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Mexican labor in the United States

01 Jan 1970-
About: The article was published on 1970-01-01 and is currently open access. It has received 102 citations till now.
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper found that Mexican immigrants with 6 or more years in the United States declined relative to native whites from 1910 to 1990, and that the deterioration in economic performance can be linked to a decline in the schooling of Mexican immigrants relative to the U.S. population.

46 citations

01 Jan 2013
TL;DR: Sanchez et al. as discussed by the authors investigated how and why territorial institutions differentially recognized those with whom they interacted, directly or tangentially, including immigrant miners, an incarcerated pregnant African American teenager and her veteran father, an elderly Anglo female murder victim, imprisoned Hispano husbands, Hispana business owners in need of police protection, and young Anglo "cowmen" seeking employment.
Abstract: Author(s): Sanchez, Sabrina | Advisor(s): Haas, Lisbeth | Abstract: Marginalized husbands, fathers, and sons on dramatically different positions within territorial New Mexico's social, racial, and class hierarchies constructed and performed the identity of young, able-bodied, industrious "A-1 good men" when demanding entitlements from governors, penitentiary wardens, chiefs of the Mounted Police Force, and Bureau of Immigration officials in a fledgling territory that desperately coveted statehood. Not a Hispano identity, an Anglo identity, or an affluent one, this gendered identity embodied a representation of the man territorial authorities defined as the ideal New Mexican, an image deemed necessary to merit and achieve equal inclusion in the United States.I argue that New Mexico's underfunded institutions of the Territorial Penitentiary, Mounted Police Force, Bureau of Immigration, and territorial courts--institutions designed to facilitate New Mexico's transition from a demeaned site of Spanish, Mexican, and indigenous Pueblo authority to a celebrated site of U.S., Anglo, and federal authority--enabled this gendered representation to flourish. This dissertation interrogates how and why territorial institutions differentially recognized those with whom they interacted, directly or tangentially, including immigrant miners, an incarcerated pregnant African American teenager and her veteran father, an elderly Anglo female murder victim, imprisoned Hispano husbands, Hispana business owners in need of police protection, and young Anglo "cowmen" seeking employment. New Mexico's status as a peripheral participant in the nation propelled a milieu of unbelonging and rigorous racialization. Scrutinizing demands for entitlements found in the correspondence, advertisements, and judicial proceedings of territorial institutions illuminates a gendered rhetorical pattern that determined whose labor would be considered most valuable, whose testimony would be granted the most consideration in court, whose family would merit wages from territorial employment, and whose presence would be most welcome outside of the penitentiary. New Mexico's territorial institutions are spaces where the enmeshment of race, gender, working-class masculinity, and political disenfranchisement is highly visible. These institutions did not evaluate gendered claims of entitlement equally. How women--whether Hispana, Anglo, African American, immigrant, native-born, young, elderly, domestic worker, or business owner--negotiated this space in political transition challenges the ubiquitous performances of masculinity harnessed to obtain privileges from territorial institutions.

42 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A review of what the authors know on some of the characteristics of this migration and the presentation of preliminary findings of a survey conducted by the author in nine Mexican border cities, based on interviews with Mexican undocumented emigrants recently deported from the United States are presented.
Abstract: This paper focuses on three aspects of the undocumented immigration from Mexico to the United States. First is presented, a statement on the state of the art regarding the empirical research on thi...

40 citations

DOI
01 Jan 2008
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the creation and evolution of the agricultural economy and labor relations of South Texas from the late Nineteenth Century to the Nineteen Sixties, and examine the social and residential segregation, continued migration from Mexico and seasonal immobilization of workers.
Abstract: PAGE This dissertation examines the creation and evolution of the agricultural economy and labor relations of South Texas from the late Nineteenth Century to the Nineteen Sixties. The changing demographic reality of Mexico, with massive population shifts northward during the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century, caused massive emigration to the United States once the violence of the Mexican Revolution erupted after 1910. Hundreds of thousands fled north of the border, most of them traveling to South Texas. This migration wave out of Mexico met another group of migrants traveling from the Southeast and Midwest who sought to purchase farm land in South Texas as the region underwent a transition from ranching to agriculture. A new regime of labor and racial relations emerged from these simultaneous migrations, built on a system of social and residential segregation, continued migration from Mexico, and seasonal immobilization of workers. While this system never stopped the mobility of the Mexican and Mexican American populations of South Texas, it did allow the region to continue paying the lowest wages in the nation even as production and profits soared. Agricultural interests in the rest of the COl;Jntry were not long in taking notice, and began recruiting workers from South Texas by the thousands during the Nineteen Twenties after immigration from Europe had slowed down following the passage of restrictive immigration legislation in 1917, 1921, and 1924. The South Texas model of labor relations then went national during the era of the Bracero Program from 1942-1964. Originally meant to be an emergency contract labor program between the United and Mexico during World War II, it morphed into a method by which growers could replicate the labor market conditions of South Texas, with basic rights of choice, mobility, and citizenship disregarded in favor of cheap and easily exploitable foreign labor. Throughout the Twentieth Century, in other words, South Texas has not been a peripheral, backward region with little importance for the rest of the nation. Instead, the rest of the nation has followed in the footsteps of South Texas.

37 citations