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Title: Meat Consumption, Meat Processing Restructuring, and Rural Hispanic Population Growth
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2006
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Abstract: The current legislative and more public media debate over immigration reform has increasedpublic awareness of Hispanic population growth and two important trends: the aging the non-Hispanic U.S. population, and the increasing unwillingness of native-born residents to takeundesirable jobs at their current wage levels. This attention on Hispanic influence in recent yearshas been motivated, in part, by the appearance of rapidly growing Hispanic populations inunexpected places, particularly nonmetropolitan counties outside of the Southwest. Thediversity of new rural areas of destination raises questions about forces attracting migrants toareas outside of the Southwest. While much of the public and legislative debate on immigrationemphasizes the supply side of the labor market for foreign-born workers, this paper takes analternative approach and considers some of the forces in American industry that have altered thedemand side of the labor market. This paper uses a case study to illustrate how economic forceswithin an industrial sector can influence immigrant population growth. We examine trends inmeat consumption and the resultant structural changes in the meat processing industry includingconsolidation, vertical integration, and concentration. We show how these trends havecontributed to the increasing tendency for firms to locate plants in rural areas of the Midwest andSoutheast and employ growing numbers of foreign-born workers. Our results highlight the roleof industrial transformations in the meat processing industry for understanding Hispanicmigration to new geographic destinations in the United States.
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Authors: Parrado, Emilio A.; Kandel, William
Publisher: UC Davis
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Aging and Retirement, Fertility and Mortality, Race and Ethnicity
Countries: United States