According to these authors, at a given destination, networks of migrants from a particular place of origin provide social capital enabling relatives and friends who migrate to obtain jobs easily and generally adjust themselves quickly to their new environment. Among the first demographers to emphasize the importance of social networks in stimulating migration from a particular area of origin to a particular destination were John MacDonald and Leatrice MacDonald Their article coined the term "chain migration" to refer to the process of cumulative causation whereby, at a particular destination, each additional migrant from a particular place of origin strengthened the social network for potential migrants from that place of origin.
Even earlier, the noted immigration historian Oscar Handlin had remarked on the importance of social networks in the destination for European immigrants to the United States, and Morton Rubin had noted the importance of such networks for migrating from a rural community in Mississippi to northern cities.
Both Myrdal and Massey have recognized that upward spirals of cumulative causation do not last indefinitely.
Massey is very specific in this regard: "In any finite population, of course, processes of cumulative causation cannot continue ad infinitum" , What could terminate a cumulative upward spiral of migration from a particular place of origin to a particular destination?
In my opinion, the most important factor would be a reduction, relative to other potential destinations, in economic opportunity for immigrants from a particular place of origin.
In the case of Mexican immigrants to Los Angeles County, we have a large number of people with little education and limited English. The lack of a high-school degree and the inability to speak English are of relatively little importance for performing jobs in garment and many other manufacturing industries, the construction industry, the restaurant and hotel industry, and gardening services. In Los Angeles County, bilingual foremen are able to talk to both workers under their direction, in Spanish, and their own supervisors, in English.
Nevertheless, the number of jobs in the county requiring neither a high-school degree nor English fluency is limited. Marcelli and Heer showed that for Los Angeles County in , for males and females considered separately, the distributions by occupation, industry, and class of worker for undocumented and legal immigrant workers from Mexico were, in each case, very dissimilar to that of the total labor force, in that Mexican immigrants were heavily concentrated in low-skill jobs that did not demand English fluency.
Consequently, we should expect that job opportunities for Hispanic immigrants in Los Angeles County are less favorable than for areas that previously have seen very little Hispanic immigration. The higher the percentage of Hispanic immigrants in a population in a given destination, the lower the relative economic opportunity in that area.
The lower the relative economic opportunity in a given area, the lower the subsequent rate of population growth for Hispanic immigrants in the area. The example of Los Angeles County justifies the first proposition. The second proposition is simply a restatement of the classic push-pull explanation of international migration Mattei, ; Sassen, Escobar et al. What exactly do I mean by "relative economic opportunity" and, ideally, how would I want to measure it?
The basic concept would be the earnings of Hispanic immigrants in a particular place relative to earnings in the United States as a whole, with earnings adjusted for local variations in the cost of living and computed separately for each skill level. This should involve a matrix of earnings subdivided by the recipient's gender, educational attainment, and English fluency.
Finally, we would have to summarize cost-of-living-adjusted earnings at each skill level, using a weighting scheme comprising the proportion of Hispanic immigrants in the United States as a whole at each skill level. For , this measurement of relative job opportunity cannot be undertaken until the release, sometime in , of the Census Public Use Microdata Sample. In the absence of this measurement, what existing data might support the first of my hypotheses?
Bureau of Labor Statistics, , the average weekly earnings declined 2. Census Bureau, , Table However, given the extreme occupational segregation of undocumented and legal Mexican immigrants from the overall Los Angeles County labor force Heer et al. Marked differences in both the Hispanic portion of the total population in and the percentage increase in the Hispanic population from to differentiate these three locations.
According to Census data, Los Angeles County had a very high proportion of Hispanic immigrants in its economically active population. Specifically, among the labor force aged 18 to 64 years, It's no surprise to Rene Castillo that many immigrants are eschewing California for places like North Carolina, Massachusetts and the Pacific Northwest. He's thinking about going to Indiana himself in a few months. Although California remains the No. Myers is the coauthor of a study released Tuesday that finds that the pace of foreign immigration to California has finally slowed after three decades of rapid growth.
The attitudes of people like Castillo help explain why. Word of saturated job markets in California and of opportunities in other states, has traveled rapidly to the towns and cities of Mexico and Central America, which generate the bulk of immigrants to California.
Pioneering immigrants have set up beachheads in such far-flung locales as Seattle and Minneapolis and New York, informing their compatriots and urging others to join them. Networks have developed among villages in Mexico and neighborhoods in Brooklyn, small towns in Pennsylvania and rural enclaves in Georgia.
Drive-by hiring centers, long a flash point for controversy in California, have popped up in suburbs on the East Coast, and in the South and Midwest. Many low-wage immigrants have left California and relocated elsewhere in the country after becoming fed up with the often rough-and-tumble job market, even amid an economic boom.
And low-wage employment in construction, restaurants, hotels and elsewhere is relatively plentiful, even for those here illegally. But the glut of low-skilled workers drives wages down. Others in the parking lot take a similar stand, rejecting jobs that pay less Table 1 presents data for Los Angeles County, California, concerning the change from to in the total population, the Hispanic population, and the foreign-born population born in Latin America.
The Census Bureau defines the "foreign-born population" as persons born outside the United States or its possessions, but the category excludes those individuals born outside the United States if one, or both, of the parents is a U.
For the sake of simplicity, I shall refer to the foreign-born population born in Latin America as the population born in Latin America. But after 15 years of going nowhere in South-Central, the weary garment worker from Acapulco was ready for a fresh start.
New industrial development, for example, requires construction workers who themselves require housing, and services such as schools and shops. An increased demand for food will benefit local farmers who may increase their spending on fertiliser. Workers employed directly in the new industry increase the local supply of skilled labour, attracting other companies who benefit from sharing this labour pool. Access to the complete content on Oxford Reference requires a subscription or purchase.
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