Metropolitan Migrants

The Migration of Urban Mexicans to the United States

Rubén Hernández-León, Rubén Hernández-León

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9780520256736
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520942462
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Labour Economics
• Index: Social Sciences

Challenging many common perceptions, this is the first book fully dedicated to understanding a major new phenomenon—the large numbers of skilled urban workers who are now coming across the border from Mexico's cities. Based on a ten-year, on-the-ground study of one working-class neighborhood in Monterrey, Mexico's industrial powerhouse and third-largest city, Metropolitan Migrants explores the ways in which Mexico's economic restructuring and the industrial modernization of the past three decades have pushed a new flow of migrants toward cities such as Houston, Texas, the global capital of the oil industry. Weaving together rich details of everyday life with a lucid analysis of Mexico's political economy, Rubén Hernández-León deftly traces the effects of restructuring on the lives of the working class, from the national level to the kitchen table.

Table of contents

• Contents
• 1. The Migration of Urban Mexicans to the United States
• 2. Urban-Industrial Development in Mexico, 1940–2005
• 3. Restructuring and International Migration in a Mexican Urban Neighborhood
• 4. The Monterrey-Houston Connection: The Social Organization of Migration and the Economic Incorporation of Immigrants
• 5. The Migration Industry in the Monterrey-Houston Connection
• 6. Metropolitan Migrants: A New Dimension of Mexico- U.S. Migration
• Methodological Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index