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A large body of research documents the social, economic, and demographic sources of Mexican migration to the United States, but this research tends to use geographically limited survey data, to give little consideration to domestic migration within sending countries as an alternative to international migration, and to focus on men. Since the mid-1980's, however, the regional and rural-urban origins of Mexican emigrants have been diversifying, international and domestic migration flows may have become increasingly interconnected, and women make up a rising proportion of international migrants from Mexico to the United States. This dissertation uses relatively recent, nationally representative Mexican data to analyze the sources of U.S.-bound emigration from Mexico in three main ways. First, I test whether there are rural and urban differences in the correlates of emigration. I find that indeed there are, and that they reflect the articulation between urbanization and economic development in Mexico. Whereas high levels of socioeconomic development within Mexican cities retain emigrants, urban economic development may generate emigration out of neighboring rural places. Second, I document the connection between recent domestic migration and U.S. emigration in Mexico. I find that the relationship varies across Mexico's geography: in rural places and in the historic emigrant-sending region, the two migration flows are still differentiated by the destination-specific role of social networks. However, the two forms of migration are connected in urban areas in the border and center regions. And, third, I evaluate how gender structures the social process of domestic and international migration from Mexico. Migration may be an outcome of socioeconomic development, but social axes of differentiation structure that process above and beyond the economic and demographic forces at play. My research finds that while gender is the form of social difference that most strongly differentiates migration patterns, gendered differences in emigration vary with class, ethnic, and geographic disadvantage. The greatest inequality in emigration exists between those marked by the greatest social disadvantage. / text

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The purpose of this study is to investigate what seem to be the principal attitudes of Americans toward Mexico and Mexicans as expressed by four contemporary American authors, and to point out and evaluate salient features in their respective treatment of the subject.

Mexican-Americans are disproportionately burdened by metabolic syndrome, a medical condition characterized by the concurrence of clinical abnormalities that contributes to diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease (CVD). This is alarming since Mexican-Americans constitute two-thirds of the US Latino population, the largest minority and fastest growing group in the US. Investigating acculturative stressors associated with immigration is crucial for eliminating health disparities, but few studies have examined the acculturative impact of Mexican migration to the United States or the relationship between acculturation and metabolic syndrome among Mexican-Americans. The purpose of this dissertation research was to investigate the associations between acculturation and metabolic syndrome among a bi-national sample of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. Metabolic syndrome was assessed among a bi-national sample of individuals with diabetes using the definition outlined by the International Diabetes Federation, and acculturation was assessed by proxy measures (years lived in the US and generational status) and responses on the Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican-Americans, version-II. Chi-square, analysis of variance, and logistic regression were used to determine relationships between country, gender, and acculturation status and metabolic syndrome and its biomarkers. The overall prevalence of metabolic syndrome was 79.7%, with 85.0% prevalence among Mexican-Americans and 75.7% among Mexicans (p=0.069). Mexican-Americans had higher blood pressure and central obesity, while Mexicans had higher triglycerides levels. The majority (81.2%) of Mexican-Americans was first generation and lived in the US for an average of 27.65 +/- 16.05 years. The mean acculturation score was -1.83 +/- 1.56, which indicated participants in this study were Mexican-oriented, or more closely associated to Mexican cultural influences than Anglo cultural influences. Higher acculturation scores were positively associated with fasting blood glucose and systolic blood pressure and lower acculturation was negatively associated with fasting blood glucose. Logistic regression analysis showed first generation Mexicans-Americans were more likely to develop metabolic syndrome than second generation Mexican-Americans (OR 7.399, 95% CI 1.464-37.401, p=0.015). Mexican and Mexican-American individuals with type 2 diabetes have a high prevalence of metabolic syndrome, which increases their risk for heart disease and other cardiovascular complications. Mexican-Americans are especially affected by central obesity and hypertension and Mexican immigrants appear to be impacted by negative lifestyle factors upon entering the United States. Acculturation is a complex process and the unclear relationship between acculturation and metabolic syndrome warrants further investigations.

Thesis (M. Des.)--York University, 2007. Graduate Programme in Higher Education. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 36-38). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004 & res_dat=xri:pqdiss & rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation & rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:MR32035.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 259-275). Also available on the Internet.

Transnational Mexican-origin Families is a qualitative study of four working class, Mexican-origin families who resided in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. region and who also made return visits to Mexico at least every two years. Through critical ethnographic case studies, the researcher worked with the families for over two years in multi-sited ethnography, with locations in the U.S. and Mexico. The dissertation examines the following question: What are the ways of knowing of Mexican-origin transnational students and their families in the Washington, D.C. area, and how do these transnational families experience their ways of knowing regarding education in formal schooling contexts? Using transnational theory and Gloria Anzaldúa’s theory of conocimiento, or knowing, this study shows how transnational families’ ways of knowing are situated in three mutually-constituted domains. They are: 1) chained knowing, including the ways participants are chained to the Mexican-U.S. border and to their communities in Mexico and the U.S., 2) sobrevivencia or survivalist knowing, in terms of how the families both survive and thrive, highlighting what I call their “underdog mentality” as well as the matters of life and death on both sides of the border, and 3) Nepantlera knowing, or an in-between knowing, which allows for attempts at bridge buildings and creation of Third Spaces. In regards to schooling, the transnational aspects of these families’ lives remained hidden, despite the students’ eagerness to share about their transnationalism. Schools tended to respond to their transnational families along the “continuum of the comfortable,” or a line where schools increased their outreach to these families only moderately and only along their terms. The intention of this research is to disrupt assimilationist discourses about immigrants, particularly in light of the need to be able to navigate an increasingly globalized world. Preliminary findings suggest the need to begin to reframe immigrants as transnational, value their language heritages, disrupt the comfort of educators in their outreach to transnational families, and for educators, in particular, to learn to do the work of border crossing in their outreach to transnational families. / text

This dissertation examines the participation and regulation of African American and Mexican women in the sex industry during the Progressive period of Texas to complicate ideas of womanhood. Between 1889 and 1925, sex workers survived, resisted, and contended with several shifts to their industry caused by the interventions of religious leaders, civil servants, community members, and reformers. Red light and related vice districts were socially- and legally-sanctioned tolerated forms of amusement and leisure throughout the state. Although black and brown madams, inmates, and prostitutes were not the most visible sex workers, they were often pivotal to that social and cultural fabric of numerous cities such as San Antonio, Fort Worth, Houston, and Laredo. The white slavery and antivice campaigns reshaped the discussions and reforms from the local to federal level. They created a social, economic, and political climate of stringent policing of vices that led to the eventual abolition of commercialized sex, where prostitutes of color embodied the worst tenets of womanhood. In contrast, the Mexican anarcho-socialist and African American progressive women’s club movements more broadly enhanced the views of women of color, demonstrating the ways that they (re)defined themselves. In this study, I argue that the intersection of prostitution and progressivism in the South/west represents a peculiar juncture in race- and sexual-making. At stake were the contested meanings of sexuality, race, and modernity under the growing vilification of vice by the national government and local groups in the Jim Crow Borderlands. While this dissertation contributes to the diverse historiographies of progressivism, the New South, and U.S. West, it also has important implications in enriching and facilitating the intersection of the histories of Mexican American and African American women in new and unconventional ways. Its significance is that it advances knowledge in topics of sexuality, race, and gender formation from a transborder and transregional framework. Moreover, it expands conceptual and methodological paradigms that presently exist in the field of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, by coupling them with the study of Jim Crow segregation of the Southwest. / text

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