Seeking to reduce the huge fiscal deficit, lower inflation rates, address macroeconomic instability and adjust to the new global order, the Mexican government cut public spending, eliminating most of the state subsidies, reduced the size and scope of the state by dismantling or privatizing state-run companies, and opened up the economic and finance sectors. The problem was, as Fukuyama pointed out, that "in the process of reducing the scope of the state those reforms decreased its strength or generated demands for new types of state capabilities that were either weak or nonexistent" Fukuyama, During the industrializing period, the state's revenue was mainly levied on industrial production, natural resources mainly oil-related profits and international trade with special schemes for workers in the primary sector and tax exemptions for corporations that invested in key industrial sectors and indirect taxation was based on a single turnover tax Alvarez, The fiscal system was part of the first generation reforms during the early s and it was reformed to enhance the openness of the economy and achieve macroeconomic stability and fairness in income distribution.
However, the tax system is still far from providing the Mexican state with enough non-oil revenues to fulfil its functions, and in relation to the gdp it is around 4. The main reasons for this have been the following. First, the influence of the international and local private sector, which had greater participation in areas previously reserved for state-owned enterprises, to which the state "grants extensive tax preferential treatment, currently accounting for about half of tax revenue" Alvarez, After the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement nafta , there has been a focus on fostering the growth of the manufacturing sector as the main strategy for generating employment.
Therefore, corporate income tax reductions and duty free vat exemptions on imports of machinery, equipment, parts and material have been granted in order to "set a competitive level against trading partners: Politicians under strong political competition direct more resources to those regions with high voter turnout, or leave segments of the population untaxed. Moreover, the federal government has focused on trying to decentralize the pull of federal revenue collection without helping or encouraging states and municipalities to improve their institutional capacities first.
For instance, in state governments were empowered to tax individual income obtained from professional services, leases of fixed property, disposal of property, and business activity. Nevertheless, "by only three state governments - Chihuahua, Guanajuato, and Oaxaca - had already implemented some form of local cellular tax" Alvarez, As a result, the Mexican state has been unable to mobilize enough resources towards social needs and the generation of employment despite the fact that public expenditure has increased in recent years.
Therefore, the state has had to implement a residual welfare model directed only at the poorest, who have to be involved in participating in the solution to their own problems. Moreover, due to its weakly institutionalized bureaucratic apparatus, the state has been unable to find sectors in which it could have a competitive advantage and this has impeded employment generation. The bureaucratic or civil service reform, on the other hand, was part of the second generation reforms, which included governance considerations mainly pushed by the World Bank.
However, the patronage and clientelist legacies and issues with the design and implementation of the civil service have constrained the development of an effective bureaucratic apparatus. The public sector reforms in Mexico were always restricted to some degree by the pri political party, whose officials used the resources of the state to reward party members and party activists for political support rather than to represent the interests of society.
The civil service reform was part of the Presidential Agenda of Good Government, which aimed at building institutions for markets. The new law only applied to around 40 workers at the federal level, leaving aside the unionized officials and those who work in offices where the state and the private sector share control. Therefore, it is a limited law if we take into account the fact that the number of civil employees of the whole Federal Public Administration is more than 1 , Grindle, Moreover, the traditional appointing methods are still used; the governmental officers have found gaps in the law to keep appointing positions.
Dussauge found that many workers are appointed using Article 34 of the lspc, which "was originally introduced to allow for non-competitive, temporary appointments, needed in case of emergencies and other exceptional circumstances" Dussauge, In particular, he "provided additional requirements for using Article 34 of the lspc, in order to limit the number of non-competitive appointments that were apparently being made for partisan reasons in most cases" Dussauge, However, he opened a window to patronage and clientelism by leaving every ministry in charge of the implementation of lspc without clear rules of inspection, constraining the development of an effective bureaucratic apparatus.
In the local governments the situation was even worse. For instance, in the case of the states by , only eleven out of the 32 had introduced a lspc. The situation of the municipalities is the worst of the three levels of government. Cabrero and Zabaleta found that most of the municipalities in Mexico, even the urban and metropolitan ones, lack important basic rules and norms such as those that regulate basic aspects of the political structure or those of citizen participation in the activities of the municipalities.
Moreover, most of the municipalities still lack civil service systems that provide corporate coherence and allow the public servants to gain experience as well. This, in consequence, brings about feeble intergovernmental relations between the different levels of government By the early s, the goals of the structural reforms had been accomplished, having been successful in lowering inflation, reducing fiscal deficits and to some extent income inequality as well.
According to Handelman, in Mexico economic growth was also stimulated for the first time since the Mexican miracle Handelman, The consequences of the structural reforms put pressure on Latin American leaders to find ways to tackle inequality and poverty. The introduction in the early s of the ccts was one of the main responses to these pressures, especially in Latin American countries, which have some of the highest levels of inequality in the world.
