Publications by authors named "Karen Pren"

We analyze the effect of homicide in Mexico on patterns and processes of internal and international migration. Linking municipal-level homicide rates from 1990 through 2018 with data from the Mexican Migration Project, we estimate a series of multinomial discrete time event history models to assess the effect that exposure to lethal violence has on the likelihood of migration within Mexico and to the United States without documents. Statistical estimates indicate that the homicide rate negatively predicts the likelihood of taking a first undocumented trip to the United States but positively predicts the likelihood of taking a first trip within Mexico.

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In this article we undertake a systematic analysis of why border enforcement backfired as a strategy of immigration control in the United States. We argue theoretically that border enforcement emerged as a policy response to a moral panic about the perceived threat of Latino immigration to the United States propounded by self-interested bureaucrats, politicians, and pundits who sought to mobilize political and material resources for their own benefit. The end result was a self-perpetuating cycle of rising enforcement and increased apprehensions that resulted in the militarization of the border in a way that was disconnected from the actual size of the undocumented flow.

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Using data from the Mexican Migration Project we compute probabilities of departure and return for first and later trips to the United States in both documented and undocumented status. We then estimate statistical models to analyze the determinants of departure and return according to legal status. Prior to 1986, Mexico-U.

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At the end of the 1950s, the United States permitted the entry of a half million Mexican migrants per year, of which 450.000 entered with temporary work visa and 50.000 as permanent residents.

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Immigration reforms in the United States initiated in the 1960s are widely thought to have opened the door to mass immigration from Asia and Latin America by eliminating past discriminatory policies. While this may be true for Asians, it is not the case for Latin Americans, who faced more restrictions to legal migration after 1965 than before. The boom in Latin American migration occurred in spite of rather than because of changes in US immigration law.

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Over the past four decades, the Latino population of the United States was transformed from a small, ethnically segmented population of Mexicans in the southwest, Puerto Ricans in New York, and Cubans in Miami into a large national population dominated by Mexicans, Central Americans, and South Americans. This transformation occurred through mass immigration, much of it undocumented, to the point where large fractions of non-Caribbean Hispanics lack legal protections and rights in the United States. Rising illegality is critical to understanding the disadvantaged status of Latinos today.

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Analysis of the impact of international migration on the socioeconomic conditions of migrants and their families in Peru, using data from the Latin American Migration Project, suggests that international migration contributes to individuals' socioeconomic well-being. While those who migrate tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds in the first place, they gain further relative economic advantage by moving out of the country. A possible implication of this is that the growing international migration observed today is likely to exacerbate rather than ameliorate the already uneven distribution of income and rigid socioeconomic hierarchy in Peru.

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Using data from Mexico's Matrícula Consular program, we analyze the geographic organization of undocumented Mexican migration to the United States. We show that emigration has moved beyond its historical origins in west-central Mexico into the central region and, to a lesser extent, the southeast and border regions. In the United States, traditional gateways continue to dominate, but a variety of new destinations have emerged.

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The history of Mexico-U.S. migration is characterized by a series of discrete phases during which levels and patterns of migration change primarily in response to shifts in U.

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In this article we use uniquely comparable data sets from two very different settings to examine how exogenous economic transformations affect the likelihood and selectivity of international out-migration. Specifically, we use data from the Mexican Migration Project to construct event history files predicting first U.S.

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