MIGRATION AND PRODUCTIVE INVESTMENT: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
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land (if the household does not own a plot), to clean and prepare the site for planting, and to buy and plant the avocado trees. Subsequently, periodic investments are required to maintain the orchard. In general, it is only at the five-year mark, when the trees are in full production, that the orchard becomes self-sustaining and profitable. A significant number of San Juanico’s migrants were able to seize this investment opportunity. How is it that these migrants were able to become engaged in avocado production when most of them were experiencing serious economic deprivations? Most producers followed a three-step strategy of migrating to the United States, accumulating capital, and establishing avocado orchards. To examine the timing of and relationship among these events, the migration prevalence ratio, that is, the proportion of the population of San Juanico that had traveled to the United States, was estimated for each year between 1950 and 2005 (for more information on how to estimate this ratio, see Massey, Goldring and Durand 1994).24 As figure 10.1 illustrates, between 1950 and 1969 the percentage of the population that migrated to FIGURE 10.1
Migration Prevalence Ratio, San Juanico and Xhániro, 1950–2005 45 40
migration prevalence ratio
35 30 25 20 15 10 5
San Juanico Source: Author’s analysis of Mexican Migration Project data.
Xhániro
05 20
00 20
95 19
90 19
85 19
19 80
75 19
70 19
65 19
60 19
55 19
19
50
0