The Migration of Skilled Women from Monterrey to Houston: The Case of Bilingual Mexican Teachers

ABSTRACT

This article examines the integration of skilled Mexican female workers in the Monterrey labor market, and the relationship with the genesis of migratory flows toward the city of Houston. Following this line of investigation, the feminization of Mexican migration toward the US is considered, in part, to be the result of unfavorable conditions affecting qualified women professionals in their country of origin, who find an employment niche in the basic schooling system of Texas. However, the findings obtained in the fieldwork conducted beg the question of whether this type of migration can truly be defined as skilled.

KEYWORDS:

• Skilled female workers
• transnational migration
• bilingual teachers
• labor market
• Texas
• Mexico

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ To facilitate reading of this text, the expression, metropolitan area of Monterrey, may be substituted by the acronym ZMM or simply Monterrey.

² It should be pointed out that the definition of migrant and non-migrant is characterized by very weak confines owing to the fact that they are not established and permanent roles but rather changing and contingent constructions.

³ For all the interviewed women, age is considered at the time of the interview.

⁴ To protect the anonymity of people, we use abbreviations. All interviews were conducted in Spanish and here the English translation is provided.

⁵ Mexico City (Universidad Iberoamericana and Universidad Intercontinental), metropolitan area of Guadalajara (Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara), León (Universidad Iberoamericana), Puebla (Universidad Iberoamericana) and the metropolitan area of Monterrey (Universidad Regiomontana).

⁶ This is a private university located in Monterrey.

⁷ https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/immigrate/employment.html#overview viewed on 30 June 2017.