The Latino Question

Politics, Labouring Classes and the Next Left

Armando Ibarra, Alfredo Carlos, Rodolfo D Torres

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781786800398
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Ethnische Studien

While so many Latino/Chicano Americans struggle in pursuit of the 'American dream', while figures such as Donald Trump are accepted in mainstream politics, and scaremongering and paranoia is rife, the need for a vivid, empirically grounded study on Latino politics, culture and society has never been greater. The Latino Question fulfils this need, offering a cutting-edge analysis of the transformative nature of Latino politics in the US. In a radical alternative to dominant ideas, the authors emphasise the importance of political economy for understanding Latino politics, culture and social issues. It draws from original research and a number of critical traditions including the thought of Karl Marx and Antonio Gramsci, to understand the politics of race and ethnicity in a modern capitalist society. Including case studies of how Latino/Chicano communities across the US are not only resisting, but also reinventing and transforming ethnic politics in the age of neoliberalism, this book is required reading for all those hoping to understand the 'Latino question' in contemporary America.

1

Mexican Mass Labour Migration in a Not-So-Changing Political Economy

Pobre de México, tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos. Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States.

—Porfirio Díaz, president/dictator of Mexico, 1880–1911

Academics, politicians, and pundits have widely used this quote from former Mexican president Porfirio Díaz to characterise unequal US-Mexican political-economic relations during the late nineteenth century. The statement is rooted within a historical political-economic context in which American capitalist production and exchange have dominated Mexico’s economic and political structures. Relations between the two countries have changed little in the last century.

In 2016, US Latinos reached 55.3 million, making this group 17.3 percent of the total US population. When this group is disaggregated by country of origin, those of Mexican origin comprise 64 percent (34,038,599) of US Latinos, while the second-largest group is Puerto Ricans at 9.4 percent (4,970,604).¹ Mexicans and Mexican Americans as a subset of Latinos outnumber all other country-of-origin groups in forty-two of fifty US states. By 2050, the Latino population is projected to nearly triple, from 55.3 million to 132.8 million, making Latinos the second-largest group in the country at 30.2 percent. If growth rates remain constant, the Mexican-origin population will number 85 million.² As this population has increased and expanded geographically newfound academic interests have emerged to investigate similar questions that academics and activists probed in the early and mid-twentieth century. Why are there so many Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the United States?

In this chapter, we argue that the current demographic position of the Mexican and Mexican American population cannot be understood apart from the historical impacts of the United States’ actions and its capitalist economy on this population. Our argument builds upon literature supporting the empire theory of migration (ETM) and specifically looks at how labour migration is linked to unequal economic policy between Mexico and the United States.³

POPULAR IMMIGRATION THEORIES

Mexicans have continually migrated and settled in the United States since the turn of the twentieth century. This population has been at the forefront of various political and academic interests for many decades.

Early research and publications on Mexican mass migration to the United States conducted by Galarza, Gamio, McWilliams, and Taylor⁴ are considered foundational in the development of literatures on immigration, adaptation, and industrial labour relations studies. Central to these scholars’ findings is that the political economy of production is fundamental in establishing the conditions for migration and labour integration within various industries (specifically agriculture, mining and smelting, railroad, and construction). It is within this contextual framework that we analyse the political economy of Mexican migration to the United States.

Since these initial publications, a robust and valuable interdisciplinary body of literature has developed through debates on the impulses and impacts of immigration, economic and labour integration, political and civic behaviour, and the overall processes of assimilation of immigrants. Nonetheless, there is still no ‘grand unified theory’ of Mexican migration; instead, scholarly debates on immigration have produced multiple bodies of literature offering valuable insights into various aspects of this phenomenon.⁵ For the purposes of this chapter, we briefly discuss three theoretical constructs of immigration as they relate to Mexican migration: neoclassical economics, social capital, and empire theory.⁶

Neoclassical Economic Theory

Contemporary neoclassical economic theory proposes two explanations for immigration. The first argues that individuals make decisions based on a ‘rational’ assessment of their relative personal positions. In this construct, immigration is the process of individuals’ rational choices as they weigh the cost of immigrating against the potential material benefit gained upon arrival in the new country. The second approach argues that the decision to migrate is not only rational and based on a calculated formula, but is also influenced by competitive market pressures.⁷

George J. Borjas, economist and prominent immigration scholar, invoked neoclassical economic methodologies to study Latin American immigration to the United States.⁸ Borjas argued that econometric models utilising immigrants’ origin and certain individual variables can be used to predict the size and composition of immigration, the skill level of those immigrating, and how they will fare in the United States. The assumption is that ‘individuals make the migration decision by considering the values of the various alternatives, and choosing the option that best suits them given the financial and legal constraints that regulate the international migration process’.⁹

