This pilot study represents the first systematically comparative, fieldwork-based study of migration from developing countries to the United States and Spain. We seek to determine whether various immigration control measures implemented by the United States (to deter unauthorized immigration from Mexico) and Spain (to regulate the entry, legal status, and employment of migrant workers from Ecuador and Morocco) during the past ten years have actually changed migration behavior at the individual level, in the directions intended by policymakers. The unintended consequences of these immigration control measures will also be explored, such as increasing the rate of permanent settlement among unauthorized migrants, increasing fatalities resulting from clandestine entry, fueling the professional people-smuggling industry, and changing the composition of migrant flows (especially by gender and national origin).

The project seeks to explain these policy outcomes by collecting new individual and community-level data that will enable us to establish direct linkages between changes in immigration control policies and changes (or lack of change) in migrants’ behavior. Types of behavior to be studied include the decision to migrate internationally, the timing of such decisions, the migrant’s choice of destination, mode of entry (including, in the case of unauthorized migrants, the choice between unassisted entry and reliance on professional smugglers), and participation in receiving-country legalization and labor-importation programs. We will also study how the behavior of potential, first-time international migrants still residing in their home countries may be influenced by receiving-country control measures.

Cross-national comparisons will be used to show how similar immigration control measures perform in different socio-cultural contexts and to better isolate the causal mechanisms leading to specific policy outcomes. In the Mexican case, returned migrants and potential migrants in two migrant-sending towns in different states will be interviewed in depth, as well as samples of long-term (“permanent settler”) immigrants from these towns living in southern California. In the Spanish case, Ecuadorean and Moroccan immigrants will be interviewed in six provinces, including Madrid and the Canary Islands. Special attention will be devoted to differences in how Spanish government policies have affected migrants originating in Ecuador and Morocco. A small sample of potential migrants still living in Ecuador will also be interviewed. Data collection methods will include standardized, in-home survey interviews and semi-structured life-history interv iews. After completion of the PME-Metropolis-supported research, we will seek funding for a larger study that will enable data collection in additional migrant-sending communities in Mexico, Ecuador, and Morocco, and additional migrant-receiving communities in the United States and Spain, as well as longer-term monitoring of recent immigration policy developments in the U.S. and Spain.