Guest Workers or Colonized Labor? Mexican Labor Migration to the United States

Scholars and journalists have looked to Mexico's economy and society for the chief causes of Mexican migration to the United States. This book presents a contrasting explanation, examining the history of relations between the two countries. Gilbert Gonzalez dispels the myth that Mexican migration conforms to the pattern of earlier European migrations. Mexican migration, he shows, is the social consequence of US economic domination of Mexico. Since the late nineteenth century, US capitalist enterprises have controlled important sectors of the Mexican economy, a dominance that uprooted small farmers from traditional villages. These uprooted families eventually proceeded to the United States to be integrated into the largest capitalist corporations in the world. This mass migration has had a number of consequences, from indentured labor to legal and illegal labor. Gonzalez's book examines recent Bush initiatives, NAFTA measures, and the history of antecedent bracero programs supported by US government and business to show how colonial explanations of migration better fit historical patterns.