Mexican Immigration in Los Angles 1990's - Essay Example

Mexican Immigration in Los Angles 1990's Introduction Mexican migration to the United s began on a large scale at the end of the nineteenth century. Economic and political conditions in Mexico had created a large pool of impoverished rural people. Equally the incorporation of southwestern states into the US national economy meant a constant demand for a cheap labour force (Cardoso 7-9). At the same time, the extension of railway links made migration easier by providing a fast and safe means of transport for migrant workers from western Mexico to the US South-West (Driscoll 56-59). During the twentieth century, Mexican migration has passed through several stages, its character varying in accordance with changes in politics and the economy. The changing profile of Mexican migration Starting in the mid-1980s, there has been a programme of structural adjustment and economic realignment in Mexico, founded on a set of neoliberal policies which have made the working and contractual conditions of the Mexican workforce more precarious. In this new political and economic context, the 1982 and 1994 financial crises have contributed to a redefinition of the relations between unions and the state, especially with regard to labour market deregulation, but also regarding capital-labour relations (Zapata 6-10; Delgado 1-19). The direct effect of the new economic and labour context has been to make employment more precarious, with a general reduction in wages. This has been going on for nearly 20 years (Cortes 12-19). Income levels, already low in 1980, declined even further in the next few years. For example, the minimum wage shows an uninterrupted tendency to fall steadily over the last 20 years, and by 1998 it was worth only 31 per cent of its 1980 value. Average working incomes have also been badly hit and have continued to go down during this period. In the first half of the 1990s there was some improvement in average incomes, but not enough to restore wages to the values they had in the early 1980s. The crisis of December 1994 reduced salaries again, and this state of affairs has continued pretty much up until now (2002). The current value of average working incomes is still about 25 per cent less than it was at the start of the 1980s (see Figure 1). In addition, the number of people earning less than the minimum wage has increased, from 27.7 per cent of the working population in 1990 to 32.5 per cent in 1995 and 37.5 per cent in 1997. The proportion of those receiving between twice and five times the minimum wage has remained stable over the decade. Those who earn more than five minimum wages are in the curious position of having increased in number in 1995 only to go back to representing the same proportion of the workforce as in 1990 (see Table 1). In spite of this, the most important fact to emerge from the figures is that for the entire 1990s a third of the working population earned less than the minimum wage established by law, which is itself very meagre and insufficient to cover even basic needs. Furthermore, an additional 30 per cent of the working population earned between 1 and 2 minimum wages. This means that two-thirds of the workforce have been exposed to a precarious and vulnerable situation in which the movement of their wages has been, in fact, downwards. The persistence of this pattern of income inequity and insecurity for more than 20 years has made migration a real alternative for many. International migration (and remittances) has become a more attractive option than working in new industrial zones or in cities in Mexico, although job opportunities in urban areas are far superior to the limited chances in the Mexican countryside. As Figure 2 shows, the average amount sent back in remittances to Mexico by each migrant worker from 1995 onwards is 2.4 times the official minimum wage, which is two-thirds of the average working income in Mexico. In other words, migrant workers were able to bring to the family income as much money as one-third of the resident population was able to earn (not including here migrant workers saving in the United States). Therefore it is hardly surprising that migration has come to include new social groups that have both modified the profile of the migrants and changed the means and types of their movements. It is worth highlighting three recent tendencies that can be observed in the migration process. First, there have been absolute and relative increases in migrant flows. Second, new demographic groups (mainly women and children) have been incorporated into the migration flow. And finally, new regions and urban zones have also been incorporated into the flow. The first thing to note is the sheer magnitude of the constant and sustained increase in the number of Mexicans who have established their usual place of residence in the United States. Up until 1970, permanent emigration to the Unites States involved some 45,000 people annually. From 1970 onwards, there is a sustained increase in the numbers of those who