Who Crossed the Border? Self-Selection of Mexican Migrants in the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract

We estimate the self-selection of Mexican migrants into and out of the United manifests, which we use to proxy migrant quality and to measure self-selection into migration in 1920. Migrants were positively selected on height compared to the Mexican population. We link these migrants to the 1930 U.S. and Mexican the selection into return migration. Return migrants were not differentially selfselected on height relative to permanent migrants.

The (South) American Dream: Mobility and Economic Outcomes of First- and Second-Generation Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Argentina

“…In addition to the two articles described earlier, some other examples include Abramitzky, Boustan, andEriksson (2012, 2013), Boustan, Matthew E. Kahn, and Paul W. Rhode (2012); William J. Collins andMarianne H. Wanamaker (2014, 2015); Jason Long and Ferrie (2013), Long (2005), Edward Kosack and Zachary Ward (2014), and Laura Salisbury (2014). In contrast to this article, the focus of this literature has been to study either internal migrations within the United States or the United Kingdom or international migrations to the United States.…”

Revisiting Mexican migration in the Age of Mass Migration: New evidence from individual border crossings

“…In contrast, there is little cliometric literature on the Mexico-United States migration. Kosack & Ward (2014) estimate the selection pattern of Mexican immigrants and return immigrants in the 1920s. Feliciano (2001) examines the performance of Mexican immigrants in the US labor market from 1910 to 1990.…”

“…Specifically, I exploit the publication N°A3365 that consists of manifests listing aliens arriving at nine entrance ports in Arizona and Texas from 1903 to 1910. To my knowledge, the MBCRs have been used only by Kosack & Ward (2014). However, following the classification of Durand (2016, p. 7), the period covered in their research does not belong to the beginnings of the flow, but to the Deportations and Mass Migration Era .…”

Migrants’ self‐selection in the early stages of modern economic growth, Spain (1880–1930)

“…The evidence on the historical selectivity of international migrants, however, is mixed. On this issue, see Hatton, ‘Cliometrics’; Abramitzky, Platt Boustan, and Eriksson, ‘Huddled masses’; Stolz and Baten, ‘Brain drain’; Spitzer and Zimran, ‘Migrant self‐selection’; Kosack and Ward, ‘Who crossed the border?’.…”

“…Different studies have addressed this issue focusing on historical migration abroad. See, for instance, among others, Stolz and Baten, ‘Brain drain’; Abramitzky et al., ‘Huddled masses’; Kosack and Ward, ‘Who crossed the border?’; Spitzer and Zimran, ‘Migrant self‐selection’.…”