CIAO DATE: 05/2011
September 2010
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Migrants to the United States are a diverse population. This diversity, captured in various migration theories, is overlooked in empirical applications that describe a typical narrative for an average migrant. Using the Mexican Migration Project data from about 17,000 first-time migrants between 1970 and 2000, this study employs cluster analysis to identify four types of migrants with distinct configurations of characteristics. Each migrant type corresponds to a specific theoretical account, and becomes prevalent in a specific period, depending on the economic, social and political conditions. Strikingly, each migrant type also becomes prevalent around the period in which its corresponding theory is developed.
Resource link: Discovering Diverse Mechanisms of Migration: The Mexico-U.S. Stream from 1970 to 2000 [PDF] - 1.5M