Doctoral Dissertation Research: Migration, Social Mobility, and Self-Employment

University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill NC

Investigators

Abstract

This research directly informs policies to reduce income disparities. More than 80% of the world's population live in low- to middle-income countries. These regions are characterized by a high degree of socioeconomic stratification and low levels of intra- and intergenerational mobility. Although extensive research documents patterns of stratification, few studies consider particular mobility pathways available to different classes of workers. As the noted economist, Gary Fields (2013), observed in his recent report to the United Nations, a critical aim of post-2015 development policies should be identifying "interventions to promote the graduation of the self-employed from one segment to another, higher-earning form of employment." This dissertation responds to that call by identifying factors associated with both upward and downward economic mobility among the self-employed. Of the major strategies used to address income disparities, educational reform is an important one, but, initial results suggest that policies that provide business capital and access to credit to self-employed workers with little schooling may have the greatest short-term potential to promote mobility. This research also contributes to contemporary debates about immigrant incorporation in the United States. By documenting economic mobility pathways available to Mexican immigrants in their origin communities, this study will contextualize the process of economic incorporation within broader patterns of economic inequality in sending countries. It is impossible to truly understand and incorporate new arrivals without first understanding their origins. This project investigates two mobility pathways--self-employment and international migration--commonly used by workers of varying social classes in Mexico, a highly unequal country. To do so, the Co-PI will 1) assemble a nationally representative panel dataset of self-employed Mexican workers in 2008-2012; 2) analyze 52 in-depth interviews that were conducted with self-employed return migrants in an urban and industrial community, and 30 interviews that were conducted with self-employed return migrants in a rural and agrarian community; 3) develop a typology of self-employment that identifies marginal, temporary, and successful businesses; and 4) use quantitative methods to analyze how social class and market sector affects the risk of business failure among all self-employed workers. The proposed research will address two related research questions: First, is self-employment a mobility pathway in highly stratified labor markets? Second, how does migration experience in the United States shape self-employment trajectories among returning labor migrants in urban and rural sending communities?