The main goal of the programme was to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty by helping the poor to acquire capabilities that would 79 improve their chances of obtaining a sustained income in the labour market. In the educational component, the objectives of the programme are, as we shall see later, very similar to those in Progresa-Oportunidades: The programme has been successful in achieving most of its objectives; however, its success comes from the strong institutionalization of the labour market, which has been materialized in the reduction in the levels of labour informalization and economic insecurity.
According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean eclac , in Brazil since , the annual employment rates have been higher than the unemployment rates, while in Mexico since , the annual employment rates have been lower than the unemployment rates According to De Andrade et al. Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado was the president who started the implementation of the pro-market structural reforms. However, it was Salinas who consolidated them. The programme included food support aid, credits to farmers, grants and scholarships for children, building and refurbishing public schools, communal electrification, and other similar measures.
However, the programme was criticized as being corrupt and clientelist, and it was used more as a political tool for electoral purposes than as an effective poverty-reduction programme Molinar and Weldon, Under Salinas, gdp recovered, growing 2. Ernesto Zedillo therefore inherited a serious political and monetary crisis.
In this context, a new means-tested programme was launched with the intention of raising the human capital of the extreme poor through the provision of cash conditional upon a change in their behaviour as a way to alleviate poverty. In , Zedillo announced the start of Progresa an Education, Health and Nutrition Programme supplanting Pronasol, a programme with similar goals but more concerned with the causes rather than the consequences of poverty. The programme provided a cash transfer delivered every two months to extremely poor families conditional upon the school attendance of their children, who had to be enrolled between the third grade of primary school and the third grade of secondary school, and health checks for the whole family, especially pregnant and nursing women, on a regular basis.
The general idea behind the programme was to provide a minimum income to the poorest so that they could invest it in the education and health of their children who, once educated and healthy, would acquire capabilities that would enable them to keep on obtaining an income in the labour market in the mid and long-term to move out of poverty by their own efforts Levy, Accordingly, Progresa was first directed at rural areas, where the incidence of poverty was higher at that time, and using a well-supported criterion to identify the right families and avoid clientelism the targeting methodology comprised three phases: In addition, in order to empower women and change their role within society, the cash transfer was 81 given to the mother of the household, and in order to encourage girls to stay in school, after elementary school the amount of the cash transfer was higher for them than for boys.
When Progresa was launched in , it covered around families in rural areas of twelve states. By the end of Zedillo's term of office, it covered almost 2 families living in marginal rural areas all over the country. Due to the good initial results of the programme, Vicente Fox not only maintained the programme but also expanded it. Nowadays, the programme, re-named Oportunidades in , covers more than 6 families, in both rural and urban areas. Fox took over in representing the right political wing pan, after 70 years of the hegemony of the pri, in a stable political, economic and social context.
This takeover by the right-wing party, however, is far from being the consolidation of democracy in Mexico. The main changes that the programme incorporated were the coverage of urban areas, grants to students in high school, a pension for elderly people and an official definition of poverty.
However, when he faced the food crisis in and the financial crisis in , he not only continued spending on social programmes and maintained Oportunidades, but also expanded the programme making three main additions that were part of a strategy which he labelled: Vivir Mejor 'To Live Better': As we have seen, the programme has kept growing; however, it is still financed from the oil profits and loans from international institutions of development due to the weakness of the fiscal institutions.
Our methodology was a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods and can be divided into four main parts. In order to analyse the data obtained from these interviews, we transcribed and coded them in relation to our research objectives. This preliminary interview allowed us not only to understand the lives of the ex-recipients but also put us in an excellent position to locate other relevant actors in the government, the private sector and civil society with whom we could also conduct qualitative semi-structured interviews in order to triangulate the findings from the focus groups.
The second part was nineteen semi-structured interviews that we undertook with different actors of the social structure involved in our research problem, such as government officials, private sector employers and civil society organizations. The third part was the analysis of several 83 types of official documents related to the institutional capacities of the Mexican state, mainly requested through the websites of ifai Federal Institute of Access to Information and data protection, in English and infoem Institute of transparency, access to public information and protection of personal data of the State of Mexico and Municipalities, in English.
Once we had completed the qualitative interviews and the data analysis from secondary resources we proceeded with the development of a questionnaire and the building of the sample to which we applied it. We applied the survey to ex-recipients of the Oportunidades programme of an urban municipality of the State of Mexico called Toluca in early We chose the State of Mexico because it provided us with important conditions to present a good example of the extent to which the weakness of the institutional capacities of the state impedes the achievement of the main goal of Oportunidades in urban zones.
