Abstract
Mexican migration to the USA has experienced unprecedented growth since the implementation of neoliberal reforms in Mexico in the 1980s and 1990s. The signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) further accentuated the phenomenon to the degree that it turned Mexico into the number one country of emigrants in the world. This seemingly inexhaustible expulsive force brought with it profound qualitative transformations in the migratory phenomena associated with processes of deep social transformation. One of these, which has received relatively little attention in the literature, has to do with highly skilled labour migration which, in the last two decades, has shown a pace of growth greater than that of Mexican migration in general (see Figure 13.1). This makes Mexico the second-ranked country in the world in terms of sending highly skilled migrants to the USA, the first-ranked to the rest of Latin America and the sixth-ranked to the rest of the world.
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Wise, R.D. (2015). Unravelling Highly Skilled Migration from Mexico in the Context of Neoliberal Globalization. In: Castles, S., Ozkul, D., Cubas, M.A. (eds) Social Transformation and Migration. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137474957_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137474957_13
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