Estimating Internal Migration in Contemporary Mexico and its Relevance in Gridded Population Distributions

Evaluation and extension of the radiation model for internal migration

Human migration is often studied using gravity models. These models, however, have known limitations, including analytic inconsistencies and a dependence on empirical data to calibrate multiple parameters for the region of interest. Overcoming these limitations, the radiation model has been proposed as an alternative, universal approach to predicting different forms of human mobility, but has not been adopted for studying migration. Here we show, using data on within-country migration from the USA and Mexico, that the radiation model systematically underpredicts long-range moves, while the traditional gravity model performs well for large distances. The universal opportunity model, an extension of the radiation model, shows an improved fit of long-range moves compared to the original radiation model, but at the cost of introducing two additional parameters. We propose a more parsimonious extension of the radiation model that introduces a single parameter. We demonstrate that it fits the data over the full distance spectrum and also-unlike the universal opportunity model-preserves the analytical property of the original radiation model of being equivalent to a gravity model in the limit of a uniform population distribution.

How local community context shapes labour market re-entry and resource mobilisation among return migrants: an examination of rural and urban communities in Mexico

Recent estimates suggest that nearly half of all international migrants return to their communities of origin within five years of emigration. Motivated by high levels of return migration, scholars are increasingly investigating the ways in which return migrants mobilize resources they acquire abroad, such as human and financial capital, to achieve economic mobility upon return. Yet, resource mobilization and labor market reintegration unfold in heterogeneous community contexts. To understand the labor market reintegration of return migrants in various local contexts, we draw on an eight-year study that included interviews with 153 Mexican returnees to examine how labor market reintegration and resource mobilization vary across three types of communities: urban, urban-adjacent, and rural. U.S.-Mexico migration is the largest binational return flow in the world, providing a unique opportunity to explore variations in the reintegration experiences of returnees. We find that labor market reintegration and resource mobilization are contextually embedded processes that respond to the social, economic, and spatial features of migrants' origin communities. Following our analysis, we extend three testable hypotheses that can guide future research on international migration and return.