Immigration, Repatriation, and Deportation: The Mexican-Origin Population in the United States, 1920–1950

2013/12/01 by Brian Gratton, Emily Klancher Merchant · 42 citations
Social Sciences · #Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy #Race, History, and American Society #Migration and Labor Dynamics #Deportation #Repatriation #Immigration #Census #Government (linguistics) #Political science #Demographic economics #Population #Refugee #Development economics #Criminology #Economic growth #Demography #Sociology #Law #Economics

paper · open access · doi:10.1111/imre.12054

published in International Migration Review 47(4), 944-975 (SAGE Publishing)

openalex publication_date 2013/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

Abstract

Scholars conventionally assert that government authorities forcibly expelled 500,000 persons of Mexican origin from the U.S. in the 1930s, with more than half of those removed U.S. citizens. Estimates using census data indicate substantially lower numbers, limited governmental involvement, fewer citizens, and considerable voluntary departure. Voluntary decisions fit the repatriation strategy that had been common among young Mexican immigrants in the 1920s. Ironically, the 1940s Bracero Program, designed by Mexico and the U.S. to replicate the 1920s pattern of circular migration, led instead to massive illegal immigration and unprecedented levels of deportation.

Citations

• Mexican Immigration to the United States: Continuities and Changes
• Texas and the Bracero Program, 1942-1947
• The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924
• The Strange Career of the Illegal Alien: Immigration Restriction and Deportation Policy in the United States, 1921–1965
• Stimulus to Repatriation: The 1931 Federal Deportation Drive and the Los Angeles Mexican Community

Cited by

• History of Mexican Americans [wikipedia]

Related

• “I Want to Return to My Country”: Ethnic Mexicans Request the Right to Return during the Great Depression
• The New Era of Mexican Migration to the United States
• Mexican Emigration to the United States, 1897–1931
• From Deportees to Coerced Workers: Managing Labor and Migration Within Mexico After the Bracero Program
• Migrating Concepts