Envisioning Mexico's Migration Future: Three Scenarios to Inform Policy and Transform Narratives

Claudia Masferrer, El Colegio de México, A.C. Centro de Estudios demograficos, Urbanos Y Ambientales
Víctor M. García-Guerrero, El Colegio de Mexico
Daniela Ghio, University of Catania

Immigration to Mexico and people on the move to the United States have been subject of much politics, and often very few empirical evidences. The increasing tensions towards migration has promoted the idea of the need to control emigration closing the northern Mexico-United States border, as well as controlling immigration by closing the southern Mexico-Guatemala border. In this paper we study the demographic future of Mexico under three extreme migration scenarios: assuming 1) no emigration; 2) no immigration; and 3) no emigration nor immigration. We compare these scenarios to the projected future with an open population, using official population projections (2020-2070) and the same methodology, except for the three international migration scenarios. Population projections where estimated using the Cohort Component Method that extrapolates historical trends using time-series analysis combining probabilistic and deterministic methods for calculating each demographic variable. We compare key focal dimensions at the national and state level: total population, population growth, total emigrants and immigrants, age-structures, and dependency ratios. Narratives associated with potential negative impacts of migration are not easy to change. By better understanding the demographic future of Mexico we aim to inform Mexican immigration policy that is based more on demographic empirical data rather than politics

Keywords: Population projections, forecasts, and estimations, International Migration, Population Policies, Migrant Populations and Refugees

See extended abstract.