country, the interaction is a
labor relation, that is, a relation in which both actors understand that
one will provide labor and the other will pay money in exchange.
This theoretical context assumes that there may be power
asymmetry between the actors in the interaction, and that this power
differential determines asymmetric positions for the actors within the
structure of market relations. Given this assumption, we can design the
research to empirically identify what are the defining characteristics of
the power asymmetry between actors, and what are the implications of
this asymmetry for the nature of the relationship.
At this level, the interaction between actors can be extended to
include interactions between migrants and other actors who are on the
demand side but are not strictly employers. These are called “significant
others.” An illustration of these are the agents of the United States Border
Patrol or representatives of other organizations or institutions on the
demand side, who interact so frequently with the migrants that enable
the observer to empirically identify patterns of interaction.
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One important methodological characteristic of this level of
analysis is that it can be carried from the macrodimentional levels to the
most microdimensional ones that the research demands. This was
probably one important reason why Weber placed the definition of basic
concepts for the study of social relations in the first chapter dedicated to
spell out the methodology that would correspond to his theoretical
approach. More important for the purposes of this paper is to underline
the theoretical difference between the notion of market in classical
economics and the notion of market in the sociological theory of Max
Weber. This is especially important when the object of our study is a
labor market. We sociologists object to equating labor with the purchase
or the bartering of a barrel of oil or a ton of corn, as if all can be equated
as market commodities. To the extent that the labor force as a commodity
is linked with the destiny of its producer in terms of universally accepted
human and labor rights, it is significantly differentiated from any other
type of commodity. Because these other commodities have no inherent
rights associated with their producer, they can have, and in fact do have,
a destiny that can be totally independent of that of their buyers or sellers.
Because of their independent destiny, these commodities are generally
subject to markets in which price, theoretically is the result of a tendency
toward an equilibrium between the forces of supply and the forces of
demand. This tendency could not be assumed without some minimum
degree of power symmetry between the actors representing supply and
demand respectively. When we turn to look at a labor market from a
sociological perspective, it is virtually impossible to find such symmetry
and equilibrium, particularly as we look at the lowest wage levels. This
is why Weber diverges from the notion of market proposed in classical
economics in order to introduce the variable of power as an element in
the interactions of an “imperfect market,” a concept particularly
applicable to labor markets. Here power is taken to mean the number
and merit of the options that each partner in the labor relationship has to
impose its conditions on the other partner.13
According to adherents of Weber’s theory of social relations, the
idea of labor market stems from the premise that it is a social structure
shaped by interactions between actors who can hold differential power
positions; thus, the exchange of labor for money need not necessarily tend
toward equilibrium for us to be able to view it validly as a market
relationship. Weber introduces the element of power differential between
actors in an “imperfect market,” and we can use his sociological construct
in modeling a labor relationship as asymmetric, such as the one that exists
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between Mexican migrant workers and U.S. employers. Weber’s concept
of market permits us to logically organize not only the specific elements
that personify supply and demand, but also the contexts that condition the
existence of supply and demand, respectively, as components of this market.
Thus, this is how this concept allows us to speak of the “structural
conditions” on the “demand side” and on the “supply side.” These conditions
include “factors” such as the domestic market of each country, allowing us
to envision the interactions of each domestic labor market with that of the
neighboring country through the link of international migration. This means
that each domestic labor market is a part of the respective conditions of
supply and demand in the context of an international labor market. This is
the theoretical notion that it is used here in order to understand the processes
of interaction between factors located on both sides of the frontier between
the two countries interconnected by this migration. These factors produce
impacts on a phenomenon whose empirical reality can be defined by the
fact that migrants sell their labor in exchange for money in a country other
than their homeland.
B) The level of interaction between the “structural conditions” that
correspond to supply and demand, respectively. This is a level of analysis
that permits a more macrodimensional focus, through which it is possible
to analyze, for example, the interactions between a state of economic
recession on the demand side and a drop in the amount of remittances
that migrants make to their home economies. Another example might
be the interaction between changes in the age structure of the population
on the demand side, when these changes yield a labor shortage that
interacts with conditions on the supply side to produce a migration flow
that has different conditions than it would have had if there were no
changes in the age structure on the demand side.
C) The level of interaction between the “factors” that comprise the “conditions” of supply or of demand in such an international labor market. By
focusing the analysis at this level, it is possible to move from the macro
to the micro level in order to examine the relationship that could exist,
for example, when drought affects a region in the migrants’ country of
origin, increasing their need to depend on work in the United States.
The resulting increase in the migrant labor force, in turn, lowers the
“market value” in the United States of those migrants who were the
victims of the drought in their home region.
In the scenario proposed above, we could say that drought in the region of
origin entered into interaction with the demand conditions in the destination country
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through the phenomenon of migration, even though this drought would have been
an independent factor with respect to the demand conditions if migration did not
exist as a mediating link between the two countries. This same concept of migration
as a mediator, enabling conditions of supply in one country to interact with conditions
of demand in the other, allows us to identify and measure the costs and benefits of
undocumented migration for the sending country and for the receiving country, as
well as the association between them. This is something that would be very difficult
to do without this concept. It explains, for example, the inflation that occurs on the
supply side when the migrants make seasonal returns to their homes in Mexico;
and, on the demand side the social mobility of some Hispanics as a result of the
savings that the hiring of undocumented Mexican migrants represents.
The theoretical schema presented above refers to a relatively static view of the
structure of relations in an international labor market. Therefore there must be
other concepts that can contribute toward explaining the dynamism that actually
characterizes the migration phenomenon. Along this line of thinking the concepts
of “circular migration,” “migration flows,” and “migration stocks” will be introduced after the following section.
The main objective of this paper is to make clear, through scientific methods,
the elements that turn the reality of migration between Mexico and the United
States into a myth, and the elements that hinder our understanding of this reality.
Only with a clear understanding can the people and the governments of these two
countries act in concert to address the migration issue in a way that takes their
respective interests into account.
With this aim in mind, a central definition of undocumented immigration is
proposed. One that could be used to lead scientific research as well as serving as a
common ground for bilateral negotiations.
A Central Definition of Undocumented
Immigration from Mexico
Undocumented immigration from Mexico to the United States is understood
here as a process of social interactions between people from the two countries as
they move across the U.S.-Mexico border or are located in a country different than
that of his or her counterpart in a labor relation. The basic meaning of these
interactions corresponds to an international labor market where the demand from
the United States is as real as the supply from Mexico.
The basic elements of this definition are the concepts of a) a context of processes
of social interactions across the international border and, b) the asymmetry of power.
These two concepts have the analytical advantage of being able to apply from one
end to the other of the continuum that goes from the micro to the macro levels of
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analysis. That is, from the micro level of the social interaction between a migrant
worker and his or her employer, to the macro level of the interaction between the
national economies or governments or cultures, as long as they are relevant for the
shaping of conditions for the international labor market where the undocumented
migrant worker is inserted.
These basic concepts allow the analysis to follow different axes of the patterns
of social interactions of the undocumented immigrant such as: a) the geographical
location of actors or factors at each side of the border or; b) the structural location
of actors or factors pertaining to the international labor market between the two
countries or, c) the identification of the external processes of interaction characterizing either the demand side or the supply side of the respective country, within
which there are interplays of internal labor market shaping conditions connected to
those external processes of interaction as suggested in the diagram.
This definition of undocumented immigration from Mexico is not shared by
the governments nor by the majority of the people of the two countries. The presence of undocumented immigrants from Mexico in the United States is predominantly viewed as an exogenous calamity. As a crime-related phenomenon thus, as
a law enforcement problem which requires a police type of solution.
The same people doing the same thing are viewed in Mexico as people who go
to theUnited States in search of a job to do things that American citizens are not
interested in doing for a living. In a nutshell, Mexican undocumented migrants do
something as legitimate as the benefits received by those who hire them in the
United States.
The marked contrast between the perceptions or visions of undocumented
Mexico-U.S. migration held respectively in the two countries concerned is not
due to a lack of adequate information as much as it is due to a contrast between
the respective national interests of these two countries, in turn associated with
the asymmetry of power that characterizes relations between Mexico and the
United States.
