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Title: Mexican Immigrants in an Unequal America: Starting out at the bottom, moving ahead?

Citation Type: Working Paper

Publication Year: 2008

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Abstract: With the United States experiencing levels of immigration of historic proportions, the central question is whether the immigrants and their children will move ahead. That issue is of particular importance for Mexican immigrants, who comprise almost a third of the U.S. foreign-born population. The Mexican immigrants of the turn of the 21st century are the latest arrivals in a century-long migration. They enter the U.S. economy with disproportionately low levels of schools; many arrive without legal status; they converge on low-level, low-status jobs in which Mexican immigrants have often labored, making it likely that historic patterns of discrimination and prejudice will attach to these latest arrivals. Given this migration’s size, its characteristics, and its history, the trajectory of Mexican immigrants and their descendents is a crucial, perhaps the crucial, issue in immigration research in the United States today. As this paper shows, despite these unfavorable conditions, migration does yield mobility, though the extent of upward movement varies depending on the comparative frame. As the migrants experience high employment rates, new arrivals in the United . . .

Url: https://escholarship.org/content/qt06s2s5jr/qt06s2s5jr.pdf

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Authors: Waldinger, Roger

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Publication Number: 2009-15

Institution: Institute for Research on Labor and Employment - University of California

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Publisher Location: Los Angeles

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Migration and Immigration

Countries: Mexico