The reshaping of Mexican Labor Exports under NAFTA: Paradoxes and Challenges

This presentation will analyse the new dynamics within Mexican labor migrations to the United States in the context of the economic integration of the two countries, which is taking place with the introduction of neoliberal policies and, particularly, under the influence of NAFTA. It argues that Mexican workers play a fundamental role in the industrial restructuring of the United States and that this role has triggered a series of contradictions; these, in turn, threaten the viability of the process and create an urgent need for a rethinking of Mexico's development model and of the policies currently governing migration and development. To this end, it offers a critique of the Mexican export model, analyzes the dialectic that exists between economic integration and international migration, and questions the prevailing outlook that underlies public policy.

About the speaker

Raúl Delgado Wise is Director of the Doctoral Program in Development Studies at the University of Zacatecas (Mexico) and Executive Director of the International Migration and Development Network. He is author/editor of 14 books and more than 100 essays, including book chapters and refereed articles. Dr. Delgado has been guest lecturer in Canada, the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Italy, Spain and various Latin American countries. He received the annual prize for economics research “Maestro Jesús Silva Herzog” in 1993, and is a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, of the National System of Researchers, and of several scholarly associations in Canada, the United States, Latin America and Europe. He is editor of the Journal Migración y Desarrollo, member of the editorial committee of several academic journals in the US, Chile, Argentina and Mexico, and editor of the book series “Latin America and the New World Order” for Miguel Angel Porrúa.