With the above definition we move to an empirical analysis of the two
dimensions suggested above. This analysis results from different methodological
approaches required by the difference explained above between the cultural and
the interactional dimensions. Both pertain to the same phenomenon to the extent
that values which shape perceptions leading to immigration policies belong to the
immigration issue as much as the actual number of undocumented immigrants
working in the agricultural production of a particular region of the United States.
One dimension might not be directly related to the same facts than the other.
Furthermore, one dimension could be in contradiction to the other or follow different
dynamics. The theoretical assumptions followed in this analysis are, a) that the
interplay between the two dimensions has to be understood before the undocumented
830
immigration phenomenon is under control and, b) that the same method of research
can not be applied to the two dimensions.
There are in fact two “cultural” dimensions of this bilateral phenomenon. One
corresponding to the conditions of the supply side in Mexico and another corresponding to the conditions of the demand in the United States. For the purpose of discussion
of the theoretical frame of reference proposed in this paper, focus will be placed on
the cultural dimension corresponding to the demand side of the international labor
market, as it is shaped in the United States. For the “Verstehen” at the level of meaning of the “cultural” dimension of the undocumented immigration in the United
States, an historical approach will be taken, led by the following hypothesis.
The public morality of those in the United States who believe that Mexican
immigration is a threat or something exogenous and harmful includes an ideological construct that justifies in moral terms the sanctions or punishments levied against
those identified or labeled as “illegal aliens.” This ideological construct is a social
construct in a similar sense in which Max Weber understood that element of the
social relations to which he called the “Gemeinter Sinn.”14 as the intersubjective
meaning commonly attached to a behavior or a symbol by the members of a community in a context of a social interaction.
What it makes the meaning attached to the presence of undocumented immigrants from Mexico stick in the social context of the United States is an act of
power. Its exercise corresponds to an asymmetry of power between those who
label15 them “illegal aliens” and those who are so labeled. The common meaning of
such a label is about some one (an alien) who has entered the United States braking
the U.S. laws with the main purpose of doing something which will represent a
cost or a burden to the American people.16
“Illegal aliens” are viewed today in the United States both, as a cause of some
of the worst calamities that afflict the country, such as drug traffic, and as source of
cheap labor. That is, both, as a problem and as a solution. The intensity of these
views varies over time respectively. The contradiction between them however,
becomes more acute in times of economic crisis.17
If we look at the history of migration from one country to the other, what
stands out is the United States’ interest in gaining access to cheap Mexican labor.
The following quotation, drawn from the congressional hearings on migration held
in 1926, is particularly eloquent:
Mr. Chairman, here is the problem in a nutshell. Farming is not a profitable
industry in this country, and, in order to make money out of this, you have to
have cheap labor... in order to allow land owners now to make a profit on their
farms, they want to get the cheapest labor they can find, and if they can get the
Mexican labor it enables them to make a profit. That is the way it is along the
border and I imagine that is the way it is anywhere else.18
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For the purpose of the methodology suggested here, this quotation becomes
even more significant when we learn that its author was John Nance Garner, who
built his fortune on agricultural lands adjacent to Mexico, just north of Piedras
Negras, Coahuila, and who became Vice-president of the United States a few years
after making this statement in a congressional hearings.
A few years later we find the same clear “Gemeinter Sinn” of a national interest underlying the immigration policies of the United States. In 1953 Senator Walter
McCarran declared the following before a Senate Committee:
Senator [Elender], I think you will agree with me that on this side of the border
there is a desire for these wetbacks... Last year when we had the Appropriations
Bill up, the item that might have prevented them from coming over to some
extent, was stricken from the Bill... we might as well face this thing realistically.
The agricultural people, the farmer along the Mexican side of the border in
California, in Arizona, in Texas... want this help. They want this farm labor.
They just can not get along with out it.19
It is intriguing how these references to the cheapness of Mexican labor in
congressional hearings testimony in the United States over several decades seem
to assume that the Mexican labor force is a sort of a natural resource, something
inexpensive by its very nature. What it is more relevant for the purpose of the
theoretical framework used here, is the way this two statements reflect very
eloquently the cultural understanding of Mexican immigrant labor among United
States employers in a historical perspective. These statements allude to two levels
of power asymmetry, one, between the U.S. employers and the migrant workers
and; two, between the United States and Mexico. Here you have U.S. Senators
talking about Mexican citizens as if there was no international law or as if Mexico
did not exist as a sovereign nation to be dealt with about her own citizens. Here we
have a power asymmetry reflected at both end levels; from the macro to the
microdimensional. The latter reflected in the capacity of U.S. employers to exercise
their power by imposing low wages upon the socially constructed vulnerability of
the Mexican migrant. It suffices to compare the salaries compiled in the meticulous
research conducted by Manuel Gamio. Gamio noted that the average salary paid to
migrant workers in southeast Texas in 1926 was between $1.50 and $2.00 per day.20
Twenty-four years later, Saunders and Leonard recorded average salaries in this
same region at $2.50 an hour for a twelve-hour workday. 21 If we factor in inflation
in the interim, we find that salaries have risen hardly at all in nearly 25 years, while
the profit returns to agriculture in this region rose 1,000 percent in the same period,
according to these same authors.22
Then followed the years of the Bracero Program, from 1942 to 1965. No
one has described more knowledgeably or more eloquently the conditions of
832
extreme exploitation that migrant workers suffered during these years than
Dr. Ernesto Galarza in his classic work, Merchants of Labor: The Mexican
Bracero Story. 23
During my years as a graduate student, when I posed as an undocumented
migrant as part of an exercise in participant observation which I reported in my
doctoral dissertation,24 I had occasion to witness an event that reflected very
eloquently the way in which the power asymmetry between Mexicans and U.S.
citizens was brought into play to drive salaries down. It was the summer of 1969.
I was in Weslaco, Texas, and had joined a group waiting on a street corner to be
hired by a farmer. A truck drew up and stopped near the group. The driver gestured
that we could climb aboard. About 20 of us did so, almost everyone who had been
waiting. They took us to a ranch about 15 kilometers away. The driver of the truck
got out, and we all got down. His first words to us were: “There’s lots of you....” As
if he had not expected us. Then he said: “Let’s see... raise your hand if you want to
work for a dollar an hour.” Nearly everyone in the group raised his hand. “No...
there are still too many of you,” he said. Then he added: “Let’s see, raise your hand
if you want 75 cents an hour.” The number of us who raised our hands dropped to
half. As his voice rose in impatience he said: “No... there’s still too many. Let’s see,
who wants the job for 50 cents an hour.” The group of us raising our hands dropped
to seven. Talking like someone who had repeated the same speech many times
before, the foreman told those who had not raised their hands: “Ok, boys, you’ll
get a chance another time. Get on your way fast so I don’t have to call the police
and have you cited for trespassing.”
As the big group of unhired workers moved away, they began to yell at us,
clearly angered, as if in persisting at trying to get a job, even at low salaries,
we had failed to show the hoped-for solidarity. Their mildest words for us were,
“You hungry bastards.” The foreman turned around toward the seven who had
survived this “reverse auction,” where those who won employment were those
who offered the lowest price. The foreman gestured, and all the workers
responded with a palms up gesture. I did the same as the others. When the
foreman came around and saw my hands, he told me laconically: “Not you...
you go with the others.”
As I walked slowly toward the ranch gate I asked myself if this was the ultimate
measure of power asymmetry between U.S. employers and Mexican workers, and
how long it had taken to transform it into a shared code of communication, into a
“Gemeinter Sinn,” well understood and well accepted despite its clear disadvantage
for the migrant workers. I asked myself at what point this disadvantage in hiring
conditions had been transformed into an element in the culture of the labor market
of migrants and their employers in a foreign country. Posterior reflection on this
experience made clearer to me that this is some sort of a last degree of “freedom”
833
before reaching the point where work stops being a social relation between an
employer and a “free” worker to become slave labor. Taking the theoretical
perspective in which international labor migration is viewed as a social relation
that takes place in the structural framework of an international labor market, this
notion of a scale of “freedom” within which the worker acts in response to conditions
that the employer sets, is relevant because it leads to the point where the worker’s
level of freedom disappears, and with it the nature of the social relationship. When
this happens, as it does with slavery, we are no longer talking about a social
relationship of labor but about a unilateral act of power.
