Thesis (MA)--Kent State University, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Apr. 15, 2009). Advisor: Max V. Grubb. Includes bibliographical references (p. 50-55).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2004. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 221-227). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2001. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 164-173).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

abstract: The Phoenix area had no sizable Mexican presence before the U.S. took over the territory. Some assumed that the region was founded completely by whites from the outset. Whites and Mexicans actually held nearly equal populations throughout the first two decades of settlement. Though they did not hold equal status, their cohabitation was largely characterized by mutual interdependence and respect. Transforming the Salt River Valley's desert terrain into a regional agricultural hub depended on the Sonorans' preindustrial skills. As the town modernized, a new class of resident sought large scale projects to integrate Phoenix into the U.S. economy. Two pivotal projects achieved this. First, railroad spur lines made Phoenix accessible for migrants, as well as allowing farmers to supply commercial markets profitably. Second, the massive Roosevelt Dam secured a stable water supply for valley farmers. While these projects provided the foundation for development, it was cotton that brought commercial success. Throughout World War I, valley cotton growers capitalized on the booming cotton market by expanding their average acreage from 400 acres in 1912 to 130,000 acres in 1920. This rapid escalation to meet wartime demands depended upon a massive seasonal labor force from Mexico. While this boom brought prosperity to valley farmers, it solidified the Mexican's role in the Salt River Valley as little more than a laborer. Valley cotton growers impressively managed all labor issues through a well-organized collective association. Over-recruitment and wage setting kept workers from collective bargaining for better wages. The cotton growers' hegemony crashed along with cotton prices in 1921. Though the industry recovered fairly quickly, the cotton growers faced a new challenge in the rising national clamor to restrict Mexican immigration to the U.S. Though growers fought restrictions in Congressional hearings throughout the decade, the economic crash of 1929 finally ended widespread Mexican immigration. By the time of the crash, most Mexicans who remained lived in the agricultural peripheries or scattered urban barrios. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. History 2012

No description available.

U.S. immigration procedures are complex and may elude the average individual seeking admission to the United States. Understanding this, the current study investigates how information resources are used by potential migrants to learn about the migratory process. Using a mixed-methods approach, I interviewed 30 Mexican immigrants with unauthorized immigration experience about the process of gathering migration information in the pre-migration phase. Qualitative data were coded using seven themes generated from the primary research questions, including: Information Resources, Resources Used During Migration, Motivation for Migration, Method of Migration, Lack of Information/Misinformation, Types of Help and Types of Information. Findings suggest that the factors motivating migrants to come to the U.S. are combined in complex ways and lack of information about legal alternatives to unauthorized migration is an important factor influencing method of migration. Also, while access to new information resources is increasing, these resources are not being tapped for migration information.

“Undocumented Youth” is a socio-legal history of Latinx child migration to and within the United States between 1937 and 1986. By drawing on archival collections from across the country, the dissertation analyzes a crucial missing dimension of Mexican and Central American (im)migration history that adult-centric histories have overlooked or obscured. The dissertation uncovers a legal system of migrant exclusion that relied on various legal and quasi-legal forms of domestic restrictions and removal that combined with federal policies governing international migration. Under this broad legal apparatus, “border crossing” included migration from Mexico into the U.S. and domestic migration across state lines. Federal and state officials denied ethnic-Mexican border-crossing youth, with and without U.S. citizenship, legal rights and access to welfare state benefits, especially public education. This hybrid system of restriction and removal resulted in multiple injuries to children and families, including migrant minors’ exploitation on farms, educational deprivation, detention, and deportation beginning in the 1940s. The broad racialization of the criminal and invading “alien” of all ages at mid-century spurred ambivalent legal and political responses from officials in power that ranged from humanitarian to punitive. As grassroots activists and sympathetic policymakers found ways to intervene on behalf of unaccompanied and accompanied ethnic-Mexican migrant children, the state persistently and creatively enacted new draconian measures and refashioned well-meaning polices to reinforce the power and reach of the domestic removal apparatus. In response to the rights deprivations and welfare state exclusion imposed on the nation’s migrant Mexican youth, child welfare and migrants’ rights activists devised a series of local welfare programs in the 1940s and ‘50s to restore border-crossing minors’ “right to childhood” based on middle-class norms of innocence, play, and education. These local efforts led ultimately to federal reform, specifically the establishment of the Migrant Education Program (MEP) in 1965 during the War on Poverty. However, the MEP’s introduction of a unique data collection technology in schools jeopardized the privacy of undocumented youth and their parents, making them vulnerable to the criminal justice system and federal immigration enforcement. This data collection helped transform public schools into school-to-deportation pipelines. Concurrently, undocumented Mexican and Central American youth were forced to endure different forms of educational deprivation and rights violations in carceral and quasi-carceral sites, in immigrant detention and on commercial farms. The tensions and contestations over rights provoked by child migrants with and without U.S. citizenship after 1937 led to legal experiments, liberal pro-migrant federal policies like the MEP, and landmark court decisions, such as Plyler v. Doe (1982), that provided the rhetorical and policy foundations necessary to construct modern, child-centered mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. These legal experiments and court battles also increasingly defined national U.S. citizenship as the sole grounds for claiming rights, eclipsing social and local citizenship as modes of belonging. As a result, they hardened the distinctions between the citizen and the noncitizen migrant. In the 1970s, a legal regime with strict noncitizen restrictions emerged that no longer collapsed all border-crossing minors into a single discursive and legal category. By the late-twentieth century only minors and adults without federal U.S. citizenship were identified and marginalized as “migrants,” marking a sharp departure from the category’s previous legal and social meanings.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / El propósito de este estudio es realizar una descripción general de las actitudes de los padres de familias mexicanas en la ciudad de Indianápolis sobre el uso y mantenimiento del español. Se intenta describir los diferentes puntos de vista y actitudes que se consideran cuando los padres de familias deciden promover o no promover el uso, y por consiguiente, el mantenimiento del español por sus hijos. Además, se analizan otros parámetros relacionados con las actitudes, el bilingüismo, la educación bilingüe, y el mantenimiento del español y su relación con el mantenimiento de la cultura mexicana.

This study aimed to identify the family communication patterns that were typical of Mexican immigrant'schildhood and parenthood, along with the influence that resources and the distribution of power and dependency have within the family structure. In doing so, this study demonstrated how a change in the family communication pattern occurs after migration to the United States. Moreover, this study uncovered some of the reasons behind the change in communication. Fifteen conversational interviews were conducted in the homes of Mexican immigrants to address the following three research questions: (1) How do parents of Mexican immigrant families describe the family communication patterns that typified their communication with their parents, in terms of (a) socio-orientation versus concept orientation, (b) resources, and (c) power dependency? (2) How do parents of Mexican immigrant families describe the family communication patterns that typify their communication with their children, in terms of(a) socio-orientation versus concept orientation, (b) resources, and (c) power dependency? And (3) what suggestions do the parents of Mexican immigrant families have for improving family communication with their children? The answers provided by the participants elicited thirteen key themes that provided interesting insights about this wide and critical population. The thirteen themes indicated that Mexican immigrant parents of pre adolescent children have constructed a hybrid communication pattern, which combines traditional characteristics with open and expressive characteristics. Mexican immigrant parents of young adult and adult children have developed an open and expressive communication pattern. This study also found that resources, acquired by U.S. born children, did not affect the distribution of relational power and dependency within their families nor did they create a shift in their family's communication power. A resource that did influence both relational power and the family's communication pattern was peer dependency.