The return of United States migrants to Mexico: Impacts and challenges for Zacatecas

Abstract

In Mexico, international migration has been viewed, for more than 30 years, as a unidirectional flow northward, thus diminishing the importance of migrants who return. However, aspects such as the severe economic crisis in the United States (U.S.) (2007-2013) and its repercussions on unemployment, the long process of militarization of the northern border since the 1990s, and the anti-immigrant legal reforms throughout the country over the past 15 years have resulted in the return of more than two-million Mexican migrants to their homeland just in the past five years (Gallegos, 2014). This poses new challenges for research and the design of public policies to address the impacts of that homecoming, in order to help with the reincorporation of those migrants and to support their families. The return of migrants has had important effects upon Mexico‟s social and economic life. This chapter examines the principal impacts faced by returning migrants to the state of Zacatecas in terms of their health and education. Thus, through an analysis of the impacts in those areas, it is possible to formulate a proposal for a „Support Program for the Comprehensive Reintegration of Migrants and their Families‟ to be implemented by the Federal and State government, in collaboration with the Federations of Zacatecan Hometown Associations. Studies on the