Over more than 20 years of conducting research on undocumented migration,25
I have seen very few improvements in the working conditions of the migrants. I
thought I had seen everything until I visited the so-called spider holes that migrant
workers are constructing today, at the end of the 20th Century, in the northern
part of San Diego County. The migrants spend their nights in these holes. By day
they work in the few crops that have not yet been edged out by changing land use
patterns which convert agricultural land into the proliferation of residential
developments that is taking over this area that formerly grew the most beautiful
flowers in southern California, cultivated since the first plantings in the 1940s by
Mexican hands.
To summarize: For decades, the United States has demonstrated an insatiable
appetite for Mexican labor. This appetite is not constant. It has decreased in times
of high unemployment, as during the economic crises of 1907, 1921, 1929-34,
1954, 1974, 1981 and 1992. Nevertheless, in none of these crises has the appetite
for cheap labor fallen to zero. In the three most recent crises, I have been able to
document a paradoxical situation: the crisis itself encourages some businessmen,
who under normal conditions would not hire undocumented migrant workers, to
turn to this labor force in order to lower their production costs as a way of dealing
with the impacts of the crisis.
In all of these crises, measures have been proposed that would expel Mexican
migrant workers en masse, offering ideological justifications that I will discuss in
the following section. In many of these crises, there were broad expulsions of fully
documented Mexican immigrants. Instances include the crises of 1907, 26 1921,27
1929-34,28 and 1954.29
What is important to note here in terms of the proposed hypothesis is, that
the United States has demonstrated a long-standing and intense demand for Mexican
migrant labor. But the United States wants to satisfy this demand for a resource
which comes from abroad according to its own unilateral terms. In this way the
United States is exercising the power asymmetry it holds over the country from
which it extracts de facto the cheap labor force it seeks. Even when bilateral
agreements have been signed that would regulate this demand, as was the case
834
with several of the bracero agreements, these were flagrantly violated, as
documented by Craig,30 Galarza,31 Gamboa,32 García,33 Montejano,34 Sobek,35 and
Taylor,36 again testifying with each violation to the power asymmetry in U.S.
relations with Mexico, even when the U.S. government has put its signature on a
bilateral agreement with Mexico.
One could argue that the U.S. interest in Mexican labor has not been so much
national as regional, although, as Gamboa has ascertained, 37 demand in the United
States has geographic roots as far away as Washington State, on the border with
Canada. What is clearly beyond question is that the U.S. government, when dealing with Mexico, has put all its might behind its interest in Mexican labor. The
most recent expression of this government support is the United States’ unilateral
decision from the outset, to exclude labor migration from the agenda in the negotiations of NAFTA.
This degree of national support, by which the United States has historically
guaranteed U.S. employers unrestricted access to Mexican labor, has led to a persisting official definition of undocumented immigration as a problem of criminality and law enforcement.
When public opinion reaches a high level of consensus around this official
definition, it becomes equated with “national interest.” At this level, the
predominance of such a public definition makes politically impossible any alteration
of the official position that equates “illegal aliens” with criminals, particularly
because this definition has the function of producing savings to the U.S. economy.
These savings are equal to the difference between the salary and benefits that an
undocumented migrant receives as a function of being undocumented, and the
salary that a U.S. citizen actually receives for the same work, particularly in regions
and economic sectors where the hiring of undocumented workers is widespread.
The implied equation for this function would lead to a result that could well total
several billion dollars per year. This is equal to the costs the U.S. economy would
be likely to incur in salary differentials if bilateral negotiations produced a
legalization program that would regulate hiring practices, wages, working
conditions, as well as the number of Mexican migrant workers which would
correspond to the real size of a U.S. labor needs. When one imagines the economic,
social and political meaning of such a notion of dealing with the undocumented
immigrants from Mexico as a bilateral phenomenon related to a de facto
international labor market, one can imagine the analogy of such changes with
what implied in the 19th Century the rising cost of the black labor force in the
United States once slavery was abolished. In this analogy lies one part of the
explanation of why there is such a resistance from the part of the U.S. government
to officially recognize the labor market nature and the bilateral causality that
characterize and drive the phenomenon of undocumented Mexican migration. In
835
refusing to give this recognition, the United States is exercising an act of power
which is essentially no different in nature than the act of power involved in
justifying the enslavement of blacks in the 19th Century.
Although as yet little research has been done in this area, the profile of an
hypothesis emerges from history. This is one which goes to the root of the problem
addressed in this paper. That is, that the current and widespread economic interest
in keeping the U.S. border with Mexico relatively open to the entry of undocumented
migrants exists, not because there is a real need for labor or because the labor
demand cannot be satisfied domestically, but because this is a strategy that can
lower, or slow the rise of, salary levels in U.S. regions that draw Mexican migrants.
In other words, the conditions of power asymmetry between these two countries
make undocumented migrants vulnerable in terms of their human and worker rights
in the United States. This allows U.S. employers to pay salaries and impose labor
conditions that are inferior to those that would be acceptable to local workers. This
decreases the salaries of undocumented migrants, but it also produces a wider impact
on salaries since it drives down the salaries for other jobs that are near the bottom
of the wage scale. In summary, this hypothesis could be stated as follows:
undocumented migration from Mexico to the United States is maintained because
it depresses wage levels, thus, the greater the oversupply of migrant labor, the most
marked is the decrease in wage levels in the region. If this hypothesis can be
confirmed, it would explain why the United States does not use its might to close
the border to undocumented migrants, and why it took the decision not to include
labor migration in the negotiations of NAFTA.
The attempt has been in the previous sections to reach a sociological Verstehen,
“adequate at the level of meaning” of the “cultural” dimension of undocumented
immigration in the United States. We turn now to the other dimension that it was
called “interactional” where some basic socioeconomic characteristics of the
undocumented immigrants from Mexico will be presented in a route toward an
“Erklarendes Verstehen” of this phenomenon, for which methodological approach
the concept of “circulatory migration” becomes crucial.
Circular Migration between Mexico
and the United States
It is well known that many of the workers involved in immigration flows into
the United States return to their country of origin. In the case of migration from
Mexico to the United States, which has persisted for over a hundred years, not only
has there been a return flow but it has included the majority of migrants. These
workers return to Mexico after a migratory “career” that involves alternating stays
in the receiving areas in the United States and in their home communities in Mexico.
836
Such a migratory “career” can continue for several years, but it generally ends
with an aging worker’s definitive return to Mexico. Obviously this is not true in
every case. A growing proportion of migrants is choosing to remain permanently
in the United States. Perhaps the decision to remain in the United States or to
return definitively to the home community is a function of the intensity of the
interaction between the sending community and the receiving community, reflected
in the number of family members that the first-time migrant has in the United
States. That is, the fewer family members a migrant has in the United States, the
more likely it is that he will return definitively to Mexico.
Data obtained from the Zapata Canyon project support these hypotheses. They
reveal a process of circular migration from Mexico to the United States which is
clearly related to the geographical proximity of these two countries. By circular
migration it is understood here, the process by which an individual alternates stays
in Mexico and the United States, for more than six months, between his or her
family residence and job residence, until either age, success or failure, makes him
or her to permanently establish his family residence at some point of his or her
circulatory route, either in Mexico or in the United States.
The notion of circular migration holds methodological and theoretical implications. Methodological, because of at least two reasons, a) length of stays in the
United States might be increasingly long, returns to Mexico become increasingly
short and job residence becomes permanent as a result of family reunification.
Then, new entries to the United States from Mexico might increase the volume of
the migratory flow giving the observer the impression of an increase in immigration to the United States, when in fact he or she is observing an increase in the
intensity of a circulatory movement, including Mexican citizens who might have
moved on a permanent basis to the United States. On the other hand, b) when
measured properly, circulatory migration might become an indicator of the intensity of the interactions between “structural conditions” and “factors” located at the
two sides of the border, which are associated to the phenomenon of international
migration between the two countries.
The notion of circular migration holds theoretical implications because the
definition of a migrant should no longer depend on his or her position on the map
but on his or her engagement in an international labor market. Traditional definitions
of a migrant require his or her crossing of a geographical boundary for certain
period of time. The notion of a circulatory migration should be operationalized
from the theoretical assumption that a migrant is a person who is no longer a
permanent resident of his or her home town because of a decision that implies
joining an international labor market by responding to a perceived labor demand in
another country. This means that a migrant is a migrant from the moment he or she
has left home with the intention of looking for a job in another country.
