La Jornada: Ciro Perez Silva
Translated by Latisha Hicks
The new government of Mexico is coping with the challenge of creating jobs for millions of Mexicans returning to the country from the United States. Because of the generally lower level of education, joining the ranks of organized crime is easy after finding no employment in their country of origin, warned researcher Carla Pederzini Villarreal of the Department of Economics at the University Iberoamericana (UIA).
She explains that the majority of those returning home are between the ages of 25 and 29, with little education, "and upon not finding employment are candidates to enlist in criminal gangs", which is indicated in the study, "Selection in times of crisis: exploring the selectivity of Mexicans who returned home between 2005-2010" that is part of an binational research project of the US and Mexico in coordination with Georgetown University, UIA and Ciesas [Center for Advanced Studies of the National Institute of Anthropology and History].
The researcher determined in the analysis, that "these include nationalized American youth from Mexican families who have returned to Mexico but have not constructed social networks, don't know Spanish, and face many difficulties integrating cultures." What's more is that the young adults who return with their families are facing a country without employment. What is found among them is "they neither study nor work or, in the worst of cases, this drives them into the ranks of organized crime."
She adds that, from 2005 to 2010, more than 100,000 Mexicans that returned home were men older than forty, that didn't have access to education, weren't able to resolve their migratory situation, and didn't visit their communities for a long time due to the difficulty of crossing the border without papers. This situation can be contrasted with that of immigrant women, whose return numbers are fewer because the majority of them serve in the domestic market, allowing them to remain invisible or intermingle with the native population.
According to the study, 139 of each 1000 Mexican men in the United States returned home in 2010, in contrast to 37 of each 1000 women. "We are in an age of demographic overage; there are many young people and the labor market isn't providing alternatives to integrate them. The option is either migration to Europe or the United States," she points out.
The demographics expert at UIA said that Mexico will face the challenge of incorporating into the culture and employment those families who have been deported, due to anti-immigration politics that have intensified since 2009 with Arizona Law SB1070, or the economic world crisis.
"A complex situation the next federal government will face is our migrants' reintegration to Mexico. For a long time, they were heroes, going and returning with money and triumph; only now they return with one hand behind and the other forward," a problem that is accentuated by the youth of Mexican families that stay in the United States with the hope of resolving things for their parents so they can return.
She believes that Mexico is not "in such a bad economic situation when it maintains or increases its investments in the automotive market and takes advantage of its strategic geographic location and prepares mexican human capital in the technical sector in order to place them in the economic sector which is being developed, above everything in industry." Spanish original