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Science 14 August 1987:
Vol. 237. no. 4816, pp. 733 - 738
DOI: 10.1126/science.237.4816.733
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Articles

The Social Process of International Migration

DOUGLAS S. MASSEY 1 and FELIPE GARCÍA ESPAÑA 2

1 Professor of sociology at the Population Research Center, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637.
2 Doctoral candidate in the Graduate Group in Demography, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6298.

The social process of network growth helps to explain the rapid increase in the migration of Mexicans to the United States during the 1970s. Migrant networks are webs of social ties that link potential migrants in sending communities to people in receiving societies, and their existence lowers the costs of international movement. With each person that becomes a migrant, the cost of migration is reduced for a set of friends and relatives, inducing them to migrate and further expanding the network. As a result of this dynamic interaction, network connections to the United States have become widespread throughout Mexico, and the probability of international migration from that country is high.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
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Plant Receptor-Like Kinase Gene Family: Diversity, Function, and Signaling.
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Sci. STKE 2001, re22
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Anti-immigrant Sentiment and the Problem of Reproduction/Maintenance in Mexican Immigration to the United States.
T. D. Wilson (2000)
Critique of Anthropology 20, 191-213
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One Border, Two Transitions: Mexican Migration to the United States as a Two-Way Process.
S. S. ZAHNISER (1999)
American Behavioral Scientist 42, 1350-1380
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The Current Situation in Mexican Immigration.
G. VERNEZ and D. RONFELDT (1991)
Science 251, 1189-1193
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The Social and Economic Origins of Immigration.
D. S. MASSEY (1990)
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 510, 60-72
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