The Ethnosurvey & The Mexican
Migration Project
Outline
 Context and Historical Overview
 Methodology
 Publications
Move Towards the Survey
 Rooted in the Census
 Transformation of Formal Demography into Social Demography
 Topical issues
 Relationship between population and social processes
 Census no longer adequate
 Why, not just What?
 Implementation of Survey’s began
 1982 , the Ethnosurvey
The Mexican Migration Project (MMP)
 Designed by Massey et al. to analyze the social processes of migration
 Combined Effort
 First Survey 1982
 4 Communities
 Now 124
 Annual interviews
 Specifically targets migrants in Mexico and the US
Ethnosurvey
 Methodology of the MMP
 “A full understanding of the
migration process requires
information that is historically
grounded, ethnographically
interpreted, and quantitatively
rigorous.”
 Designed to operate at the
community level
http://mmp.opr.princeton.edu/research/mapsen.aspx
Sampling Techniques
Varied communities selected
Mapped
Random Sample
Sample size similar across
communities
Low refusal rate
http://harrogatenorth.com/images/Harrogate
CommunityMap.gif
US migrant Sampling Techniques
 Snowball sampling
 Potential for bias?
 Confidentiality
http://www.migrationinformation.org/images/Spotlig
ht-on-Mexican-Immigrants-April-2008-map.gif
Question Design and Interview
Age
 “Informal and
unthreatening”
 Semi-structured
House
Hold
Head
 Two phases
Mother
 Detail
 History
Child
Child
Trips to
US
State in
US
Money
Transfer
Data Coding and File Construction
 Coding conducted by field assistants familiar with the
interview process.
 Checked multiple times for clerical errors
Ethnosurvey Strengths
 Analyze detailed data compared to the census
 Can document trends extremely well
 Makes further analysis easy
 Control for distortion
 Results were congruent with Mexican research (Massey and
Zenteno 1999)
Ethnosurvey Weaknesses
 High costs and upkeep
 Cannot explain causality, just note trends
 Explains behavior not motivations
 Qualitative up to a point
Ethnosurvey Weaknesses, continued…
 Broad Quantifications
 Quantify human beings
 Not generalizable
 Only actually applied in one setting
Examples Articles from MMP
 (Phillips and Massey 2000)
 (Kanaiaupuni 2000)
 (Bauer, Epstein and Gang
2002)
Conclusion
 “First we shape our buildings and then they shape us. The
same may be said of our statistics.” –Winston Chrucill
Reference List:
 Bauer, Thomas, Gil Epstein, and Ira Gang. 2002. Herd Effects or Migration
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Networks? The Location Choice of Mexican Immigrants in the U.S. Mobility and
Flexibility of Labor 11, no. 8: 31-50.
Kanaiaupuni, Shawn. 2000. Reframing the Migration Question: An Analysis of
Men, Women, and Gender in Mexico. Social Forces 78, no. 4: 1311-48.
Massey, Douglas, Rafael Alarcon, Jorge Durand, and Humberto González.
1990. The Social Process of International Migration fromWestern Mexico. New York:
University of California.
Massey, Douglas, and Rene Zenteno. 2000. A Validation of the Ethnosurvey: The
Case of Mexico-U.S. Migration. International Migration Review 34: 766-93.
Phillips, Julie, and Douglas Massey. 2000. Engines of Immigration: Stocks of
Human and Social Capital in Mexcio. Social Science Quarterly 81, no. 1: 33-48.
The Mexican Migration Project Home. Mexican Migration
Project.http://mmp.opr.princeton.edu/ (accessed February 20, 2010).
Weeks, John. 2007. Population An Introduction to Concepts and Issues. New York:
Belmont:Wadsworth.