Undocumented and Unwell: Legal Status and Health among Mexican Migrants

Abstract

This study examines the consequences of legal status for the health of Mexicans who have migrated to and returned from the U.S. Returned migrants, the focus of this study, make up a significant, albeit selective, share of the broader Mexican migrant population. Prior to the escalation of border enforcement in the late 1980s, undocumented migration was overwhelmingly seasonal and circular. Between 1965 and 1985, an estimated 86% of undocumented entries were offset by departures (Massey and Singer 1995). Increased border enforcement in the 1990s and 2000s, however, reduced return migration to zero (Massey, Durand, and Pren 2015), and net migration turned sharply negative during the Great Recession of 2007–2009, during which some one million immigrants left the country. Since 2009, net migration from Mexico has been zero or negative, with few migrants either departing for the U.S. or returning home (Chort & de la Rupelle 2016; Gonzalez-Barrera 2015).