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Eliza Christopher

Professor Evin Rodkey

Anthropology 103

6/18/2021

An Analysis of Immigration Between Mexico and the United States

Immigration has always been a highly controversial topic for the United States throughout

history. The United States has always been a popular destination to immigrants due to its

promise of the American dream, a term coined in the early 1930s, and general political and

economic stability compared with other countries. The U.S today is highly diverse with people

from all around the world living here as full U.S citizens, but with the concept of immigration

comes problems with undocumented immigrants wanting the same right to migrate as well.

Although we have systems in place to help migrants enter the United States and gain citizenship,

these systems are often slow and may deny you due to several external factors. Due to this many

enter the U.S undocumented, skipping this system entirely. In this paper I will discuss some of

the historical aspects of the relationship between the United States and Mexico regarding

immigration as well as talk about some of the key concepts driving undocumented immigration

in our world today.

To understand why undocumented migration occurs, you must understand why people migrate at

all. These questions do not have one simple answer however, as humans make decisions due to a

possibly infinite number of reasons. Historically the relations between Mexico and the United

States in the context of immigration has always been difficult however there was a time when it

was more accepted. In earlier times after the United States invaded Mexico and established an
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official border in 1854 the border was not originally meant to stop the movement of good or

people like it is today (Gomberg-Muñoz 28). A common misconception is that Mexican

immigration is driven by a low amount of economic development in Mexico however this is not

completely factual. The actual movement of goods and people between countries is what creates

economic development. Although we do trade with Mexico today on a high-volume scale, this is

not always to the benefit of the poor who at one point were able to move freely and gain work for

themselves as easily as before. Because of structures set in place by Porfirio Diaz to increase

agricultural production and global trade as president beginning in 1876 the self-sufficient lands

of rural Mexico were diminished causing labor to be harder to come by and community self-

sufficiency becoming an increasing struggle (Gomberg-Muñoz 29). With this information you

can see jut a snapshot of why Mexican citizens in particular look to immigrate or work

elsewhere. Although the reasons are different everywhere, it boils down to wanting a better life.

Before a more modernization of our immigration laws and policies in the United States

industrialization drove the immigration movement of Mexican workers to the U.S (Gomberg-

Muñoz 26). With the way that concepts such as supply and demand work, with increasing

demand the supply increases as well. A corporation's goal is to maximize profits and find the

cheapest labor available which is why Mexican immigrants have always been a resource

companies seek out. Companies often exploit undocumented Mexican immigrants to do hard

manual labor for as little as possible if it is more than what they would make in Mexico. The

concept of core and periphery introduced by Immanuel Wallerstein in 1974 is the concept that

the more industrialized and modernized nations known as core countries take what they need

such as cheap labor or materials from less developed countries known as periphery countries.

(Guest 281). You can see this type of pattern here with the migration patterns in Mexico. Like
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Gomberg-Muñoz talks about in chapter two titled Why Is There Undocumented Migration

Mexican workers were often recruited by or brought over by companies in the United States to

do manual labor often for less money than American workers.

Changes in the economy contribute to a substantial portion of migration today. In earlier

years as the United States as a core country continued to grow and become more industrialized it

increased the demand for labor tremendously. With the state of the economy and labor shortages

inside Mexico itself it led to many Mexican migrants coming to the United States looking for

work and a way for them to generate an income (Gomberg-Muñoz 30). The fact that Mexican

citizens could come to the U.S and were often recruited or encouraged to migrate led to a belief

that the benefit of working in the U.S was much greater than in Mexico. However, this system

was known as “the hook” because workers were hooked into working hard for truly little in

return (Gomberg-Muñoz 30).

The concept of Fordism, originally introduced by Henry Ford who was the founder of the

car company Ford. The concept was that workers would provide labor and loyalty and in return

they would get a livable wage and healthy working conditions. The main goal of this system was

to form a relationship between workers and Ford as an employer to create a better system of

employment (Guest 283). With the evolution of the economy in the United States in the 1960’s

and 1970’s the push for increasing company profit brought Fordism to an end and the concept of

flexible accumulation became the new model system. Flexible accumulation is the concept of

doing making decisions like pay and labor in a way that will maximize profit. If we think about

the core and periphery concept again this aligns more with flexible accumulation. In a system of

flexible accumulation companies aim to hire workers, facilities, and other various things from

periphery countries for as little as possible. This is better for a system of flexible accumulation
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instead of hosting all their operations in the U.S where they must pay more for labor and

materials. With the United States seeking Mexican workers for cheap manual labor, you can see

how they are taking the concept of flexible accumulation and finding the closest and cheapest

laborers they can find. When the concept of self-sufficiency started to be diminished in Mexico,

companies running on the system of flexible accumulation saw an opportunity where they could

easily exploit Mexican immigrants in need to work for as little as possible because they had no

other options.