837
For the purpose of estimating of the number of international migrants, the
count should begin when they join the migratory circle, regardless of whether that
person has crossed an international border or not. The migratory circle includes the
geographical space between the last permanent residence and the place of migratory
destination. The latter could be of various types—from an attempted destination to
an actually reached one. The analyst’s selection of the type of migratory destination
might depend on the scope of the analysis. The important implication here is to
include all persons who are in the international migratory circle in the enumeration
of international migrants, whether or not they have left the country of origin or
reached the country of destination.
There is need is for the concept of “circulatory migration” because to know
the actual cost and benefit of international migration for the countries of origin and
destination respectively one needs to know how many there are in the “migratory
circle.” The operationalization of this concept should allow a better understanding
of the relationships between the costs and benefits of international migration for
the two countries by taking into account where and how the costs are borne for the
reproduction of the migrant labor force. In other words, in the theoretical context
of international circular migration, one could say: a) that circularity exists between
an economy of origin and an economy of destination which are brought into interaction through migration; b) if the migrant is understood as “human capital”38 needing
to be reproduced, the reproduction of this “capital” involves a cost to the economy
of origin and a net benefit for the economy of destiny, where this human capital is
generating wealth with its labor; therefore c) the economy of origin is subsidizing
the economy of destiny where this subsidy is equal to the savings that the receiving
economy realizes when it takes advantage of human capital for which it did not
pay the costs of reproduction.
Both the methodological and the theoretical implications of the concept of circulatory migration should be analytically viewed from a Weberian perspective as an
“ideal type”39 of an international labor market. This is to say, a social and economic
construct. The social sense, in its microdimensional level derives from the nature of
a social relation between its most significant actors, namely the U.S. employer and
the Mexican migrant. In its macrodimensional level it involves the social, political,
economic and cultural relations between Mexico and the U.S. as nations.
The operationalization of the concept of “human capital” corresponds to the
operationalization of the concept of “structural conditions” as one of the “factors”
both, on the supply side, in terms of its production and, on the demand side, in
terms of its use. It is hoped that this conceptual framework will suggest the means
to measure the dimension of costs and benefits of international migration,
something not attempted to date, perhaps because no adequate theoretical
framework existed.
838
Migratory Flows
The circular nature of international migration between Mexico and the United
States can best be measured when we are able to identify migratory flows in spatial,
temporal and numerical terms. The fact that most undocumented migrants cross at
some point along Mexico’s northern border, where they can be interviewed, has
enabled the Zapata Canyon Project to identify principal flows in terms of their
origin and destination. The measurement of migration flows has been the surest
means devised thus far for calculating variations in the volume of undocumented
migration; this is the case because efforts to measure undocumented migrant stocks
are hindered by the fact that the undocumented status of these individuals forces
them into a covert existence in the United States. Measurements of migration flows
are even more valuable when we can determine the socioeconomic characteristics
of the migrants, even though this technique has not allowed us to determine the
number of undocumented immigrants there are in the United States. The ongoing
research of the Zapata Canyon Project has illustrated the importance of focusing
on flows as the key element in the analysis of international migration between
Mexico and the United States.
The following maps depict empirical findings of two independent research
projects. One is the above mentioned Zapata Canyon Project. The other
corresponds to the Survey on Migration in the Northern Border of Mexico which
acronym in Spanish is EMIF. 40 In contrast to the Zapata Canyon Project, EMIF
measures migratory flows from south to north and from north to south. Its
methodology derives from the theoretical concept of “circulating migration.” It
is based on an adaptation of what biology statisticians call “sampling of mobile
populations.” This sampling technique is used for the estimate of numbers of
migratory species. From whales to dolphins to salmon or migratory birds or blood
cells. As it is the case with some migratory species, the circular nature of the
migratory phenomenon between countries, in a theoretical frame, involves
dimensions of time and space. The conceptualization of these dimensions allowed
for the operationalization necessary for the design of the sample of continuous
migratory flows. These were developed and administered by a team of scientists
of El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, headed by the author, by means of the EMIF.
The empirical definition of “space” through which “migratory circulation” occurs,
is associated with the concept of “migratory routes.” These are like rivers that
flow with two-way currents, connecting places of origin with places of destination
of a circulating migration.
In the case of the observation of migratory flows, after the route of these virtual
rivers has been empirically established , we define the place of empirical observation
for the smallest unit of sample space, as if resorting to the narrowest part of the
river in order to better view what passes through the current. To this end, we find
839
the narrow sections of these “rivers” in bus stations, airports, railroad stations, and
customs and immigration inspection places along the freeways.
All of these points are identified as corresponding to all the points of entry to
Mexico, from or to the United States, which represent levels susceptible to
conforming even more when “doors” or other units of space that are smaller, are
systematically identified in airports or bus stations through which displacements
occur through the “migratory rivers.” Once that, say, a bus station is identified as
the narrowest sampling unit, we complete a systematic count of all the persons
who pass through this “door” in units of time. Periods of three months are the most
amount of time used. During this time, we make a complete census of people who
cross. This occurs with the end of taking sample units of the smallest amounts of
time which are then selected at random in accordance with conventional sampling
techniques for designs of multistage samples.
Maps 1 to 6 indicate with arrows the set of Mexican states which consist of the place
of origin of migrants, both documented and undocumented, who were found to have the
place of destination indicated with the arrow in the map. The arrow starts in the Mexican
state with the largest number of migrants in terms of their state of origin. Data used for
the maps compiles the whole region defined by the shadowed area in the map. Arrows
point at the state of destination of the migratory flow in the United States.
The estimated number of migrants is based on conventional sampling procedures applied to the sample frame of the “mobile populations” following the same
principles used by biology statisticians for their sampling technique mentioned above.
Maps 7 to 12, are based on the Zapata Canyon Project’s data. The reference to
the number of cases corresponds to actual individuals who were personally interviewed based on the questionnaire that has been administered three days per week,
ever since September of 1987 to the present.
Maps 13 and 14 indicate flows of returned migration from the United States to
Mexico. In accordance to the notion of “circulating migration,” “returned migration”
does not necessarily mean a return for good. Numbers of this flow indicated in the
map correspond to individuals who, in the period during which the survey was
conducted, were found to be returning to Mexico after being identified as migrants,
coming from the United States. Data shown in the maps correspond to the first
time ever that the actual flows of returned migration is estimated directly from a
systematic random sample of actual migrants.
Map 1
This map shows the state of Guanajuato as the place of origin of the highest
number of migrants, who were found to come from the region defined by the
shadowed area, on their way to the U.S. southwest region, with the state of
840
California as the place of destination for the highest number of migrants coming from the shadowed area in the map. This area represents historically the
place of origin of the oldest and largest source of out labor migration from Mexico
to the United States. This was the targeted region for the first recruiting efforts
by U.S. Congress-funded recruitment programs during the second decade of
this century.
Total estimated flow from Mexico to the United States = 455,695
Estimated flow from shadowed area = 209,009
Source: Survey on Migration in the Northern Border of Mexico. COLEF-CONAPO-STyPS,
from March 1993 to March 1994.
Map 1. Destination in the United States of the Flow of Migrants
Whose Stated Permanent Residence Is in One of the
Following States: Guanajuato, Michoacán, Jalisco,
Zacatecas and San Luis Potosí
841
Map 2
This map shows the origin and destination of U.S.-Mexico border migrants. The arrow
indicates the highest numbers corresponding to this short distance flow as it originates in the
state of Coahuila and as it ends in the state of Texas. Data from this and other COLEF
surveys indicate a northward tendency in the place of origin of the majority of migrants.
This is to suggest that there seems to be a tendency to shorten the distance between place of
origin and place of destination of the international migratory phenomenon under study.
TEXAS 57%
NEW MEXICO 12.5%
BETWEEN 8.5 AND 3%
LESS THAN 1.5%
Total estimated flow from Mexico to the United States = 455,695
Estimated flow from shadowed area = 113,407
Source: Survey on Migration in the Northern Border of Mexico. COLEF-CONAPO-STyPS,
from March 1993 to March 1994.