That is, there is: If the programme worked, it should be there. The survey was applied to ex-recipients of the Oportunidades programme who had completed high school while they were members of the programme and who were between eighteen and twenty three years old, and of these As for the role of the Mexican state in that regard, we argue that the main issue is the weakness of its institutional capacities, which have brought about an increase in the levels of labour informalization and economic insecurity. More specifically, the weakness of the regulatory-market capacity of the state has brought about less employment protection, triggering short job tenure, which, joined with the weakness of the fiscal capacity of the state that constrains the effective provision of basic services such as education, impede the citizens from obtaining sustained income in the labour market, as we shall see next.
The Mexican labour market model of the post-war period was the result of the process of the integration of the different social groups to maintain social stability and at the same time to provide the labour institutional environment of a capitalist system. According to Bensusam, the enactment of the ltf in and the new law of were to counterbalance Article of the constitution, which gave occupational rights to the people without taking into account the bgs and the mncs, harming their interests. This, added to the crisis, forced the state to enact a law that protected the interests of the private sector, expanding the limits of the discretion of the state to intervene in the conflict between labour and capital both in times of growth and stability and in times of economic crisis It was thought that with the lft and a system of labour justice that worked under the executive branch without formal ties to judicial power, the control of the different actors of the social structure would bring about social stability, allowing economic growth to be achieved.
The reality was that the state controlled the private sector and civil society through corporatist and clientelist relationships, channeling their demands into personal relationships, which limited the expansion of universal social rights. Nonetheless, after the openness of the economy, combined with the clientelist legacies of the Mexican state, the bargaining power of the private sector national and international grew so much that it escaped the control of the state, influencing the adjustment of the labour market institutions informally in their own interest without going through a formal process.
These groups have influenced the disappearance of social protection, bringing about high levels of labour informalization and economic insecurity, where the poor are the most affected. This is a paradox because the reach of Mexican labour legislation is quite wide since it includes every waged worker from both the formal and the informal sectors without the need for a formal contract Bensusam, Moreover, Articles 35, 36 and 37 of the Federal Labour Law establish that all labour relations, except for those covered by temporary contracts and contracts for a specified job, are indefinite and even despite the fact that there is no written contract, the workers should still receive the same rights because the responsibility for the lack of a formal contract lies with the employer and not the employee.
For instance, at the federal level, despite the fact that in a civil service system that was supposed to bring about higher organizational capacity, professionalization and corporate coherence was implemented, the corporatist practices that structure the institutional framework of the state have constrained the development of an effective labour inspection apparatus.
At the federal level, the coverage of inspectors by , all of whom are part of the civil service system of the Federal Public Administration per worker around 50, workers was very low in comparison with some other developing countries Romero, Moreover, there are two kinds of inspector: The problem is that although they are recruited according to their "merit", they are not specialized in the different industrial sectors.
The profiles that they mainly look for are lawyers and engineers. However, the training courses that both of them receive are only about the labour norms and regulations and interpersonal relationships and they are not trained in the particularities of the production processes of the different sectors of the economy.
In addition, supervision at the federal level comprises only the verification of short-term goals and the procedure to change them is very rigid. In consequence, there is no way to establish remedial plans that take into account both legal and economic variables in the medium and long term. The situation in the State of Mexico, where we undertook the survey to the ex-recipients of the Oportunidades programme, is not very different from what we have presented about the federal level. Moreover, due to the lack of budget and staff, 87 they do not have access to an updated census of centres of work, which forces them to limit inspections to the companies for which they have all the information.
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Therefore, informal enterprises, those that do not pay taxes whatsoever, are outside the scope of the inspection because they are only inspected if a worker makes a complaint. They are in charge of the resolution of labour disputes that arise between workers and employers, or only among employers or among workers in the economic sectors of their jurisdiction.
These boards are structured into a tripartite scheme in order to ensure "equal" representation between the private sector and workers: However, in spite of being the organizations in charge of enforcing labour justice, they do not belong to the judicial power but they are supposed to be autonomous bodies. Moreover, the representatives of the state in both its federal and local offices are appointed directly by the federal and state executive power, respectively. Furthermore, Article of the lft states that these Boards can modify agreed working conditions in collective contracts in order to achieve balance and social justice in the relations between workers and employers.
In this sense, there is a major contradiction in the law as far as the performance of the bureaucratic apparatus of the state is concerned since the Boards should not be playing both roles. During the post-war period, the relationship between the government and the unions was always based on corporatist arrangements. In order to make sure that the state could control the formation and activities of the unions, it was established that unions needed authorization from the state to be established and that the employer could hire only those employees who belonged to the union that the company or firm chose to work with.
Consequently, the most powerful unions were in key areas such as education, the oil industry and health care and their leaders frequently received benefits from their relationship with the government, such as seats in the government in exchange for electoral support. However, the unions had power to bargain with the firms and with the government since some of their members had access to high positions in the government and also because after 40 years of working with the government representing the interests of workers they had built collective capacities that allowed them to escape from the control of state officials.
