A tale of two contexts: U.S. migration and the labor force trajectories of Mexican women

Even though women have long participated in Mexico-U.S. migration studies assessing the labor market implications of international mobility for women are rare. Especially lacking are studies that follow a life-course approach and compare employment trajectories across contexts and in connection with other transitions. Using life-history data collected in Mexico and the United States, we explore the impact of migration on women's employment, focusing on how the determinants of employment vary across contexts. We show that U.S. residence eliminates or even reverses the employment returns to education found in Mexico, and that the constraints imposed on women's work by marriage are actually stronger in the U.S.

We also explicitly connect migration to other life-course events, documenting how the impact of context varies not only by marital status but also by where women's unions were formed.