Map 2. Destination in the United States of the Flow of
Migrants Living in Mexico’s Northern Border States
842
Map 3
In a descending order, this map depicts the flow from a Western region of
Mexico in which the state of Sinaloa is the place of origin of the highest numbers
of migrants going to the state of California from the shadowed area in the map.
Total estimated flow from Mexico to the United States = 455,695.
Estimated flow from shadowed area = 54,387.
Source: Survey on Migration in the Northern Border of Mexico. COLEF-CONAPO-STyPS.
From March 1993 to March 1994.
Map 3. Destination in the United States of the Flow of Migrants
Whose Stated Permanent Residence Is in One of the
Following States: Sinaloa, Durango, Nayarit,
Colima and Aguascalientes
843
Map 4
This map depicts the migration from the southern part of Mexico, with the
state of Oaxaca as the place of the highest number of labor migrants from the
region to the United States. The states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, shown in the
shadowed area in the map, are the place of origin of migrants who are mostly
Indians, some of them monolingual in their native language, and certainly the poorest
Total estimated flow from Mexico to the United States = 455,695
Estimated flow from shadowed area = 28,831
Source: Survey on Migration in the Northern Border of Mexico. COLEF-CONAPO-STyPS,
from March 1993 to March 1994.
Map 4. Destination in the United States of the Flow of Migrants
Whose Stated Permanent Residence Is in One of the
Following States: Oaxaca, Guerrero and Morelos
844
among the majority of the labor migrants going to the United States. The ethnic
group in the majority of migrants coming from the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero
are the Mixtecos. They are atypical migrants in more than one sense because they
tend to fund their respective cost of migration in U.S. dollars. This is to suggest a
factor of solidarity of migrants already in the United States whose savings are the
main source of funding for the migration of others from the same ethnic group. The
majority of the rest of migrants tend to finance their journey to the United States
with Mexican pesos, meaning the migrant’s own resources. As in the majority of
Mexican migrant’s place of destination, the state of California appears as a virtual
mecca for Mexican migrant laborers. Both the Zapata Canyon and the EMIF projects
show the state of origin of more than 50% of the Mexican migrants both documented
and undocumented, with the metropolitan area of Los Angeles as the place of
destination of 75% of the total found in the state of California.
Map 5
This map depicts the flow from Central Mexico with the Federal District
(Mexico City) as the place of origin of the highest number of migrant workers
going to the United States with the predominance indicated by the arrow and the
shadowed area. Migrants from Mexico City, both documented and undocumented,
are newcomers in the statistics of out migration from Mexico to the United States.
They appeared within the 10 states with the largest numbers of international migrants,
only 15 years ago. Today, they seem to compete for the first place as a place of
origin of undocumented migration from Mexico. This is particularly the case of
the flow that passes through the city of Tijuana.
Map 6
This map shows the region of origin of the lowest proportion within the totals
of migrant workers from Mexico to the United States, with the state of Veracruz as
the place of origin of the highest numbers and the state of Chiapas with close to nil
migration to the United States. As the arrow in this map suggests, these migrants
tend to cross the border at the closest distance to the United States.
Maps 7 to 12
These maps represent accumulated figures corresponding to an eight-year
period, as opposed to the EMIF’s data, which correspond only to the twelve-month
period between 1993 and 1994. These differences in the time span of these two
sources of data are the main reason for the differences in the direction of the migratory
flow depicted in the respective series of maps. Another important difference is the
845
sample base. Zapata Canyon Project’s data correspond to actual number of cases
with no statistical bases for a stochastic generalization of the universe of
undocumented immigrants. In contrast, the maps based on EMIF’s data, complies
with all the assumptions required for the statistical estimates indicated in the
respective maps.
Total estimated flow from Mexico to the United States = 455,695
Estimated flow from shadowed area = 39,891
Source: Survey on Migration in the Northern Border of Mexico. COLEF-CONAPO-STyPS,
from March 1993 to March 1994.
Map 5. Destination in the United States of the Flow of Migrants
Whose Stated Permanent Residence Is in One of the
Following States: D.F., México, Querétaro,
Puebla, Hidalgo and Tlaxcala
846
Total estimated flow from Mexico to the United States = 455,695
Estimated flow from shadowed area = 10,128
Source: Survey on Migration in the Northern Border of Mexico. COLEF-CONAPO-STyPS,
from March 1993 to March 1994.
Map 6. Destination in the United States of the Flow of Migrants
Whose Stated Permanent Residence Is in One of the
Following States: Veracruz, Tabasco, Chiapas,
Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo
847
Total number of cases = 107,313
Number of cases from shadowed area = 21,919
Source: Zapata Canyon Project. COLEF. From September 1987 to June 1996.
Map 7. Destination in the United States of the Flow of Migrants
Whose Stated Permanent Residence Is in One of the
Following States: Guanajuato, Michoacán,
Jalisco, Zacatecas and San Luis Potosí
848
Total number of cases = 107,313
Number of cases from shadowed area = 13,122
Source: Zapata Canyon Project. COLEF. From September 1987 to June 1996.
Map 8. Destination in the United States of the Flow of
Migrants Living in Mexico’s Northern Border States
849
Total number of cases = 107,313
Number of cases from shadowed area = 8,244
Source: Zapata Canyon Project. COLEF. From September 1987 to June 1996.
Map 9. Destination in the United States of the Flow of Migrants
Whose Stated Permanent Residence Is in One of the
Following States: Sinaloa, Durango, Nayarit,
Colima and Aguascalientes
850
Total number of cases = 107,313
Number of cases from shadowed area = 5,866
Source: Zapata Canyon Project. COLEF. From September 1987 to June 1996.
Map 10. Destination in the United States of the Flow of Migrants
Whose Stated Permanent Residence Is in One of the
Following States: Oaxaca, Guerrero and Morelos
851
Total number of cases = 107,313
Number of cases from shadowed area = 11,261
Source: Zapata Canyon Project. COLEF. From September 1987 to June 1996.
Map 11. Destination in the United States of the Flow of Migrants
Whose Stated Permanent Residenceis in One of the Following
States: D.F., México, Querétaro, Puebla, Hidalgo and Tlaxcala
852
Total number of cases = 107,313
Number of cases from shadowed area = 2,641
Source: Zapata Canyon Project. COLEF. From September 1987 to June 1996.
Map 12. Destination in the United States of the Flow of Migrants
Whose Stated Permanent Residence Is One of the Following
States: Veracruz, Tabasco, Chiapas, Campeche,
Yucatán and Quintana Roo
853
Maps 13 and 14
These maps show the volumes of the returned migration from the United States
to Mexico which took place between 1993 and 1994. Map 13 shows the flow of
return with the state of California as the place of origin and the states of Jalisco
and Michoacán as the states of destination of the majority of migrants within this
flow of return migration. When this map is compared to map 14, the importance
Total estimated flow from California to Mexico = 38,758
Estimated flow from shadowed area = 15,501
Source: Survey on Migration in the Northern Border of Mexico. COLEF-CONAPO-STyPS.
from March 1993 to March 1994.
Map 13. Destination in Mexico of the Flow
of Migrants from the State of California
854
of regional distinctions becomes more apparent in the empirical estimation of the
migratory flows. Map 13 shows the western states of the two countries connected
by migratory flows. Map 14 shows a similar connection between the state of Texas
and the eastern and northern central regions of Mexico.
The circulant process of migration suggested in this paper does not mean that
the migratory flows indicated in the maps presented here necessarily correspond
to different individuals with different socioeconomic characteristics. Actually, one
Total estimated flow from Texas to Mexico = 38,758
Estimated flow from shadowed area = 13,603
Source: Survey on Migration in the Northern Border of Mexico. COLEF-CONAPO-STyPS.
From March 1993 to March 1994.
Map 14. Destination in Mexico of the Flow
of Migrants from the State of Texas
855
individual could appear in different flows within a short period of time. The
importance of the empirical notion of migratory flows has to do with differences in
the conditions of U.S. labor demands in interaction with conditions of Mexican
labor supply. We have found that it is the changing conditions of the international
labor market studied here where the notion of migratory flows make a difference.