The structural reforms of the s reversed and worsened that situation. In order to attract international capital, the government offered cheap and controlled labour Hathaway, Among the ex-recipients whom we interviewed, only 7. As far as the manufacturing sector is concerned, only one third 14 of the ex-recipients 43 had access to workers' organizations.
For instance, since the late s onwards when the restrictive wage policy to avoid inflation was established as part of the structural reforms between the unions, the state and the private sector, labour representation in the federal chamber of deputies and the purchasing power of the minimum wage have decreased simultaneously Bensusam, The limited access to organizations that represent workers' interests, reinforced by and complemented with the weak law enforcement of the organizations in charge of applying labour justice, has impeded the state from harnessing private sector interests into areas of general interest.
Therefore, the private sector has found it relatively easy to flexibilize the labour market institutions, which, has increased the levels of informalization bringing about short job tenure and income insecurity. Due to the weakness of the unions and the failure of the state to enforce labour norms and regulations, labour mobility has relentlessly increased. Levy argued that in Moreover, by June the number of formal full-time and temporary workers registered with the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social Mexican Institute of Social Insurance - imss had declined by , compared with a year earlier ILO, The ways in which the private sector takes advantage of the labour justice system in Mexico vary; enterprises such as Wal-Mart and Office Max, for instance, treat their employees as associates and not as employees in order to avoid paying taxes and contributions from which social security is normally financed Ruiz, However, the main gap that they have found is outsourcing, which is used to reduce costs and eliminate job duties but mainly to avoid distributing the share of the profits that workers deserve, even though the employment law specifies that whoever uses outsourcing to reduce labour rights will face high fines.
There are two kinds of outsourcing: The companies that outsource, normally big or medium sized companies, are forced to be fully responsible for the health and safety issues of the workers that the medium company utilizes, but all they do is to put a clause in the contract stating that the small company will register the personnel that the medium company uses to provide the service or good with imss although this does not necessarily always happen , and with this formula they do not have any other duty to the employees of the medium or small company.
Small companies, then, normally through an intermediary, outsource the personnel that they need to have the work done, hiring them on temporary probationary and initial training contracts. As an instance, most of the jobs of the exrecipients who we interviewed were not only low-qualified ones, as Table 1.
As a result, there is a very high level of labour mobility since workers are always changing jobs either because their contracts expire or because they are looking for something better paid and more stable. However, this is the sector where most of the ex-recipients without a written contract work as well. Accordingly, when we asked the exrecipients what was the most worrying issue about their working conditions, the majority of them The second most important worrying issue that they signalled was that there is no employment at all On the other hand, almost half of the exrecipients whom we interviewed have had at least between one and three jobs since they finished high school when they were eighteen years old, and as they grow older the number of jobs that they have had grows, like the year-olds, most of whom have had between four and six jobs.
This context, on the one hand, disincentivizes workers from investing in acquiring specific skills since they are not certain whether they will keep their jobs in the long run. On the other hand, it also impedes them from organizing labour since workers stay in their posts for very short periods of time. As explained earlier, as part of the Washington Consensus reforms, the Mexican and Latin American states undertook a process of fiscal decentralization tax and social spending during the late s and early s with the intention of both reducing the size of the state and its intervention in the economy, and of improving the effectiveness of the allocation of resources.
However, according to Teichman, despite some shift toward social spending to benefit the lower classes in the last few decades, social spending is in general regressive, meaning that it does relatively little to mitigate inequality and poverty Teichman, Furthermore, in the case of the public education service, which does show some progressivity in the primary and secondary levels , the service is of low quality, meaning that every time it is more likely that only the lower classes make use of the service whilst the middle and upper-middle classes prefer private education Teichman, Accordingly, the main achievements of the programme in this component have been the high enrolment and attendance of children especially girls in primary and secondary schools Scott, A likely reason for this is the fact that the decentralization reform did not cover higher education bringing about regressive and discretionary social spending, being one of the main impediments that the ex-recipients face when it comes to obtaining sustained income in the labour market.
The lack of clear rules for the allocation of resources for higher education has resulted in universities carrying out a discretional negotiation with the federation and the states. The Mexican federal income law requires the publication of the results of a study of the incidence of spending and taxes. According to the results of the publication for , although total spending on education was mildly progressive, that is, it was mainly used by low-income people rather than highincome people, spending on high school education was neutral in urban zones and only progressive in rural areas.
At the level of technical education, the concentration ratio 91 showed a regressive national expenditure, and it was progressive only in rural areas.
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On the other hand, spending on higher education was regressive in both urban and rural areas, and Moreover, in , the state gave private and public institutions equal access to state subsidies for higher education and authorized public universities to charge students for tuition. At the same time, however, many Latin Americans have dual citizenship and thus escape official tabulations of foreigners. Even though they may be in the country illegally, immigrants are eligible for a variety of services and benefits if they sign up with the registry and thus have a strong incentive to do so.
