Exploring patterns of environmental injustice in the Global South: Maquiladoras in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico

Abstract

Decades of research in countries of the Global North have revealed distinct environmental injustices whereby industrial hazards tend to be located in poor and minority neighborhoods; few studies have investigated similar relationships between humans and hazards in the Global South. This study uses conventional quantitative environmental justice methodology to investigate spatial relationships between residential socio-demographics and maquiladoras (i.e., final assembly plants) in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. When predicting maquiladora density using percent children and social class in a spatial error regression model, we find that percent children was a positive and significant predictor, while social class was not significant. Adding formal residential development to the model, social class becomes a negative and significant predictor. Formal residential development and percent children are also positive and significant. As is the case in the Global North, relationships between neighborhood characteristics and transnationally operated maquiladoras along the northern border of Mexico are linked to urban development.

Superfund, Hedonics, and the Scales of Environmental Justice

“…The choice of control variables determines the counterfactual state and the EJ results are potentially sensitive to this choice (Noonan, 2008). Just as advanced spatial regression techniques can affect hedonic results, spatial econometrics can alter findings of EJ analyses (e.g., Pastor andothers 2004, Grineski andCollins 2008).…”

From Waste to Resource: The Trade in Wastes and Global Recycling Economies

“…First there is a set of work on trans-border environmental justice, in which the US-Mexico border has been the paradigm case [130,131,132,133,134,135]. It focuses on the Mexican maquiladoras and interprets the location of US TNCs as a shift of the environmental burden of production and waste disposal from the US to the Mexican side of the border.…”

Migration, Acculturation, and Environmental Values: The Case of Mexican Immigrants in Central Iowa

“…Surprisingly, perhaps, former workers did not generally complain about working conditions in the maquiladoras, where they had assembled such goods as wheelchairs and automobile dashboards. Instead, they remarked on the contamination of air and water by chemical pollutants and their related health impacts, such as respiratory illness, skin conditions, and cancer (see Grineski and Collins 2008). Thus, to a large degree, first-generation migrants could envision widespread, international impacts of American consumption habits, based on firsthand knowledge.…”