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Abstract
The recent publication of an expansive national dataset, the Integrated Public Use Microdata Sample, allows for new analyses of the historical geography and settlement of various immigrant and ethnic groups in the United States. The present research explores the growth, development, and geographic dispersion of the ethnic Mexican population, and outlines some of the demographic and social characteristics within significant clusters of this population in the United States across the first half of the twentieth century. The analysis does not attempt to overturn other geographies and ethnographies in Mexican American history, but through its ability to elucidate broad, national patterns it is able to create a more dynamic view of settlement, demonstrating the role of immigrants and of women immigrants in particular. Results indicate that place matters: the geographical context of arrival and settlement were key factors in differentiating communities and the lives of those who lived in them.
Notes
Source: CitationGratton and Gutmann 2000.
*Free population only.
Note: No maximized subsample estimates are reported for 1850, 1880, 1900, and 1950 because no variables are available beyond those used in the consistent subsamples. For 1940 and 1950, both person record and sample record (sr) subsamples have been produced.
Source: CitationGratton and Gutmann 2000.
*Sample record estimates.
Source: CitationRuggles et al. 2004.
1Following CitationGutiérrez (1995), we use Mexican immigrants or Mexicans to describe persons born in Mexico and Mexican American for persons born in the United States or to refer to settings in this country, such as a Mexican American community or Mexican American history. To refer to the combined population we use ethnic Mexican or Mexican-origin.
2We describe selection more completely below. A full description of the methods we used for identification can be found in CitationGratton and Gutmann (2000). Instructions on how to access the datasets and reconstruct them for analysis can be found at the Mexican American Trajectories Project: http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/ATMAF/. For details on IPUMS, see CitationRuggles et al. (2004) and the Web site: http://www.ipums.umn.edu.
3The Hispanic Oversample data sets are publicly available. See CitationGutmann and Ruggles (1998) for details.
4Even though the collapsing of “undetermined” cases may have caused us to lose some of the distinctiveness of certain subgroups of ethnic Mexicans, we feel that the benefits are far more important in creating this new, expansive historical dataset. It is also important to note that when we break down the geography by state economic area (SEA), we can quickly begin to distinguish demographic and social characteristics of the Hispano subgroup—which adds a new dimension to Nostrand's work on this culture group.
5We measure occupational status from 1910 to 1950 by using the “occscore” variable provided in the IPUMS dataset. OCCSCORE is a constructed variable that assigns each occupation in all years a relative value for the median total income (in hundreds of 1950 dollars) of all persons with that particular occupation in 1950. That is, it provides a continuous measure of occupations according to the economic rewards enjoyed by people working at them in 1950 (see CitationRuggles et al. 2004).
*Support for the research was provided by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD37824-02) on “Assimilation Trajectories in Mexican American Families,” by Principal Investigator, Brian Gratton. The authors wish to acknowledge the helpful suggestions of the two anonymous referees, as well as Paul A. Peters, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at The University of Texas at Austin, for helping to create updated maps for this article.