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Their calculations indicated that taking account of undocumented migrants would add another 50 percent to the regularized population, at least in the year they undertook their study. Immigrants from all Latin American countries have some representation in Europe, but those from South America clearly stand out. Table 4 shows the regional origins of registered immigrants living in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, the three most important destinations. Across these three countries, 88 percent of all Latin Americans came from South America, 9 percent from the Caribbean, and 2 percent from Mexico or Central America.
Calculations based on data from Padilla and Peixoto This statement is certainly true of Spain, where 89 percent of Latin Americans came from a South American nation. According to the estimates of Padilla and Peixoto , the largest contributor was Ecuador 35 percent , followed by Colombia 21 percent , Peru 9 percent , Argentina 8 percent , the Dominican Republic 6 percent , and Bolivia 5 percent. Emigration to Spain stands out for its explosive growth in the s, especially from countries in which a visa was not required for entry, such as Ecuador and Argentina.
Nonetheless, immigrants for whom a visa was required often found other routes to Spain. Migrants from Peru typically entered through the Netherlands, where no visa was required, and then made their way to Spain without a passport once inside the EU. Even if an illegal entrant missed the prior legalization, that person would simply have to wait a few years for the next one to be offered.
Italy is in second place after Spain as a destination for Latin American migrants, with 82 percent coming from South America, 13 percent from the Caribbean, and 6 percent from Central America. In the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic is the leading origin country, comprising 7 percent of all Latin American immigrants, just ahead of Cuba at 6 percent. Among South American nations sending migrants to Italy, five stand out: Peru 24 percent , Ecuador 24 percent , Brazil 13 percent , Colombia 8 percent , and Argentina 7 percent.
Argentina comes in only fifth as a source of immigrants to Italy, but the size of the flow is probably understated by these figures. During the first decades of the twentieth century, emigration from Italy to Argentina was massive. A large fraction of Argentines can therefore claim dual nationality through an Italian grandparent and enter with an Italian passport, thereby escaping registration as foreigners. In addition, many Argentine emigrants of Italian origin use their Italian passports to enter Italy but then move immediately to Spain, given their greater facility with Spanish.
Thus according to the latest data, 86, Argentines live in Spain compared with only 14, in Italy Padilla and Peixoto ; Bonifazi and Ferruzza Italy generally lags behind Spain in the preferences of Latin Americans, though it comes before France and Britain. Portugal comes in third place as a destination for Latin American emigrants, and nearly all 98 percent are from South America, overwhelmingly from just two countries: Brazil 88 percent and Venezuela 6 percent. As Table 4 indicates, trivial numbers of migrants enter Portugal from Central America and the Caribbean.
The dominance of Brazilians obviously reflects historical ties of language, culture, and colonization Padilla and Peixoto Venezuela figures as a significant source because thousands of Portuguese immigrated there as labor migrants during the years of the oil boom Van Roy The gender distribution of Latin American emigrants to Europe is generally even, except for the Dominican Republic and Brazil, which have unusually high proportions of women 69 and 70 percent, respectively.
Apart from Europe, Brazil also sends significant numbers of migrants to Japan, as does Peru and to a lesser extent Bolivia. These flows are composed primarily of second- and third-generation descendants of Japanese emigrants who entered these countries as labor migrants early in the twentieth century. During the final decades of the twentieth century, Japan found itself with a high standard of living, a low birthrate, and a rapidly aging population that yielded a shortage of workers for unskilled and semiskilled jobs and, hence, a demand for immigrants.
Given the reluctance of the Japanese to import foreigners, officials turned to the Japanese diaspora to find workers, arranging special visas and easy terms of entry for Latin Americans of Japanese descent. This policy ultimately led to the emigration of several hundred thousand workers and their families from Brazil and Peru. This phenomenon will be considered in more detail in the next section under the rubric of transgenerational migration. Upon shifting from immigration to emigration, Latin America developed a new set of migratory patterns with distinct traits and characteristics that require more detailed elaboration, for in many ways they are unique to the Latin American context.
Relay migration has developed over the course of the past several decades and stems from the disequilibrium that is created in labor markets whenever there is a significant departure of workers. It reflects the articulation of various migratory processes with one another in response to the needs of global capital and the shocks to local markets that are generated when workers are recruited to sites of capital investment, both national and international.
In this case, the process began at the upper part of the labor ladder, in the United States, and resulted from deliberate labor recruitment. After World War II, labor markets in the northeastern United States required new workers to replace aging European immigrants who had arrived earlier in the century. Europe was beginning its own postwar economic boom and was no longer sending out migrants. In response, beginning in employers established recruitment programs to attract workers from Puerto Rico, going so far as to subsidize air travel between that island and New York City Friedlander Once begun through recruitment, however, the outflow became self-sustaining in the s owing to the operation of migrant networks, which led to large-scale displacements from the Puerto Rican countryside Fleisher The departure of workers to the United States from rural areas created job openings that were then filled by immigrants from the Dominican Republic, a short boat ride away, who arrived in significant numbers to cut sugar cane and harvest coffee.
