Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Over the past three decades, millions of immigrants – mainly from Mexico – crossed the border seeking better opportunities in the United States. According to the Pew Research Center, there are currently 5.6 million Mexican unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. Understanding who decides to cross the border and, in particular, how exactly the migratory decision is made is key for planning and designing future health, education, and employment policies in both the United States and Mexico. A common limitation of most studies on the determinants of international migration is the poor quality of micro-level migration data (demographic characteristics of migrants, presumed income etc.). To overcome this limitation, I study the selectivity of Mexican inter-state migrants and migrants that crossed the border to the U.S. by using Mexican social mobility data from the 2006 ESRU-SMSM, which reports in retrospective, demographic data as well as international and inter-state migration trends for 6,533 individuals from 1946 to 2006. Out-migration and inter-state migration selectivity will be further measured by comparing results from multinomial and sequential logit models. Preliminary findings indicate that the probability of Mexicans' migrating to another state increases with the level of schooling and the locality size. On the other hand, the probability of migrating to the U.S. decreases with the level of schooling and is dependent on individuals residing in core “migrant” sending states and the number of family members who have crossed the U.S. border before.