This is to suggest that joining the migratory flow to California might represent a
different outcome than joining the migratory flow to Texas for a Mexican migrant
worker either documented or undocumented.
International Migration as a Process of Interaction
Recent Findings From The Zapata Canyon Project41
Some interesting data sources have been drawn regarding basic socioeconomic
characteristics of undocumented immigrants from Mexico over the last 6 years. In
regard to gender, there is a relative stability in the proportion of women. It should
be noted however, that there are significant variations when data is broken down
by state of origin. Then, migrants from the metropolitan area of Mexico City show
the highest proportion of women (24%) whereas in states more rural in the origin
of migrants such as Guerrero that proportion drops to less than 10 percent. An
important methodological finding could be stated. The more urban in origin, male
and female migrants’ data should be analyzed separately in order to account for
significant differences by gender in migratory behavior.
In regard to age, data from the Zapata Canyon Project suggest there is a tendency
toward a higher concentration in the most productive age cohorts (between 20 and
30). This could indicate an increasing competition in the labor market in the United
States and/or a shorter “migratory career,” meaning the time through which an
individual keeps himself or herself in the circulatory process of migration between
the two countries.
In regard to education (years of school attended), it is interesting to note a
decrease in the percentages of the least educated, which suggests an increase in the
“human capital” value of the undocumented immigrants.
One of the most important findings of the Zapata Canyon Project is the relatively rapid increase of the urban origin of undocumented immigrants from Mexico
(13% in less than 6 years). A hypothesis could be drawn from this finding in the
sense that there is a higher cost for the economies of origin of these migrants associated to an outmigration of a labor force that appears to be of an increasingly
higher “human capital” value.
Data resulting from the question, “Have you ever had a job in the United
States?” provide some empirical foundation to the notion of a “circulatory
migration” put forward here. The increasing pattern of the affirmative responses
856
suggest an increasingly intensive circulatory movement of these migrants between
the two countries.
Data from the Zapata Canyon Project show some patterns of destination choice
among undocumented immigrants from Mexico. They confirm previous findings
about the increasing preference for California in general and Los Angeles in particular, among undocumented immigrants from Mexico. The high degree of concentrated migrant flow through the city of Tijuana is congruent with the preference
for California. Almost two-thirds of the total number of Mexican undocumented
immigrants in route to the whole United States is heading toward California. This
pattern of concentration seems to be enhanced by the relative decline in the preference for other regions of the United States or Canada in addition to the decline in
the percentages of migrants who responded not to know where they were heading
at the time when they were interviewed.
Finally, data from the Zapata Canyon Project yield empirical support for contentions made above about of the persistence of a United States labor demand for
Mexican undocumented immigrants. There is an increase in the reported previous
job experience in the United States of individuals getting ready to enter the United
States again, except in farm working where a clear decline seems to be taking
place. This seems to be congruent with the patterns of increase in education levels
among undocumented immigrants.
Toward a Pragmatic Approach to Manage
Labor Migration from Mexico
In a manner of a symbolic synthesis of the two parts discussed above, an idea
for the initiation of a bilateral process of rationalization of the labor migration
phenomenon between the two countries is advanced here.
In early 1992 there was an important meeting in Washington, D.C., at which
representatives of the Mexican and U.S. federal governments discussed the problems
of violence on their common border. On the eve of that meeting, a high-level
functionary in the U.S. federal government, who asked not to be identified, told
me, “there are no official proposals from the Mexican side on what to do about
undocumented immigration; they only have proposals to talk about the problem,
but not about how to resolve it.” Meanwhile, of course, it is painfully clear that the
U.S. government does have proposals. These proposals all share a common
characteristic: all adopt the law enforcement focus that the U.S. government
consistently places on undocumented migration. The U.S. government never wavers
from defining this phenomenon as a crime problem requiring police-type solutions.
The persistence of this view of migration from Mexico has led the U.S. government
to categorically reject on principal the idea of considering labor migration within
857
the negotiations of NAFTA. The U.S. government will only agree to deal bilaterally
with the problem of undocumented migration if it is in relation to law enforcement
policies. Its refusal to view the issue as a labor issue has been inflexible. However,
this inflexibility has not been expressed openly and hence it has not appeared in
the mass media. In my view, it is a political miscalculation on the part of the Mexican
government to allow the U.S. government to acknowledge its inflexibility only
within internal diplomatic circles. I had the opportunity to attend an ANUIESPROFMEX conference in Mazatlán in 1990, to hear the opening of the free trade
negotiations.
A high-level functionary from the office of Ambassador Carla Hills presented
the United States’ official position on refusing to include the migration issue as
part of the negotiations of this accord. The rationale put forward since that time
is that labor migration would only be included in the negotiation of a “common
market,” not of a “free trade agreement.” This rationale masks the fact that the
United States prefers to continue addressing the migration issue unilaterally as a
crime issue, since undocumented migration provides an inexhaustible source of
cheap labor that the United States can regulate and has regulated according to its
economic needs. It also has an additional advantage: these migrants serve politically
as scapegoats every time the U.S. government wants to hide from the U.S. public
the true causes of some hardship such as high rates of unemployment, drug
trafficking, or social unrest such as the recent disturbances in Los Angeles. To
address the migration issue as a labor phenomenon would mean bringing it to the
bilateral negotiating table, and that, in turn, would increase the costs of this labor
force that is kept cheap by virtue of the fact that it is kept undocumented, and
hence criminal. The United States’ refusal to focus on undocumented migration
as a labor issue saves the U.S. economy several billions of dollars every year.
This is the chief reason for the current U.S. position, and it is what lies behind
U.S. inflexibility on dealing with the migration issue as anything other than a law
enforcement issue.
This inflexibility is nothing other than a flagrant expression of the power
asymmetry characterizing the U.S.-Mexico relationship across all dimensions, from
the macro to the micro. In this light, the United States is unjustified in saying that
“there are no official proposals from the Mexican side.” This is asking to blame
the victim.
This situation suggests that the Mexican government should formulate a proposal
detailing what has been voiced by a series of Mexican presidents, government
ministers, and high-ranking members of Congress: a) that Mexico wants to export
products, not people; b) that undocumented migration is a labor issue and a human
rights issue; c) that these issues should be negotiated bilaterally in depth and over
the long term. This has been the position of the Mexican government during the
858
last four administrations, ever since President Echeverría decided over 20 years
ago not to seek renewal of the Bracero Program agreements which had lapsed in
1965. The U.S. government has never officially accepted points b) and c) since the
U.S. view does not accept that migration is a trans-border issue demanding
“international cooperation.” It continues to hold that migration is a domestic national
security issue or a law enforcement issue. In order to correct this lack of a precise
definition of Mexico’s national interests in the issue of undocumented workers, I
propose a strategy that includes the following steps:
Step A is agreement by the two national governments to form a Bilateral Commission with three objectives:
A1) to produce a bilateral report that defines and describes legal and
undocumented migration, both of Mexican citizens to the United
States and U.S. citizens to Mexico;
A2) to discuss and defend this report before representatives of the
respective legislatures and before representatives of the major
media networks, of key associations from the private sector, and
of organized labor from each country;
A3) to act as consultants to the official negotiators of a Migration Treaty
between the two countries, with commission members filling this
role in their respective countries.
Negotiating such a treaty would be step B, which could only be attempted
once the set of objectives outlined above—A1, A2, and A3—had been accomplished.
The irrationality that permeates the mythology of Mexico-U.S. migration leads
us to assume that a necessary precondition for reaching agreement on a Labor
Migration Treaty would be to de-mythify undocumented immigration. This could
be accomplished through a scientific analysis that would be produced and supported
bilaterally, making it acceptable and credible on both sides of the border. Under
current conditions, it is impossible to reach any agreement that would be acceptable
to the respective political institutions and civil societies of Mexico and the United
States. It is imperative that these conditions change. This would be the primary
objective of the proposed Bilateral Commission. This commission would be made
up of one member from each country’s respective government sector, and two
members each per country from the business sector, organized labor, and academic
institutions. It would have a budget with which to finance independent studies on
the condition that they be bilaterally directed. Its secretariat or permanent staff
would include members from both countries; these individuals would be charged
with implementing the decisions of the commission. Once the research efforts had
produced their results and the negotiations of the Migration Treaty had begun,
859
commission members would act as consultants to their respective country’s team
of negotiators, except in the case of government representatives on the commission,
who could serve as members of their country’s negotiating team. The complexity
of the issue of migration between these two countries is so great that we should not
expected its negotiation to be any less intricate than the negotiation of NAFTA.