In this case there was no active labor recruitment because news about the availability of seasonal jobs filtered back to the neighboring island, where salaries were lower, initiating voluntary undocumented migration. In turn, rural areas of the Dominican Republic began to experience a shortage of workers owing to the departure of workers for Puerto Rico as well as the capital city and, after , the United States.
The shortage of workers in the coffee and sugar industries was then met by recruiting workers from Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, whose inhabitants viewed seasonal labor in the Dominican Republic as an economic opportunity. Other authors have also commented on the same migratory pattern.
Instead, they focused on emigration from Haiti and the Dominican Republic, on one hand, to the United States, on the other, and left aside the critical link of Puerto Rico. Haitians were willing to accept the worst jobs in the Dominican Republic, whereas Dominicans were willing to take the worst jobs in the United States. Subsequent ethnographic work has shown that Dominicans going to the United States are not those who worked in the cane or coffee fields but were urban in origin Georges ; Grasmuck and Pessar Recent ethnographic work reveals that it was Dominicans, and not Haitians, who went to Puerto Rico to work in the sugar and coffee industries Duany, Angueira, and Rey In the end, dependency theory offers a rather narrow and somewhat mechanical way of analyzing labor markets.
In reality the various labor markets are interconnected and operate more dynamically, like interconnected cups in which water leaking from one leads to inflows from others. Dominicans went to Puerto Rico because wages were higher than in the Dominican Republic, not because they would have to work at home in jobs that were appropriate for Haitians. As Piore has noted, in places of destination, jobs held by immigrants invariably lose prestige and become unattractive to natives.
Thus, Dominicans are cane workers in Puerto Rico but not in the Dominican Republic, where the work is done by Haitians. Relay migration does not imply an automatic or mechanical process, but a series of discrete labor market adjustments that are made slowly over time and take advantage of connections that exist between neighboring countries among people doing the same kind of work.
The chain or relay extends from the top to the bottom rung of the development ladder. In this example, the top is the United States and the bottom is Haiti. As the poorest country in the region, Haiti receives no immigrants. The sugar industry, however, is historically complex, and the direction of flows has shifted in the past. Nevertheless, at the end of the twentieth century, the flow of workers had stabilized as a relay system linking Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and the United States in a progressive chain of jobs.
Relay migration always involves an asymmetry between two social and economic perspectives: Whereas the rungs of the labor ladder ascend for the former, they descend for the latter, indicating the fundamental asymmetry that drives the process of relay migration. For their part, of course, Puerto Ricans look down on Dominicans and compare them to groups toward which they display great intolerance—homosexuals, ex-convicts, and the homeless—reflecting the fact that many are undocumented, a majority are women, most are darker-skinned, and they tend to be of rural origin, leading to stereotyping of them as dangerous, strange, dirty, ignorant, and violent Duany Of course, these are the same traits and stereotypes that the Dominicans, in turn, assign to Haitians.
As Grasmuck notes, the work of cutting cane in the Dominican Republic is not only considered to be poorly paid, but is work fit only for Haitians, blacks, and slaves. Once imported from a lower rung of the labor ladder, relay migrants typically encounter racial and social stigmatization, and the jobs they hold become stigmatized and exclusively identified with the racialized out-group.
Although economic activities change and societies evolve over time, the migratory flows and stigmatizations persist. In Puerto Rico, the cutting of sugar cane at this point is practically all mechanized and no longer requires much labor. Nonetheless, a strong demand for Dominican labor continues in industries such as coffee, construction, and services, and these jobs are now reserved for Dominicans.
Disequilibria in labor markets owing to emigration have generated the conditions for relay migration elsewhere in Latin America as well. In Mexico, a relay circuit has been established that brings migrants from Guatemala to take the place of migrants from Chiapas who have gone to Jalisco because people there have left for the United States. In El Salvador, out-migration has been so great that the country now imports Hondurans and Nicaraguans to work in the sugar cane fields. In the Argentine region of Patagonia, meanwhile, older European immigrants who once worked on farms and ranches have abandoned them for the city and are being replaced by Bolivians Sassone, Owen, and Hughes Transgenerational migration is another migratory pattern born in Latin America.
It refers to the migration of the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of emigrants who came to Latin America from Europe or Japan during the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Despite this privileging of blood ties, however, recent ethnographic work suggests that second- and third-generation descendants of Japanese and European immigrants to Latin America often carry very different cultures, such that adaptation and integration within ancestral lands is often more complex and contradictory than expected, either by the receiving society or by the immigrants themselves Takenaka ; Takeyuki Various demographic and legal factors interact to produce transgenerational migration: In some ways, transgenerational migration stems from the failure of prior waves of immigrants to integrate, which led some policy-makers to conclude that common descent might facilitate the process of immigrant assimilation, or at least forestall rejection.
