The Cat and Mouse Game at the Mexico-U.S. Border: Gendered Patterns and Recent Shifts

Abstract

This paper provides new insights into the process of undocumented border crossing by examining both men and women in the process. We investigate differences in the ways in which men and women make their way across the well-guarded Mexico-U.S. border, and the extent to which men and women by the end of the 1990s were similar to, or different from, their counterparts who crossed before 1986 and the implementation of immigration policy designed to reduce undocumented migration. We find substantial differences in how men and women crossed the border without legal documents and in their chances of being apprehended. Our analysis makes clear that shifts in U.S. immigration policy after 1986 have led to women's greater reliance on the assistance of paid smugglers to cross without documents but men were more likely to cross alone. Moreover, immediately after 1986, women on first U.S. trips faced higher risks of being apprehended compared to women who migrated in the early 1980s, but men faced lower risks. After accumulating some U.S. experience, however, both women and men faced lower risks of being detected after 1986 compared to earlier in that decade.Despite a growing literature on Mexico-U.S. migration since the late 1970s, the process of clandestine border crossing is still not well understood. By definition it is difficult to observe and measure, and as a consequence, prior

Legal Status and Wage Disparities for Mexican Immigrants

“…In the migration stream from particular communities or families, the timing of men's migration tends to be earlier than that of women. Women often follow men as dependents or, if they themselves are labor migrants, migrate to join family or community members who have already established themselves in the U.S. (Donato, Wagner and Patterson 2008). Thus undocumented male workers are more likely to consider themselves temporary migrants whose intention is to return to families in Mexico, whereas women may see their migration as more permanent, regardless of legal status.…”

“…They found substantial earnings penalties associated with being undocumented, but only after the passage of IRCA. Donato et al (2008), using a later, expanded version of the same dataset, found that legal status not only affected earnings but was also related to a greater likelihood of employment in the informal sector. The results also showed that women's situation relative to men had deteriorated following IRCA, increasing the importance of considering potential gender differences in the effects of legal status.…”

“…Mexican migration is known to be a gendered process. Traditionally, men have been more likely to be primary labor migrants, while women have been more likely to accompany them or follow them several years later as dependents (Donato, Wagner and Patterson 2008). Women's relatively later arrival within the migration stream, their greater likelihood of joining family members rather than migrating alone, and their greater responsibility for children are all factors that may make their earnings trajectories following migration different from those of men.…”

Gendering Illegality: Undocumented Young Adults’ Negotiation of the Family Formation Process

“…individual and household decisions to migrate, migration journeys, legalization patterns, settlement experiences, initial and long-term labor market experiences, parenting of children in 5 sending and receiving countries, transnational activities, and return migration patterns (Abrego, 2014b;Donato, 1993Donato, , 2010Donato & Gabaccia, 2015;Donato, Wagner, & Patterson, 2008;Dreby, 2010Dreby, , 2015Flippen, 2016;Hagan, 1998;Hamilton, 2015;Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994;Nobles, 2011;Parrado & Flippen, 2005;Smith, 2006). Recent work on first-generation undocumented adults also suggests that gender roles and expectations influence when, where, and how undocumented individuals experience the limitations associated with their immigration status (Abrego, 2014a;Golash-Boza & Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2013;Salcido & Menjívar, 2012;Schmalzbauer, 2014).…”

Methodological and Ethical Dilemmas in Research Among Smuggled Migrants

“…Antonopoulos and Winterdyk 2006;Herman 2006;Staring 2004;Zhang 2008), the human rights perspective is getting more attention (e.g. Bhabha 2005;Gallagher 2002;Morrison and Crosland 2001;Nadig 2002;Obokata 2005) and there are studies looking into gender dynamics within smuggling processes (Ahmad 2011;Donato et al 2008;Peixoto 2009;Sanchez 2015;Schrover et al 2008;Zhang et al 2007). Overall, much more emphasis is put nowadays on migrants' experiences and perspectives than when we started This is an updated version of Chapter 5 in Bilger and van Liempt (2009). our research in 2002.…”