ABSTRACT
One of the ironies of US-bound emigration from the communities is that it has probably done more to fuel entrepreneurship in nearby Mexican urban centers, and perhaps even in the United States, than in the source communities themselves. A minority of nortenos in the research communities use their dollars to engage in various kinds of what is, by Mexican standards, conspicuous consumption. Only a handful of persons in the research communities have used their US earnings to become agricultural entrepreneurs. The employment-multiplier effects of small-business investments by migrants in the research communities have been modest. The economic and demographic forces promoting emigration from the research communities are powerful and obvious, but in many cases they are insufficient to explain the intensity of migratory behavior. There is a need for realism in gauging the capacity of any sending community-based development scheme to retain would-be migrants to the United States.