What the United States has to gain from a Labor Migration Agreement is not of a
different nature than what is expected to be gained with NAFTA; namely, a
neighboring country economically capable to buy more U.S.A.- made products
and politically stable to institutionalize similar rules of the game than those of the
neighbors to the north, joining strategies on a regional basis in order to compete
successfully with the European Community and the Asian countries.
Notes
1. This is the Zapata Canyon Project which basically consists of a survey technique
where personal interviews are systematically conducted at the main crossings sites of the
Mexican-U.S. border in the cities of Tijuana, Mexicali, Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo and
Matamoros, to a randomly selected sample of individuals on the Fridays, Saturdays and
Sundays of every week, ever since September of 1987 to the present. This project has produced the only time series data base on the flows of undocumented migration from Mexico,
other than the statistics on apprehensions produced by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Previous findings from this project have been reported, among others, in the
following publications by the author of this paper: “Undocumented Immigration: Research
Findings and Policy Options,” in R. Roett, Mexico and the United States: Managing the
Relation, Boulder, Co.: Westview Press. 1988; “Measuring the Flow of Undocumented
Immigrants,” in W. Cornelius and J. A. Bustamante eds., Mexican Migration to the United
States: Origins, Consequences and Policy Options, San Diego-La Jolla, CA: Center for
U.S.-Mexico Studies-University of California. 1989; “Undocumented Migration to the United
States: Preliminary Findings of the Zapata Canyon Project,” in: F. Bean et al. eds., Undocumented Migration to the United States, Washington, D.C.: The Rand Corporation and the
Urban Institute Press. 1990.
2. Max Weber, Grundriss der Sozialokonomic; III Abteilung, Wirtschaft und
Gesellschaft, Tubingen: Verlag von J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). 1925. In the first section entitled “Methodische Grundlagen” (Basic Methodological Premises), section 5, pp.
3-4, Weber makes a dual distinction between two kinds of “understandings,” after his famous dictum that “Verstehen” is what sociology is all about. This dual distinction is between a)”aktuelle Verstehen,” which refers to the understanding of culturally meaningful
behavior directly observable and, b)”erklarendes Verstehen,” which refers to the understanding that is reached for explanatory purposes, through the cultural interpretation of
social actions. This dichotomy inspired the basic distinction made in this paper where the
“cultural dimension” corresponds to an attempt toward b and the interactional dimension
corresponds to an attempt toward a.
3. J. A. Bustamante, “Structural and Ideological Conditions of the Undocumented
Immigration to the United states.” American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 19, No. 3. New York,
N.Y.: 1976; “Commodity Migrants: Structural Analysis of Mexican Immigration,” in : S. R.
860
Ross ed., Views Across the Border: The United States and Mexico. Albuquerque, N.M.:
University of New Mexico Press. 1978; “Mexican Migration; Political Dynamics of
Perceptions” in: C. Reynolds and C. Tello eds. Stanford, Ca.: University of Stanford Press.
1983; “Interdependence, Undocumented Migration and National Security” in: Jorge A.
Bustamante et al. eds. Labor Market Interdependence. Stanford, Ca.: University of Stanford
Press. 1992.
4. Documentation in support of this assertion appears in, J. A. Bustamante, “El debate
sobre la ‘invasion silenciosa’,” Foro Internacional, Vol. 17, No. 3, El Colegio de México.
México, D.F. 1977. pp. 403-417.
5. See note 2.
6. See note 2
7. Such as an individual who is actually crossing the U.S.-Mexico border at a place
where there is no inspection by the U.S. authorities. Individual whose behavior can be empirically accounted for in terms of socioeconomic characteristics and statistical categories.
8. Here, the specific reference corresponds to Weber’s discussion of this concept in
sections 6, 7 and 8 of the first chapter of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft.
9. It is argued here that one of the most serious distortions of Max Weber epistemological
approach to the study of social relations comes from Talcott Parsons’ translation of “Sinnhaft
adaquat” and “Gemeinter Sinn” as “subjectively adequate” and “subjective meaning”
respectively. There are few concepts as crucial for the understanding of Weber’s sociological
theory as the concept of “Sinn” (meaning). My reading of the original writings leads me to
interpret this concept as “a cultural sense that is commonly attached to a behavior or a
symbol which meaning is intersubjectively shared by the members of a community.” That is
an interpretation of “Sinn” as a social construct, distinctively independent in origin from the
subjective individuality. Parsons’ rendition of “Sinn” results closer to his own epistemological
approach to the social action which is anchored in the subjective individuality of attitudes.
Weber’s explicit preoccupation for a legitimate identity of sociology as a field of knowledge,
places the datum of “Sinn” in the social nature of the community, whereas Parsons places
the datum of “subjective meaning” in the psychological nature of the individual.
10. The second paragraph of section 7 of the first chapter of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft,
leaves no doubt of Weber’s emphasis on the overt behavior as a datum required for the
“Kausal adequat” level of scientific understanding of social actions, which is to be understood
in contrast to the cultural nature of the datum required for the “Sinnhaft adequate” level.
11. This methodological distinction does not mean that cultural elements cannot be
counted or that they are not susceptible of statistical analysis. The difference is one of epistemological nature. It has to do more with a still weak scientific development of social
sciences where no analytical instruments have been developed yet to grasp and render directly measurable some intersubjective elements of culture, than with a positivistic distinction between “hard” and “soft” data.
12. Wolfang J. Mommsen, Max Weber und die deutsche Politik 1890-1920, pp. 2354, quoted by Dirk Käsler in Max Weber: An Introduction to His Life and Work (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1988). In this quote Mommsen refers to the detailed studies
that Weber made of agriculture in the region of the Elbe River, in which he analyzed in
over 12 publications appearing between 1892 and 1894 (still untranslated from the German) the conditions of the agricultural workers, including Polish migrant workers. Many
of Weber’s ideas that are particularly relevant to labor sociologists appear in this series of
861
works, commissioned by the Verein fur Sozialpolitik in 1890 to be conducted by Weber,
along with Thiel, Conrad, and Sering. My understanding of this part of social and economic theory where Weber most thoroughly develops his sociological notion of a labor
market came from a reading of the book by Dirk Käsler, cited above, and Wolfang J.
Mommsen’s later work, The Political and Social Theory of Max Weber (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
13. For a thorough analysis of the treatment that Weber gives to the topic of power
asymmetry in certain labor relations, see chapter 3, on agricultural workers, in Dirk Käsler’s
book on Weber, cited in the previous footnote.
14. See note 8. The understanding of this concept was not enhanced by the translation
into Spanish done in Mexico by a team headed by José Medina Echavarría at El Colegio de
México, first published in 1944, which rendered “Gemeinter Sinn” as “sentido mentado.” In
a work by the author entitled “The Parsonization of Weber in American Sociology,” presented
at the annual congress of the American Sociological Association held in Washington, D.C.,
in 1970, I propose that this concept should be understood as “the cultural sense that a
community attach to a behavior or a symbol” which is used or expressed in the interactional
process of constructing a social relationship. Only thus is the concept compatible with the
epistemological principle on which Weber based his insistence in differentiating psychology
from sociology; that is, “Gemeinter Sinn” is not located in, nor does it stem from, the individual
psyche but rather from the social surroundings where we find the social constructions that
shape the culture of a community.
15. This concept should be understood as used in “labeling theory.” See: Bustamante
Jorge A., “The Wetback as Deviant, An Application of Labeling Theory,” American Journal
of Sociology, Vol. 7, No.4. University of Chicago. Chicago, Ill.: U. of Chicago Press. 1972.
Pp. 706-718.
16. Both the intensity and the extension of the labeling in the way used here, becomes
exacerbated in periods of economic recession in the United States when “illegal aliens”
become the scape goats of the calamities that afflict American communities, such as unemployment tax burdens, government budget deficit, health problems (from AID’s to TV), air
pollution in the city of Los Angeles etc., as it has been documented in: Bustamante, J. A.