This micro-level approach has been challenged on at least two fundamental points by Piore et al.:

First, the behavior of the actors, which it assumes, is not consistent with the way in which they actually think about the world in which they live and conceive of their own actions. . . . The second problem with standard economics is the story about the human endeavor, which I find impoverishing and ultimately morally suspect.¹⁰

In sum, the neoclassical theory of migration identifies individual ‘rational’ choice as the root cause of migration, and is critiqued as ignoring the external forces that shape the structural context of migration. In that sense, the theory is not necessarily wrong so much as narrowly focused and incomplete. People do not make migration decisions in a vacuum. What structural forces create the conditions that affect rational actors’ choices? Nonetheless, this theory has continued to gain academic popularity and is increasingly applied to explain world migration patterns.

Social Capital Theory

Social capital theory argues that engaging in formal public and private organisations creates a set of norms, values, and trust in people that leads to stability in community networks and/or democratic structures.¹¹ Extending social capital theory to immigration, Massey, Durand, and Malone argue that Mexicans migrate to America because of high levels of transnational social capital.¹² Social capital among Mexican networks has reached a level at which immigrant social networks are so well informed and linked to the processes of migration and labour economies that movement perpetuates itself. This phenomenon has been called the ‘cumulative causation’ of migration. As Massey and others argue, ‘the causation of migration becomes cumulative because each act of migration alters the social context within which subsequent migration decisions are made, thus increasing the likelihood of additional movement’.¹³

Some scholars question the application of social capital theory to immigration. Their major critiques are that this theory does not fully consider the impact of immigration policy, North American neoliberal practices, and US trade practices on immigration and the people involved in migration. In our view, social capital theory best describes how people come to migrate and how they get to their destinations, but does not speak at all to why they leave to begin with.

Both neoclassical economics and social capital theory ultimately fail to account for the structural factors that condition migration and the extremely difficult choices people make when embarking on a migratory journey. Leaving the place you call home and family and friends with no guarantee of seeing them again is a major, life-altering process that is not undertaken lightly, despite social capital networks. Such choices also are not made with a simple cost-benefit calculation, but rather are made only if absolutely necessary for survival and as a last resort.

EMPIRE THEORY OF MIGRATION: AN ALTERNATIVE THEORY

A polemic of migration has recently resurfaced and is gaining popularity within the academy and popular narratives. With the passage of NAFTA in 1994, scholars began to revisit the impact of US-Mexico economic relations on mass migration and consequently immigration.¹⁴ Like scholars from the early and mid-twentieth century, contemporary proponents have argued that mass internal migration in Mexico and immigration to the United States are a consequence of the power the United States has over Mexico’s economic and political structures.¹⁵ We refer to this model of mass migration as the empire theory of migration (ETM).

ETM argues against the push-pull theories that have shaped traditional understandings of immigration because these theories have

reduced the causes to sets of conditions within the sending and the receiving countries, conditions that functioned independently of each other. In one country a push (supply), or too many people and too few resources, motivated people to consider a significant move; in the other country a pull (demand), usually a shortage of labour, operated to attract the disaffected. In tandem they synergistically led to transnational migration.¹⁶

ETM argues that there are few independent conditions that cause imbalances between sending and receiving countries. Rather, the conditions are interdependent and manifested by a process of global capital flows in which a dominant country like the United States seeks to exploit a subordinate country’s natural resources, including labour.

Lenin suggested that this situation is possible only because ‘numerous [dependent] countries have been drawn into international capitalist intercourse’, a process that leads to the creation of an international division of labour.¹⁷ Similarly, Fernandez and Ocampo argue that these processes are manifestations of imperialist relations between capitalist countries and countries that serve a colonial function of supplying raw materials and labour to the capitalist countries.¹⁸ These dependent countries are those ‘which, officially, are politically independent, but which are in fact enmeshed in a net of financial and diplomatic dependence’.¹⁹ For a country like Mexico, the result is ‘uneven development and wretched conditions of the masses [which] are fundamental and inevitable conditions and premises of this mode of production’.²⁰ These conditions in turn have a direct effect on migration patterns. Lenin contended that a ‘special feature of imperialism . . . is the decline in emigration from imperialist countries, and the increase in immigration into these countries from [underdeveloped/dependent] countries where lower wages are paid’.²¹

Thus, mass internal and internati...