ABSTRACT
For more than half a century, rural Mexicans have moved permanently or temporarily to seek their livelihood in Mexican cities or in the United States. Permanent removal has increased the populations of all of Mexico's 31 state capitals, made Mexico City the world's largest city since 1980, and swelled the northern border cities, especially Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana, and Mexicali. The percentage of the Mexican population living in urban centers rose from 55 percent in 1965 to 72 percent in 1989 (World Bank, 1991: 265). Temporary, recurrent migration, in which household members go to rural or urban regions of higher employment or higher wages, returning periodically to rejoin household members based in the home village, is also a common pattern in Mexico. Wage labor migration to the United States usually involves crossing the border clandestinely because of the difficulty of obtaining documents conferring permission to work. Such undocumented immigration began when the border was officially closed in 1924 and persists despite the sanctions included in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act against employers of undocumented workers. 1
