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218 changes: 218 additions & 0 deletions src/pages/documentation.astro
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---
import Layout from "../layouts/Layout.astro"
import CircleIcon from "../components/svg/Circle"
---

<Layout title="Documentation" description="About the Project">
<div class="flex flex-col gap-6">
<section class="flex flex-col gap-3.5">
<h2>Selecting Communities</h2>
<p>
The process of selecting communities for the Mexican Migration has traditionally relied on
anthropological methods. Communities are chosen after a personal reconnaissance of the
geographic area to be studied by the principal investigators. Because the project initially
focused on Western Mexico, the traditional heartland for migration to the United States,
practically all of the earliest communities had significant indices of out-migration, which
could easily be detected using field interviews and simple observations of the frequency of
new homes, foreign license plates, currency exchanges, and international courier services.
</p>
<div>
<p>
Until 2000, we lacked access to a valid measure to indicate the intensity of emigration
from specific municipalities and the only measure indicating migration was the sex ratio.
The only demographic fact regularly considered was the community’s sex ratio, which offer
general picture of the intensity of the process of international migration because in
Mexico emigration is so heavily male. After an initial round of fieldwork, investigators
compared their preliminary data with census statistics and formation available from
bibliographic sources. However, the MMP has never explicitly sought to survey only
communities with high rates of out-migration. Investigators simply seek to corroborate
that there is some migration from the community in question before proceeding. Then they
select four specific locations to represent each of four levels of urbanization:
</p>

<div class="flex flex-col py-6 gap-4 md:grid-cols-2 md:grid md:items-center">
<div>
<div class="flex items-center">
<CircleIcon styling="fill-secondary-blue-500" />
<p class="font-semibold px-2">Ranchos</p>
</div>

<p class="italic px-2">fewer than 2,500 inhabitants</p>
</div>
<div>
<div class="flex items-center">
<CircleIcon styling="fill-primary-500" />
<p class="font-semibold px-2">Pueblos (Towns)</p>
</div>

<p class="italic px-2">2,500 to 10,000 inhabitants</p>
</div>
<div>
<div class="flex items-center">
<CircleIcon styling="fill-secondary-brown-500" />
<p class="font-semibold px-2">Mid-sized Cities</p>
</div>

<p class="italic px-2">10,000 to 100,000 inhabitants</p>
</div>
<div>
<div class="flex items-center">
<CircleIcon styling="fill-secondary-blue-700" />
<p class="font-semibold px-2">Large City</p>
</div>

<p class="italic px-2">
usually a particular neighborhood within in a state’s capital city
</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>

