‘The Impact of Border Enforcement on Return Migration between the United States and Mexico’

David S. Fitzgerald

Specifically, it will examine the impact of border patrolling on migrant circularity or permanent settlement in the United States, migrant perceptions of the cost/benefit of temporary vs. permanent migration, transnational practices (including remittances), the consolidation of migration networks and the investment behavior of migrants.

The project will gather highly detailed data from a total of more than 2,790 interviewees in the Mexican research communities and their U.S. “satellite” communities.

These data will enable us to choose between two alternative explanations for the decline of circularity in Mexico-to-U.S. migration since 1993: (1) that increased border enforcement has raised the physical risks and financial costs of clandestine migration to the U.S. to such a level that circular migration between migrants’ jobs in the U.S. and their places of origin is no longer seen as feasible; (2) that the reduced circularity in Mexico-to-U.S. migration is due mainly to factors unrelated to border enforcement, such as the growing U.S. demand for labor to fill non-seasonal jobs (in services, retail commerce, construction, and manufacturing), the consolidation of migrant networks, the growing real-wage differential between Mexico and the United States, and the collapse of Mexico’s small-scale agricultural economy due to the North American Free Trade Agreement and neo-liberal economic policies.