Economic liberalism is the view that “free markets and free trade” would be the best

possible system for economic growth to occur (Guest 284). The view is that in this situation

individuals in the market will be highly competitive to make the more profit than their

competitors. Neoliberalism builds on economic liberalism and promotes a higher global trade

volume along with removing things such as “eliminating trade barriers, and reducing taxes,

tariffs, and most government intervention in the economy.” (Guest 285). In some ways neoliberal

policies have improved an overall quality of life and created opportunities for many people

however it is also argued that causes wealthy countries to continue to become wealthy and poor

countries to stay poor. This concept of economic liberalism has a heavy influence on the same

concepts I spoke on earlier with core and periphery countries. As the United States recruited

Mexican citizens as laborers for a push in maximizing profits, they were a victim of this

economic liberalism era where companies are competitive to find cheap materials and laborers to

maximize the profit they can make in a free market.

In situations like the one where many prior self-sufficient citizens in Mexico were being

forced to be exploited by U.S countries to pay for the things they needed they were an example

of pushes and pulls regarding migration. Thes pushes are often due to events in a person’s life
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that cause trouble in some way such as the economic changes and labor shortages in Mexico or

other things like famine and poverty (Guest 299). When there is better economic opportunity, or

at least promise of opportunity these may be the pulls that you are influenced by to migrate.

During this time when the United States were recruiting Mexican laborers they were being pulled

in by a promise of a better life and better wages and pushed out by the downfall in their way of

life. In the process of migration there are two key factors that migrants encounter known as

bridges and barriers. Bridges can be things like ways of transportation, smugglers, employer

sponsorships or other ways that make immigration easier (Guest 299). Barriers are things that

can make immigration more difficult like language understandings, distance, and governmental

restrictions and systems. Examples of some of these barriers and bridges can be seen in the

migration agreement the United States made with Mexico in 1942, offering copious amounts of

Mexican migrants to work in the United States. This is not a well-constructed migration bridge

because it was meant for only some and not for full migration however the real bridge lies in the

undocumented workers who migrated outside of this system encouraged by U.S companies

(Gomberg-Muñoz 32). Other processes such as recruitment and sponsorship or the ease of entry

to the United States before the modernization of practices can also be seen as bridges in aiding

Mexican migration.

As I explained the different variety of pushes, pulls, bridges, and barriers I aimed to provide a

high-level explanation of the influences and evolution of the Mexican and United States

relationship regarding migration. It is illegal for undocumented people of any origin to live in the

United States freely however there are other aspects of this when you look deeper into it. Many

people have feelings of hate towards immigrants or our immigration processes claiming that it is

wrong or other excuses to why we should not let immigrants in. However, I believe reading over
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information such as what was provided in chapter 2 of Labor and Legality can play a critical part

in creating a better understanding of immigration in not only today’s world but the past as well.

Many misconceptions that are the driving forces behind these ways of thinking are due to a lack

of understanding. It is possible that the same people who think less of immigrants may not think

about the factors such as the pushes and pulls those immigrants are influenced by. As United

States citizens we often forget that our country is a lot more established and powerful than other

periphery countries. The phrase “go back to your country” is used so frequently by those who

oppose immigrants however they do not think about what factors are making it so that these

migrants need to leave their own country. The criminalization of undocumented immigrants is

justified by law however on a non-governmental level there are justifiable reasons why there are

undocumented immigrants as well. What the law says is not always what is right, and this is one

of the most important concepts to understand. Gomberg-Muñoz was able to perfectly explain

how the U.S has historically used and exploited Mexican immigrants for our own personal gain

but have criminalized it today as our country becomes more self-sufficient. With this I hope you

as a reader were able to create a better understanding on immigration and in particular the

relationship and evolution between the U.S and Mexico on the topic of immigration.
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Works Cited

Guest, Kenneth. Essentials of Cultural Anthropology: A Toolkit for a Global Age. 3rd ed.,

Norton, 2020.

Gomberg-Muñoz, Ruth. Labor and Legality: An Ethnography of a Mexican Immigrant Network.

Oxford, 2011.