Not just money. How organised crime, violence, and insecurity are shaping emigration in Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala

ABSTRACT

This article utilises logistic regression analysis to determine the factors that influence people from Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala deciding to flee to other countries. By broadening the traditional migration literature, we argue that organised crime, violence, and insecurity, not purely economic calculations, play a crucial role in one’s decision to emigrate to the U.S. Although concretely economic motivations, such as the household’s wage level, and social capital-related factors like having family ties in the destination country, are strong correlates in our models, we show that victimisation and fear of crime also affect the decision to live or work abroad. We contend that these factors are directly related to the presence of gangs and other criminal organisations in all three countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• organised crime
• violence
• Central America
• Mexico

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the two anonymous peer reviewers for their excellent comments. A special thanks to José Miguel Cruz, Marten Brienen, Victor Hinojosa, and Barnett Koven for their consultations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We recognise there are limitations of using data from one year. We decided to use the most recent data and focus on a one-year time period to decrease noise in our model. Our goal in this article is not to explain trends over time, but rather to analyse factors that influence emigration today. More studies using panel data research is needed in the future to see how these trends change over time.

2. These figures represent a sampling error of ±2.5% for each country. Further explanation of the methodology and estimated design effects can be found on LAPOP’s website. For more, see: https://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/ab2018/AmericasBarometer_2018-19_Technical_Report_W_102919.pdf

3. The data on gangs in Central America, for instance, show that gangs recruit youth from marginalised neighbourhoods. One recent study with nearly 1,200 gang members in El Salvador reveals that 53% of the people surveyed were between the ages of 13 and 23 years old. While some of the founding leaders of the MS-13 and the 18^th Street gangs are older, the majority of gang members are youth (Cruz et al., 2017).

4. Moreover, mixing and matching datasets presents various methodological challenges.

5. CLARIFY runs simulations based on the estimated model and generates predicted probabilities from user-set covariate value inputs. A typical methodology for this approach involves setting all variables to an average (mean) value and varying the variable of interest. This analysis employed this approach, varying the binary victim of crime variable only to yield the predicted probabilities discussed here. See: (King et al., 2000).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sebastián A. Cutrona

Sebastián A. Cutrona is Associate Professor at the Jindal School of International Affairs. He earned his PhD in International Studies from the University of Miami. In addition to Fulbright, the organization that funded his studies in the United States, Dr. Cutrona has held scholarships from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the Latin American Studies Association, the Santander Bank, among others. His most recent book, published by Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires (EUDEBA) in 2022, is Drogas, Política y Actores Sociales en la Argentina Democrática. Dr. Cutrona has taught drug trafficking and organized crime at the University of Miami (United States), Universidad de San Andrés (Argentina), and Universidad Nacional de La Rioja (Argentina). His research interests are organized crime, drug policy, and Latin American politics.

Jonathan D. Rosen

Jonathan D. Rosen is Assistant Professor in the Professional Security Studies Department at New Jersey City University. Dr. Rosen earned his Master’s in political science from Columbia University and received his Ph.D. in international studies from the University of Miami in 2012. Dr. Rosen’s research focuses on drug trafficking, organized crime, and security. He has published 20 books with Routledge, Lexington Books, Palgrave Macmillan, the University of Florida, and the State University Press of New York. He has published journal articles in Trends in Organized Crime, the Journal of Criminal Justice, Deviant Behavior, International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, and Contexto Internacional, Revista CS, among other journals. He has participated in grant-funded research studies in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, and Mexico. In 2017, for example, Jonathan and his colleagues at Florida International University interviewed and surveyed nearly 1,200 active and former gang members in El Salvador.

Katy A. Lindquist

Katy A. Lindquist, is a Principal Research Scientist at NSI, Inc. She has a background in political scientist with broad and diverse methodological training in quantitative and qualitative approaches to social science. She was formerly a principal investigator and faculty researcher at START (the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism) at the University of Maryland. Her doctorate in Political Science is from the University of Chicago, where she studied international relations and comparative politics, and her A.B. in Government is from Dartmouth College.