Beyond Networks: Health, Crime, and Migration in Mexico

Abstract

Two rounds of a longitudinal survey from Mexico, representative at the national, urban, rural, and regional level, are used to examine the determinants of local, domestic, and international migration. Aside from the typical covariates in the migration decision, this study considers health conditions, crime, and individual's perspectives on life as explanatory variables. Coefficient estimates for most health variables do not offer significant support to the healthy migrant hypothesis. In terms of crime, the results suggest that females respond to worsening safety conditions in Mexico by migrating domestically, but not abroad. The decision to migrate domestically or abroad for males is not statistically correlated with increases in crime. Overall, having access to international migration networks continues to play a significant role in the decision to migrate to the US.

Persistent rurality in Mexico and ‘the right to stay home’

“…Whether forced displacement reaches a scale that will register in the national demographic data is not clear (Martínez 2014;Wood et al 2010), but some conservative unofficial estimates calculate that between 2006 and 2018, 300,000 people were displaced by violence (Hernández García 2020). The International Displacement Monitoring Centre recently reported a similar estimate of 345,000, noting that Mexico does not have an official registry of internally displaced people (IDMC 2020, 54, 103).…”

The Influence of Social Demographic Factor on Individual Decision to Cross-border Migration between Timor Leste and Indonesia

“…Several studies conducted for example by Tran (2012), Martinez (2014) and Wilson et. al (2014) explains demographic, social and economic characteristics.…”

“…According to Tran (2012) demographic characteristic of individual Vietnamese migrant in Brisbane, Australia involves variables such as gender, parents' age, duration of residency in Australia, marital status, number of children, age of children, income earning, work status, and education level. Moreover, according to Martinez (2014), demographic characteristic of individual migrant involves variables such as age, education, marital status, family size, house ownership, health insurance, and receiver of government aid, while according to Wilson et. al (2014) demographic factor of individual migrant involves variables such as age, gender, education and marital status.…”

“…However, this approach remains focus on the impact of job market and salary procurement as main determinant factors of migration. This approach considers that social, economic and demographic characteristic of individual and his/her family related to income potential determine cost benefit calculation of migration (Martinez, 2014).…”

“…Individual thought about life condition in the past and in the future, statistically have no correlation to domestic and international migration for men and women. However, according to Martinez (2014), access to international migration network continuously correlates to individual decision to migrate. Migration network is very important because network can help directly the availability of foodstuff, housing, transportation and information regarding job opportunity and safety when cross the border.…”