A Tale of Two Contexts: U.S. Migration and the Labor Force Trajectories of Mexican Women

Abstract

Even though women have long participated in Mexico-U.S. migration studies assessing the labor market implications of international mobility for women are rare. Especially lacking are studies that follow a life-course approach and compare employment trajectories across contexts and in connection with other transitions. Using life-history data collected in Mexico and the United States, we explore the impact of migration on women’s employment, focusing on how the determinants of employment vary across contexts. We show that U.S. residence eliminates or even reverses the employment returns to education found in Mexico, and that the constraints imposed on women’s work by marriage are actually stronger in the U.S. context. We also explicitly connect migration to other life-course events, documenting how the impact of context varies not only by marital status but also by where women’s unions were formed.

Ethnic–racial identity content and the development of depressive symptoms among Latino adolescents

“…Research with Latino immigrants has often used the term “immigrant paradox” to refer to these and similar findings that recently arrived immigrants outperform US-born citizens of Latino immigrant heritage on outcomes such as physical, mental, and behavioral health (Alegría et al, 2007, 2008; American Psychological Association, 2012; Portes & Rumbaut, 2006). This latter group's discrimination experiences and their awareness of the lower societal standing of their ethnic group are some of the reasons for the higher levels of depression in this population (Flippen & Parrado, 2015; Leong, Kalibatseva, & Park, 2013).…”

Strategic Gender Egalitarianism in Rural China: The Impacts of Husbands’ Migration on Gender Relations

“…Therefore, our article, like the others in this special issue, contributes to a growing number of studies in gender and migration that seek to understand gender as a relational process (Donato et al, 2006). Like Flippen and Parrado (2015), we find that in rural China, migration transforms some structures of gender relations while leaving others intact. We call this strategic gender egalitarianism because it allows the structure of labor to adapt to migration while maintaining the structure of family relations.…”

“…For example, Parrado and Flippen (2005) find that Mexican women in the United States are more likely to participate in the labor force but, on average, report less power in their marital relationships and hold more conservative ideas about gender than their nonmigrant counterparts who reside in Mexico. Thus, migration can result in gender role transformation in some domains and gender role continuity in others (Flippen, 2014; Flippen & Parrado, 2015; Parrado & Flippen, 2005; Parrado, Flippen, & McQuiston, 2005).…”

A Manifesto for Quantitative Multi-sited Approaches to International Migration

“…Comparing migrants at destination with non‐migrants at origin (rather than to natives at destination) is another way to cast new light on assimilation, labeled by FitzGerald () as the “ homeland dissimilation perspective .” Parrado and Flippen provided enlightening results on various aspects of the incorporation of Mexican women into the U.S. Their findings revealed that Mexican migrant women with low levels of education in the U.S. have, ceteris paribus, a lower level of control in relationships with males than their counterparts who stayed in Mexico (Parrado and Flippen, ). If authors had instead compared Mexican women with U.S. native born women, they would have shown unsurprisingly a disadvantage among migrants, but would have failed to show that this disadvantage was increased by the experience of living in the U.S. Flippen and Parrado () show that similar results emerge when employment outcomes are considered.…”