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Dateline: January 16, 2009 ... Willimantic, CT
Contact: James W. Russell
Phone: (860) 465-4631
Fax: (860) 465-4610
E-Mail: RussellJ@easternct.edu
Web Address: www.easternct.edu/personal/faculty/russellj/
ClassandRaceFormationinNorthAmerica.htm
WILLIMANTIC, CT - January 16, 2009 - The largest surge ever in legal
and unauthorized Mexican migration to the United States began after
the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect.
That is the conclusion of sociologist James W. Russell who studied
migration patterns between 1910 and 2008 for his new book, Class and
Race Formation in North America (University of Toronto Press, January
1, 2009).
In 1990, before NAFTA went into effect, 13.6 percent of Mexican-origin
persons in the three countries of North America-the United States,
Mexico, and Canada--lived in the United States. By 2000, after the
entry into force of NAFTA, that percentage jumped to 17.5, the largest
ever ten-year increase.
In 2005, the last year for which figures exist, it jumped further to
20.5 percent. Put differently, between 1990 and 2005 the Mexican-
origin population in the United States increased by over 50 percent.
This occurred despite former Mexican and U.S. presidents Carlos
Salinas de Gortari and Bill Clinton both arguing that with NAFTA
Mexico would export products rather than people. Precisely the
opposite occurred, according to Russell.
The main reason: NAFTA allowed tariff-free imports to flood into
Mexico, taking markets away from many Mexican peasants and
manufacturers. With work no longer available, displaced peasants and
workers joined in increasing numbers the migrant route north into the
United States.
Russell argues that NAFTA had the same effect on migration and for the
same reasons that Operation Bootstrap had in stimulating migration
from Puerto Rico to the United States from the 1950s to the present.
Before Operation Bootstrap went into effect there were relatively few
Puerto Ricans living in the United States. Now over half (50.8
percent) live in the United States.
His findings in Class and Race Formation in North America are part of
a larger study of how social classes and race relations have developed
differently in the United States and its continental neighbors of
Mexico and Canada over the five centuries since Europeans first
arrived.
James W. Russell is University Professor of Sociology at Eastern
Connecticut State University. He was formerly Fulbright Research
Professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico
City. He is the author of five other books including Double Standard:
Social Policy in Europe and the United States (Rowman & Littlefield,
2006). His articles have appeared in the New York Times, The Nation,
and The Progressive. He has been interviewed on radio stations
throughout the United States and Mexico.
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