decide to stay permanently, averaging 110,000 in the 1970s, 220,000 by the 1980s and 343,000 in the 1990s (Table 2). In the 1990s the total number of Mexicans who settled in the United States amounted to 3.5 million, the same as in the previous three decades (1960-1990). Furthermore, up until 1960 the total number of Mexicans resident in the United States amounted to less than 2 per cent of the population of Mexico. But by 1990 the proportion of Mexican citizens settled in the US came to 5.5 per cent, rising to 8.1 per cent by the year 2000. These figures suggest that the process of Mexican immigrants staying permanently in the United States has become increasingly important to Mexico in recent years. According to the latest estimates (see Table 2), there are now over 8 million Mexican citizens living in the United States as permanent residents, which is a greater number than the population of any state in the Mexican Republic apart from the Federal District and the State of Mexico. (Milkman 260) Besides relative and absolute increases in migration to the United States, there is a second outstanding tendency in this period. New population groups have been incorporated into the migration flow. This applies to women who had previously kept out of the circular migration process. This is not to say that the participation of women in the migratory process is recent, and a long-standing female presence has in fact been widely documented. The novelty is for women to be increasingly involved in migration of a circular and recurrent nature. Women have always taken part in migration but their modus operandi has always been of a specific kind. Unlike men, women have tended to make only one, non-return move, and set up residence in the United States. In a considerable number of cases it was family reunion. So it is not surprising that by 1970, nearly half of the Mexican migrants who had settled permanently in the United States should be women, and this figure has remained stable over the last 30 years (CELADE 2000). However, a look at the composition of the temporary migration flow shows there has been a significant change over recent years. Women accounted for only 4 per cent of the circular migratory flow up until the early 1990s, but this figure is multiplied almost fivefold by the end of the decade, by which time women accounted for almost 20 per cent of circular migration. If circular migration is composed essentially of labour migrants, then the change in the proportion of women migrants indicates an important change in the types of migration by women. For a long time it was thought that the migration of women could be explained basically as being part of a process of migration by the family as a whole. Today we can say that women also play a significant part in circular labour migration. A further point to note is the change over the last ten years in the geographical origins of the migrants. For several decades migration was essentially rural and limited to particular parts of the country, with migrants coming mainly from western and northern regions. Nowadays migration has spread to a number of urban zones in virtually all regions. In the early 1990s, the number of temporary migrants who had been born in urban areas with a population of 15,000 or more, amounted to a third, with 67 per cent coming from rural zones. By the end of the same decade the figures had evened out and only half of all temporary labour migrants came from rural parts, with the other half having been born in urban areas, most of them (70 per cent) coming from towns of over 100,000 inhabitants. Another important fact shown by recent figures is that a number of regions and states of the federation are getting involved in the migration process for the first time. As the maps in Figure 3 demonstrate, the places from which the migratory flow originates have tended to recede 'lower down' in the country, from the west and north to the centre and the south. Oaxaca and Puebla in particular, which used to contribute very little to the flow, now feature prominently. Of special interest is Veracruz which only started to send emigrants as late as the nineties. (5) Also noteworthy are the Federal District and the State of Mexico, which for the most part cover those who are migrating from the Metropolitan Zone of Mexico City. In short, recent changes in the composition and origins of the migration by Mexicans to the United States show that the process is now on a national scale, extending to more regions and including new subjects and new social groups who are changing the social, economic and demographic profile of the migrants. The mechanisms of migration have likewise become more varied and complicated. The process is no longer one of circular labour migration; increasingly large numbers are settling in rural towns and in various cities in the United States (Alarcon 1-22; Canales and Zlolniski 221-52). Mexican migrants and the segmentation process of the US labour market In recent decades, the United States economy has been going through a process of