Latin America is often used as a backdrop against which U.S. race relations are compared. Yet research on race in Latin America focuses almost exclusively on countries in the region with a large recognized presence of individuals of African descent such as Brazil. Racial categories in these countries are based on skin color distinctions along a black-white continuum. By contrast, the main socially recognized ethnic distinction in Indo-Latin American countries such as Mexico, between indigenous and non-indigenous residents, is not based primarily on phenotypical differences, but rather on cultural practices and language use. Many Mexicans today nevertheless express a preference for whiter skin and European features, even though no clear system of skin color categorization appears to exist. In this study, I use data from a nationally-representative panel survey of Mexican adults to examine the extent of skin-color-based social stratification in contemporary Mexico. Despite extreme ambiguity in skin color classification, I find considerable agreement among survey interviewers about who belongs to three skin color categories. The results also provide evidence of profound social stratification by skin color. Individuals with darker skin tone have significantly lower levels of educational attainment and occupational status, and they are more likely to live in poverty and less likely to be affluent, even after controlling for other individual characteristics.

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The rate of Mexico-U.S. migration has declined precipitously in recent years. From 25 migrants per thousand in 2005, the annual international migration rate for Mexican men dropped to 7 per thousand by 2012. If sustained, this low migration rate is likely to have a profound effect on the ethnic and national-origin composition of the U.S. population. This study examines the origins of the migration decline using a nationally representative panel survey of Mexican households. The results support an explanation that attributes a large part of the decline to lower labor demand for Mexican immigrants in the United States. Decreases in labor demand in industrial sectors that employ a large percentage of Mexican-born workers, such as construction, are found to be strongly associated with lower rates of migration for Mexican men. Second, changes in migrant selectivity are also consistent with an economic explanation for the decline in international migration. The largest declines in migration occurred precisely among the demographic groups most affected by the Great Recession: namely, economically active young men with low education. Results from the statistical analysis also show that the reduction in labor demand in key sectors of the U.S. economy resulted in a more positive educational selectivity of young migrants.

We examine immigrants’ earnings trajectories, and measure both the extent and speed with which they are able to reduce the earnings gap with natives, using a unique dataset that links respondents of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to their longitudinal earnings obtained from individual tax records. Our analysis addresses key debates regarding ethnoracial and cohort differences in immigrants’ earnings trajectories. First, we find a racially-differentiated pattern of earnings assimilation whereby black and Hispanic immigrants are less able to catch up with native whites’ earnings compared to white and Asian immigrants, but are able to almost reach earnings parity with natives of their same race and ethnicity. Second, we find no evidence of a declining “quality” of immigrant cohorts even after controlling for their ethnoracial composition and human capital. Immigrants arriving since 1994 actually experience similar or slightly higher earnings growth compared to immigrants from earlier eras. We identify a pattern of accelerated assimilation in which more educated immigrants experience much of their earnings growth during the first years after arriving.

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