For this reason, several countries have turned to ties of blood and ancestry to select, regularize, and recruit migrants from abroad. Nonetheless, the decision of certain receiving nations to privilege common descent in allocating entry visas opened a new window of migratory opportunity for many Latin Americans, pushing them to reevaluate and appreciate individual and group characteristics that they had previously disregarded. In essence, immigration policies linked to blood and descent turn relationships to distant relatives and long-departed ancestors into a source of migration capital.
A great-aunt living in some godforsaken town in southern Italy suddenly becomes a valuable resource enabling an Argentine to acquire an Italian visa and claim a nationality. A long-forgotten relative hardly anyone remembers can be contacted by Internet or telephone and become a valuable resource. The old passport of a deceased grandparent can provide the documentary proof needed to qualify for citizenship or a visa. Owing to the privileging of ancestral ties by certain receiving countries, they discover that they do, in fact, have a strong interest in looking back and maintaining bridges, something that is now quite possible owing to developments in transportation and communication, which have extended opportunities to travel, establish relationships, obtain information, and carry out administrative tasks over long distances.
Transgenerational migration has always existed, though only in certain isolated cases. What is new is the scale of the phenomenon today and the intentional manipulation of linguistic, phenotypic, genealogic, and ethnic markers by aspiring migrants and governments. Although its dimensions are difficult to estimate precisely, trans-generational migration does appear in recent data gathered from both regularizing and naturalizing migrants.
This new context transforms ethnicity into a fundamental source of capital accessible to potential migrants, along with whatever human and social capital they might possess. In the present global economy, these elements of ethnic capital may prove more valuable than human capital traits such as skills or education, at least for the purpose of gaining entry. A key element in the emergence of transgenerational migration is the nature of the legal regime that defines citizenship and nationality.
Traditionally, nationality has been defined according to one of two principles— jus sanguinis citizenship by blood and jus soli citizenship by birth on national soil. In the current era, both principles have been subject to their own particular casuistry under the laws of various nations, but birthright citizenship is generally less manipulable than bloodline citizenship. Birthright citizenship is inclusive and makes no distinctions by ethnicity, race, or culture.
It is a clear and transparent right that does not permit interpretations. In contrast, citizenship by blood is a social construction and subject to interpretation and ambiguity. It is exclusive rather than inclusive and privileges purity of blood in ways that cannot be anything but racial. Although this principle is simple and direct, ambiguity accumulates as one moves from parents to grandparents and great-grandparents, creating possibilities for manipulation in determining what people in which generations carry citizenship rights. In Germany, for example, blood rights are preserved up to the third generation.
In Spain, discussion now centers on whether grandchildren of earlier Spanish emigrants remain eligible for Spanish citizenship. In Japan, claims on citizenship are recognized through the fifth generation, with each generation having its own specific term in Japanese, though under current legislation each succeeding generation has fewer rights than its predecessor. Moreover, even though phenotype may be preserved if strict endogamy is practiced, culture is not so easily preserved, and in fact, the transmission of cultural knowledge drops off rapidly beyond the first generation.
In Peru, the first generation of Japanese immigrants organized sumo wrestling tourneys and endeavored to teach their children and grandchildren Japanese customs. Nonetheless, over the decades the language was lost, cultural knowledge dissipated, and sumo wrestling matches are no longer held in Lima or anywhere else in Peru.
Whereas birthright citizenship is conducive to the formation of truly multiethnic, multicultural, and multiracial societies, bloodline citizenship lends itself more to racially and ethnically homogeneous societies that privilege certain origins over others. France and Germany are paradigmatic of the two extremes in Europe. France offers citizenship on broad and relatively generous terms, recognizing as nationals the children of immigrants who are legally present.
In contrast, Germany is quite restrictive in extending citizenship, going back to a law that defined two types of citizenships: The second is granted by right of blood and is certified by a document proving racial purity, in essence confirming Aryan origin, something that eluded children of mixed marriages, though this was subject to interpretation. In the range of possibilities, the children of intermarried Jews were always excluded, whereas children of mixed Nordic origins were often accepted Garner Despite the two different systems, the resulting patterns of integration or, more precisely, nonintegration, are not that different in practice.
Although French citizens, second- and third-generation immigrants from North and sub-Saharan Africa continue to experience discrimination and have not been able to integrate, making them feel resentful and excluded Brubaker ; Mestries In Germany, meanwhile, second- and third-generation descendants of Turkish guest workers who made the postwar economic boom possible are still not considered German, though they may have been born on German soil and speak German fluently, and they too experience discrimination and exclusion.
Clearly no model of citizenship or nationality can guarantee assimilation. Nonetheless, in countries that have experienced mass migration, discussions about nationality, culture, race, and ethnicity are probably inevitable, though the ultimate issue is always integration.
