What's Driving Mexico-U.S. Migration? A Theoretical, Empirical, and Policy Analysis

Abstract

Using data gathered in 25 Mexican communities, the authors link individual acts of migration to 41 theoretically defined individual-, household-, community-, and macroeconomic-level predictors. The indicators vary through time to yield a discrete-time event-history analysis. Over the past 25 years, probabilities of first, repeat, and return migration have been linked more to the forces identified by social capital theory and the new economics of migration than to the cost-benefit calculations assumed by the neoclassical model. The authors find that Mexico-U.S. migration stems from three mutually reinforcing processes: social capital formation, human capital formation, and market consolidation.