structural change, marked by the renewal of its productive base and technology, and its insertion into the current movement towards globalisation. Labour markets exhibit a new structure of employment, with two distinct complementary features. The first is a change in the structure of employment as such, and the other is the polarisation and segmentation of employment within the new structure. The new structure of employment shows in general that professional services, linked to the 'information society', have assumed greater importance; and extractive and manufacturing activities are relatively less significant than before (Castells 1-5; Sassen 23-25). For many writers, these former activities are identified as the 'winners' in the globalisation process and therefore represent a new worker profile in the coming information society. Nevertheless it should be noted that these 'professional' services are still serving and feeding other productive processes, especially in some branches of manufacturing (microelectronics, technology, energy, automobiles, and others). So it is not really surprising that manufacturing industry still accounts for over 22 per cent of the total number of employed people. As the structure of employment changes, so a second process can be seen to operate, whereby Mexican and other immigrants are inserted into the US labour market. This process is one of a polarisation and segmentation of employment, which are characteristic features of the new structure of the labour market. To illustrate how this process functions, I present a comparative analysis of the profile of Mexican workers, measured against other ethnic groups. (6) The first thing we learn from this study is that the structure and composition of employment, by sector of activity and category of job-type, are markedly different for each ethnic group. For example, the Mexican population tend to concentrate on productive activities as such, rather than tertiary activities, except for personal services (see Table 3). In fact, 12.2 per cent of Mexican immigrant workers are employed in agriculture and other extractive activities, while 34 per cent work in manufacturing and construction. Of the Anglo-Americans surveyed, on the other hand, only 3.1 per cent work in extractive activities and less than 23 per cent are employed in manufacturing. Only 7 per cent of the Mexicans enumerated are contracted to work in production services, and the same number work in professional social services. In either case the number of people employed is far fewer than that of other ethnic groups, such as immigrants of Asian origin and members of the Anglo-American population. We may finally note that, in the sector of commerce and distribution, each ethnic group taken into account has approximately the same share of employment. But this aggregate figure hides the fact that Mexican workers are usually employed in low-skill positions, and Anglo-Americans and immigrants of Asian origin mainly in medium- and high-skill ones. On the other hand, it is noteworthy that Mexicans provide around 14 per cent of all the workforce employed in extractive activities (mainly agriculture). This means that there is one Mexican worker for every six workers of other ethnic origin. The figure is much higher than in the American economy as a whole, where the Mexican workforce accounts for only 3.3 per cent of all those employed. So in this one sector, the Mexican presence is more than four times greater than it is, on average, in other economic activities. Works Cited Alarcon, R. (1995) immigrants or Transnational Workers The Settlement Process among Mexicans in Rural California. Davis, CA: The California Institute for Rural Studies. 1-22 Canales, A.I. and Zlolniski, C. (2001) 'Comunidades transnacionales y migracion en la era de la globalization', Notas de Poblacion, 73: 221-52. Cardoso, L. (1980) Mexican Emigration to the United States, 1897-1931. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. 7-9 Castells, M. (1998) La Era de la Informacion. Economia, sociedad y cultura. Vol. 1. La sociedad red. Barcelona: Alianza Editorial. 1-5 CELADE (2000) Boletin Demografico, No. 65. Santiago: Latin American and Caribbean Demographic Center, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Cortes, F. (2000) La Distribucion del Ingreso en Mexico en Epocas de Estabilizacion y Reforma Economica. Mexico, DF: Miguel Angel Porrua and CIESAS. 12-19 Delgado, Hctor. (1993). New Immigrants, Old Unions. Temple University Press, pp. 1-19. Driscoll, B. (1999) The Tracks North: The Railroad Bracero Program of World War 11. Austin: CMAS Books, Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas at Austin. 56-59 Milkman, Ruth (ed). (2000) Organizing Immigrants: The Challenge for Unions in Contemporary California. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,. 260 Sassen, S. (1998) Globalisation and its Discontents. New York: The New Press. 23-25 Zapata, F. (1998) Flexibles y Productivos Estudios sobre flexibilidad laboural en Mexico. Mexico: El Colegio de Mexico. 6-10 Read More