Ethnographic evidence among trans-generational migrants in Japan and Europe reveals many problems and conflicts Takenaka ; Takeyuki , suggesting that segmented assimilation may occur even when immigrants share a nationality, surname, and phenotype. In Latin America we can identify key cases of transgenerational migration implicated in the turn of the migratory tide back toward Europe and Japan.
In Europe, the most important cases are Spain, Italy, and Portugal, three countries that sent out waves of immigrants to Latin America during colonization, independence, and industrialization. The other relevant case is Japan, which sent out migrants to Peru and Brazil in the first half of the twentieth century Takenaka ; Pellegrino ; Lesser The phenomenon of transgenerational migration is not limited to Latin America, of course, and has begun to be observed in other locations, such as Ireland, England, Greece, and the special case of Israel.
With the exception of Mexico, emigration from most nations in Latin America is a relatively new phenomenon that has not yet reached maturity. In the future the various processes we have identified will likely intensify to incorporate new origins and new destinations. Some processes of emigration are old and very well established, such as those in Mexico and Puerto Rico. Others have erupted with unusual force and assumed a mass scale only in recent years, as with those in Ecuador and El Salvador. Some migratory processes are markedly unidirectional, such as those originating in Mexico and Central America, which go overwhelmingly to one single destination.
Others are multidirectional with a diversity of destinations, as in the Dominican Republic and Ecuador, which send migrants to Europe as well as to the United States, and especially Peru, which sends migrants to some two dozen different countries. The legal auspices of emigration from Latin America are diverse. Many migrate through irregular channels to work illegally in countries of destination.
Others are recruited with legal but temporary work visas. Others obtain residence visas through legal provisions that authorize family reunification or skilled migration, and still others achieve legal entry by drawing on transgenerational ties to ancestors who departed as international migrants in earlier decades. Once they arrive in countries of destination, processes of adaptation and assimilation are strongly conditioned by legal status and other structural factors in society, and outcomes are often segmented.
With the exception of Chile and Costa Rica, most countries in Latin America have alternated between periods of boom and bust and experienced a prolonged economic crisis during the s. Poverty is a burden throughout the region, and a lack of economic opportunity influences the outflow of migrants from all classes.
In some cases, such as Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, those who emigrate are drawn principally from the lower sectors of society: In other cases, as in many South American nations, migrants are drawn mainly from the middle and professional classes. In general, Latin American migration incorporates both men and women, although in certain cases, such as Peru, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic, female migrants dominate. If migration is indeed a phenomenon that has increasingly spread throughout the region, there are nonetheless a few nations where it has not gathered much force.
Venezuela, which until the s received large numbers of immigrants from abroad, has recently begun to send out migrants, primarily from the middle and upper classes and mainly for political reasons. Although Latin American migration to the United States continues to be most important in numerical terms and is still the most dynamic, given the mounting restrictions on migration to the United States we may in the future see a moderation of south—north migration and an expansion of transoceanic migration. The latter is especially likely given the weakening of the U.
Finally, the relaxing of transit regulations within South and Central America in concert with free trade agreements and common market accords can be expected to increase intraregional migration in the medium term as regional economies expand and income growth proceeds. Jorge Durand is a professor and senior investigator at the Universidad de Guadalajara and an adjunct professor at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. His most recent books are Detras de la Trama: Massey is the Henry G. His research focuses on international migration, race and housing, discrimination, education, urban poverty, and Latin America, especially Mexico.
His most recent books are New Faces in New Places: Census of Population, and census enumerations of migrants in various European nations. It refers in this case to different phases of the family life cycle, when fathers who have worked as migrants are replaced by their sons. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Author manuscript; available in PMC Sep 1. Copyright and License information Disclaimer. See other articles in PMC that cite the published article. Abstract Although migration from Mexico to the United States is more than a century old, until recently most other countries in Latin America did not send out significant numbers of migrants to foreign destinations.
Turning of the Tide The second phase in the history of Latin American migration begins around and continues to the present. Processes and Patterns of Migration Before going on to analyze patterns and processes of Latin American migration, we must define what we mean by these terms. Intraregional migration Intraregional migration involves movement within Latin America.
Introduction
Open in a separate window. Transoceanic migration Transoceanic migratory processes include all those directed outside of the Americas. New Migration Patterns Upon shifting from immigration to emigration, Latin America developed a new set of migratory patterns with distinct traits and characteristics that require more detailed elaboration, for in many ways they are unique to the Latin American context.
Relay migration Relay migration has developed over the course of the past several decades and stems from the disequilibrium that is created in labor markets whenever there is a significant departure of workers. Transgenerational migration Transgenerational migration is another migratory pattern born in Latin America. Conclusions With the exception of Mexico, emigration from most nations in Latin America is a relatively new phenomenon that has not yet reached maturity. Remaking the American mainstream: Assimilation and contemporary Immigration. Harvard University Press; Peruanos en el Exterior.
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