Current Research Projects

CCIS conducts a number of interdisciplinary, multi-year research projects on various countries of immigration from a comparative perspective.

• Explaining Outcomes of Immigration Control Policies: A Comparative Study of Mexican Migration to the United States and Latin American/North African Migration to Spain
  This project seeks to determine whether various immigration control measures implemented by the United States (to deter unauthorized immigration from Mexico) and Spain (to control entry and employment of migrants from Ecuador and Morocco) during the past ten years have actually changed migration behavior at the individual level, in the direction intended by policymakers. The unintended consequences of these immigration control measures will also be explored, such as increasing the length of stay among unauthorized immigrants, increasing fatalities, fueling professional people-smuggling, and boosting migrant remittances. 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. We will also study how the behavior of potential, first-time Mexico-to-U.S. migrants has been influenced by the new control measures. The research will be longitudinal and cross-nationally comparative, using relatively small (but deeply studied) samples of migrants in previously studied communities and neighborhoods in Mexico and Spain for which detailed base-line data are available. 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 certain policy outcomes. In the Mexican case, returned migrants and potential migrants in two high-emigration communities will be interviewed each year for two consecutive years. In the Spanish case, special attention will be devoted to differences in how government policies have affected migrants originating in Ecuador and Morocco. Data collection methods will include standardized, in-home survey interviews and unstructured life history interviews. Principal investigators: Wayne Cornelius (UCSD) and Antonio Izquierdo (Universidad de la Coruña, Spain).

• Binational Political Incorporation of Mexican Immigrants in the United States
  This project explores actual and potential political incorporation of Mexican migrants to the United States, on both sides of the border. Focusing on Mexican citizens living in the United States, we will examine the factors that promote or inhibit integration into the U.S. and/or Mexican political systems. We will also analyze how the two forms of political incorporation intersect: a zero-sum relationship, whereby fuller incorporation into one national political system depends on withdrawing from the other, vs. an additive or cumulative phenomenon, wherein political incorporation in one national context fosters fuller engagement in the other. The main emphasis will be on voting (actual or potential) in home-country and host-country elections. Data will be collected through a large-scale sample survey of Mexican immigrants residing in the San Diego and Chicago metropolitan areas, and in small towns in Indiana and North Carolina. In-depth focus group discussions and a field experiment in political mobilization will also be conducted. The findings should be useful to scholars debating the nature of transnational citizenship as well as policymakers in the United States and Mexico who are considering electoral and immigration law reforms. Principal investigators: Wayne Cornelius (UCSD) and James McCann (Purdue University).

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