Abstract
This paper examines the socioeconomic and contextual determinants of internal and international indigenous migration from Guerrero’s Mountain Region (GMR), one of the poorest areas in Mexico and Latin America. Drawing on data from Mexico’s 2015 Intercensal Survey, we used logit and multilogit models to identify the determinants of migration. Empirical results reveal that indigenous people living in the GMR do not possess the necessary skills (education and information) and capabilities (assets, income, and savings) to face the costs associated with international, or even national, migration. This finding highlights the urgent need to create inclusive and comprehensive community-building strategies focused on improving welfare in this region.
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Notes
According to the 2015 Intercensal Survey, 92% of people in this region are indigenous, and they make up 9.5% of the total population in the state.
The World Bank (2015) indicates that it is not easy to determine the exact number and distribution of indigenous people located across Latin America and the Caribbean for several reasons. Prominent among them is the lack of accurate and accessible information, as well as the very nature of indigenous identities. A good example of this is that only ten of the countries in this region have included ethnic variables in their household surveys.
This estimated number is only for countries in the region which have made the information available in their census (Del Popolo and Jaspers 2014).
Net migration is a measurement used to establish the difference between the number of people that arrived in the state and those who left it. This measurement considers data from the 5 years preceding the year of the interview, 2010 in our case (INEGI 2015).
For more details on cultural diversity in GMR, see Canabal (1999).
The main public institutions in the Mexican national health system are the Mexican Institute for Social Security (Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS)), the Institute of Social Security and Services for Civil Servants (Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE)), and the Popular Health Insurance (Seguro Popular) (Frenk et al. 2006).
Some authors mention additional perspectives or elements that help explain migration decision-making, which include the institutionalist theory (Massey et al. 1993), the brain drain theory (Stark et al. 1997), migration as a result of risk of dead and violence (Bucheli et al. 2019; Velásquez 2019; Romano and Villavicencio 2014), and migration due to environmental and climatic conditions (Hunter et al. 2013; Deheza and Mora 2013).
The MMP is a valuable dataset for the study of Mexico-US migration. Since 1982, this project, a joint effort between Princeton University and the University of Guadalajara, has significantly contributed to a growing understanding of the migration process between Mexico and the USA. Its contributions cover various areas of social science, including anthropological, social, economic, and demographic research (Asad and Hwang 2018; Durand 2016; Massey et al. 1987; Kandel and Massey 2002. For more details, see: http://mmp.opr.princeton.edu).
In the Intercensal Survey (2015), indigenous language proficiency refers to a person aged 3 years and over who speaks an indigenous dialect, that is, individuals who responded “yes” to the question “Does (NAME) speak an Indigenous language?”. For this research, we only considered people aged 12 years and older living in the GMR. On the other hand, indigenous self-determination refers to household members who responded “yes” or “yes, in part” to the question “According to his/her culture, does (NAME) consider him/herself to be Indigenous?”.
The goal of the first two programs is to strengthen the social development of Mexican families and vulnerable groups, while the third one is aimed at boosting the domestic production of crops.
The GMR is made up of the following municipalities: Acatepec, Alcozauca de Guerrero, Alpoyeca, Atlamajalcingo del Monte, Atlixtac, Cochoapa el Grande, Copanatoyac, Cualác, Huamuxtitlán, Iliatenco, Malinaltepec, Metlatónoc, Olinalá, Tlacoapa, Tlalixtaquilla de Maldonado, Tlapa de Comonfort, Xalpatláhuac, Xochihuehuetlán, and Zapotitlán Tablas.
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Mora-Rivera, J., Fierros-González, I. Determinants of Indigenous Migration: the Case of Guerrero’s Mountain Region in Mexico. Int. Migration & Integration 21, 93–116 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-019-00692-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-019-00692-x