“The Mexicans are Coming: From Ideology to Labor Relations,” International Migration
Review Vol. XVII, No.2 (summer) 1992.
17. This contradiction appears documented in, Bustamante J. A., “The Mexicans are
Coming: From Ideology to Labor Relations,” cited in footnote 12. A more current evidence
of this contradiction can be found in the contrast between the verses distributed in May of
1993 by Mr. William J. Knight, Assemblyman representing the 36th California district and
former mayor of the City of Palmdale, and the table that appear in the following page,
showing the persistence of undocumented immigrant labor demands in the last 6 years in
spite of the economic recession in the United States.
18. U.S. Congress, Hearings before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization,
1926. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. 1926. Pp. 20-24
19. U.S. Senate. Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, S.1917.
Appropriations Hearings. 1953. P. 123 (Senator McCarran).
20. Manuel Gamio, Mexican Immigration to the United States. New York: Dover
Publications, 1971.
862
21. Lyle Saunders and Olen F. Leonard, The Wetback in the Lower Rio Grande Valley
of Texas. Inter-American Occasional Papers, No. 7 Austin: University of Texas Press, 1951,
pp. 16-17.
22. Ibid., p . 18.
23. Here are the final paragraphs of Galarza’s book, which support the first hypothesis
presented in this paper:
“The picture of the ideal worker drawn by the managers of migration for trade-unionists
to contemplate, was that of the man of the barracks, the main in a camp who spent all of his
time under supervision if not under surveillance. Occasionally some of these total communities
were surrounded by barbed wire, though this was in any event only symbolic. Though invisible,
a more effective barrier surrounded them—the social distance created by differences in
language, customs and unfamiliar patterns of character and behavior. Outside the barracks
the limits of freedom were prescribed, and they were also the limits of the job. Liberty had
found its economic determinant.
“No doubt efficiency lay in this direction and not in that of the man of the family; of the
spontaneous relationships of the free life after work; of the street corner, back yard and
meeting hall talk to discover interests commonly held and perhaps to devise ways in common to protect them, to discover the vital connections between work and citizenship.”
The image of the perfect farm laborer that was thus in the making under administered
migration was not, unfortunately, one that could be seen only at home. Each time that
California’s industrial farmers drew heavily on some alien reservoir of cheap labor they
called it to the attention of foreign lands.
“It could hardly be avoided. Commercial agriculture, bidding in a world stirred by
agrarian revolt, invited inspection. What it had to show, behind its dazzling efficiency, was
the managed, not the autonomous, man.
“The trumpet calls of the New Frontier were still echoing when Senator Harrison A.
Williams, Jr., chairman of the Senate subcommittee on migratory labor, posed the question:
“If a man in an underdeveloped country can point to our migratory farm workers and ask
why we have not set our house in order, what answer shall we give him?”
“The answer seemed to come in the words of four patricians of industrial agriculture
testifying at a congressional hearing, the Messis. William H. Tolbert, Bruce Sanbom, Jr.,
George Lyons and Leland J. Yost: ‘The same thing was true even in the Roman Empire.
When they reached a stage of civilization they had to reach out to other areas where there
was a lesser standard of living to bring in those people to do the menial tasks.’
24. Jorge A. Bustamante, “Mexican inmigration to the United States; the Social Relations of Capitalism,” Ph.D. dissertation. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Notre Dame. January 10, 1975.
25. I refer to the following works where I developed ana analytical distinction between
the economic or “structural” dimension and the ideological or political dimension of undocumented immigration from Mexico to the United States: J. A. Bustamante, “Commodity
migrants: Structural Analysis of Mexican Immigration,” in: Views Across the Border: The
United States and Mexico, Stanley Ross (ed.). University of New Mexico Press. 1978. Pp.
183-203; J. A. B. “Condiciones estructurales e ideológicas de la emigración mexicana
indocumentada a los Estados Unidos,” in: El Economista Mexicano, Vol. 12, No. 2, MarchApril, 1979. Pp. 24-38; J. A. B. “La migración indocumentada México-Estados Unidos:
863
Relación entre dinámica política y estructuras económicas,” in: Primer encuentro sobre
impactos regionales de las relaciones económicas México-Estados Unidos, vol. 3, Eliseo
Mendoza Berrueto (ed.) 1992. Pp. 241-310; J. A. B. “Mexican Migration: Political Dynamics of Perceptions” in: United States-Mexico Relations: Economic and Social Aspects, C.
Reynolds and C. Tello (eds.) Stanford University Press. 1983. Pp. 259-276; J. A. B. “La
migración de los indocumentados,” in: El Cotidiano, (special issue 1) 1987. Pp. 13-29; J. A.
B. “La política de inmigración de Estados Unidos; Un análisis de sus contradicciones,” in:
Migracion en el Occidente de México, El Colegio de Michoacán. 1988. Pp. 19-40.
26. We learn of these conditions through the criticisms and denunciations that writers
from the Liberal Party were able to publish in opposition newspapers during the era of
Porfirio Díaz. The following paragraph is an eloquent example. It is drawn from one of
these publications, “El Colmillo Ilustrado,” and was published on March 8, 1905.
“On previous occasions we have referred to the mistreatment suffered by Mexicans
who migrate to the United States. The representatives of our government in that country are
not in the least concerned about this suffering which is so evident among our fellow
countrymen who are in that Republic. Because of their lack of interest, we find that many of
our compatriots are wandering, unable to find work, half naked, and dying of hunger. The
government of Mexico is to blame when Mexicans abroad are made victims of mistreatment
and abuse. This blame accrues because of their lack of vigor in defending these people’s
rights. Our government must insist that the fundamental rights of our citizens in the United
States be respected. The dignity of our nation demands it” (p. 30).
27. See J. A. Bustamante, “El debate sobre la `invasión silenciosa’. Foro Internacional,
vol. 17, no. 3 (El Colegio de México), 1977. Pp. 403-417.
28. The two best works on the expulsions of Mexicans during the years of the Great
Depression are by Mercedes Carreras de Velazco, Los Mexicanos que devolvió la crisis 19291932 (Dirección General de Archivo, México, D.F.: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores), and,
by Abraham Hoffman, Unwanted Mexican-Americans in the Great Depression: Repatriation
Pressures, 1929-1939 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974).
29. See Juan Ramón García, Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican
Undocumented Workers in 1954 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1980); and, Julián Samora,
Los mojados: The Wetback Story (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1971).
30. Richard B. Craig, The Bracero Program: Interest Groups and Foreign Policy (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1971).
31. Op. cit.
32. Erasmo Gamboa, Mexican Labor and World War II: Braceros in the Pacific Northwest, 1943-1947 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990).
33. Op. cit.
34. David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1990).
35. María Herrera Sobek, The Bracero Experience: Elitelore versus Folklore (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).
36. If we had to rely on the research of a single author to prove our first hypothesis, the
research conducted by this conscientious scholar from the 1920s through the 1980s would
suffice. See Paul S. Taylor, Labor on the Land: Collected Writings, 1930-1970 (New York:
Arno Press, 1981).
864
37. Op. cit.
38. This concept is used as understood by G. S. Becker in Human Capital; a Theoretical
and Empirical Analysis. New York, N.Y.: National Bureau of Economic Research. 1975.
39. At least three sources should be consulted for a basic understanding of what Weber
meant by an “ideal type”: M. Weber, an “ideal type”: Economy and Society, (edited by
Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich) New York, N.Y.: 1968. Pp. 20-22; M. Weber, “The Meaning of Discipline,” in: From Max Weber (H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.) New York,
N.Y.: Oxford University Press. 1958. P. 42 and; M. Weber, “Objectivity in Social Science
and Social Policy” in: The Methodology of Social Sciences, E. A. Shils and H. A. Finch
(eds.). New York, N.Y.: Free Press. 1949. P. 104.
40. This research project was originally submitted to a competition for research projects
to be funded by the World Bank and under the conditions of competition established by the
World Bank, organized by Mexico’s Secretary of Labor and the National Council of Population. The maps are drawn from data corresponding to the first year of this survey 1993-94.
41. For a description of this project see note 1.
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