<p>
In the pueblos and ranchos, investigators conduct a complete census of dwellings and
undertake random selection from the resulting list. In mid-sized cities and urban
metropolises, investigators generally chose a traditional, well-established neighborhood–one
not dominated by recent rural-urban migrants. As a result, the urban samples are in reality
samples of urban neighborhoods or specifically demarcated quarters. In all cases, the
neighborhood must have at least 1,200 enumerated dwellings, from which a random sample of
200 is taken.
</p>
<p>
The methodology of the MMP thus yields results with a high degree of representativeness at
the community level, and in some of the smaller pueblos and ranchos investigators have been
able to survey every household in the community. Given that the sample is not targeted to
migrants per se, but surveys the community as a whole, the project needs a fairly large
sample size to generate a significant number of migrants. Traditional methods of cluster
sampling generally survey small numbers of respondents across a large number of areas, but
this generally yields small numbers of migrants to study an inability to make
generalizations at the community level. For example, rather than interviewing 20 households
in five communities we interview 100 households in one community, thereby enabling us to
make generalizations about migratory processes at the community level. If the frequency of
migration is 30%, on average the surveys would contain only six migrants in each of the five
communities, rather than 30 migrants in one community.
</p>
<p>
At present we are able to draw upon an index of migratory developed for municipalities in
Mexico’s National Population Council (CONAPO) based on the 2000 and 2010 census. This index
provides reliable information about the level of U.S. migration prevailing at the municipal
level and is particularly useful in identifying new communities of origin for migrants in
new sending states, where heretofore little information has been available. In sum, after 25
years of field experience, the MMP continues to use anthropological criteria for selecting
communities, which are then corroborated with available data from the census and other
sources to confirm the existence of migrants before making the final selection.
</p>
</section>
<section class="flex flex-col gap-3.5">
<h2>Ethnosurvey</h2>
<p>
The Ethnosurvey is eclectic and draws on methods and approaches well-known in sociology,
anthropology, psychology, and education. Its contribution and complexity lies in the way all
these methods are combined within a single study. The main idea for the Ethnosurvey is “to
complement qualitative and quantitative procedures, so one’s weakenesses become the other’s
strength, yielding a body of data with greater reliability and more internal validity than
is possible to achieve using either method alone.” (Massey 1987).
</p>
<p>
The Ethnosurvey contains a series of tables that are organized around a particular topic,
giving coherence to the “conversation”. It follows a semi structured format to generate an
interview schedule that is flexible, unobtrusive and non-threatening. It requires that
identical information be obtained for each person, but questions, wording and ordering are
not fixed. The precise phrasing and timing of each query is left to the judgment of the
interviewer, depending on circumstances.
</p>
<p>
In addition, the Ethnosurvey is explicitly designed to provide quantitative data for
multi-level analysis by compiling data at the individual, household, and community levels.
Detailed community-level data are compiled at the time of the survey by the fieldwork
supervisor; these data are of great help to interpret the socioeconomic context within which
individuals and households interact (Massey 1987). This small questionnaire is referred to
as the Community Data Inventory.
</p>
</section>
<section class="flex flex-col gap-3.5">
<h2>Interview Process</h2>
<p>
The questionnaires are applied in three phases. In the first phase, basic social and
demographic data are collected from all members of the household. The interview begins by
identifying the household head and systematically enumerating the spouse and children,
beginning with the oldest. All children of the head are listed on the questionnaire whether
or not they live at home, but if a son or daughter is a member of another household, this
fact is recorded. A child is considered to be living in a separate household if he or she is
married, maintains a separate house or kitchen, and organizes expenses separately. After
listing the head, spouse, and children, other household members are identified and their
relationship to the head clarified.
</p>
<div>
<div class="flex items-center">
<CircleIcon styling="fill-primary-500" />
<h3 class="text-primary-500 font-semibold px-2">Phase 1</h3>
</div>
<p class="px-2">
A particularly important task in the first phase of the questionnaire is the
identification of people with prior migrant experience in either the United States or
Mexico. For those individuals with migrant experience the interviewer records the total
number of U.S. trips, as well as information about the first and most recent U.S. trips,
including the year, duration, destination, U.S. occupation, legal status, and hourly wage.
This exercise is then repeated for first and most recent migrations within Mexico.
</p>
</div>
<div>
<div class="flex items-center">
<CircleIcon styling="fill-secondary-blue-500" />
<h3 class="text-secondary-blue-500 font-semibold px-2">Phase 2</h3>
</div>
<p class="px-2">
The second phase of the ethnosurvey questionnaire compiles a year-by-year life history for
all household heads, including a childbearing history, a property history, a housing
history, a business history, and a labor history. The goal of this phase is to capture
occupational mobility, health status, migration history, and family formation.
</p>
</div>
<div>
<div class="flex items-center">
<CircleIcon styling="fill-secondary-brown-500" />
<h3 class="text-secondary-brown-500 font-semibold px-2">Phase 3</h3>
</div>
<p class="px-2">
The third and final phase of the questionnaire gathers information about the household
head's experiences on his or her most recent trip to the United States, including the mode
of border-crossing, the kind and number of accompanying relatives, the kind and number of
relatives already present in the United States, the number of social ties that had been
formed with U.S. citizens, English language ability, job characteristics, and use of U.S.
social services.
</p>
</div>
</section>
<section class="flex flex-col gap-3.5">
<h2>Data Coding/Weights</h2>
<div class="flex flex-col gap-3.5">
<h3 class="font-semibold">Data Coding and File Construction</h3>
<p>
After the ethnosurvey questionnaires are completed and revised, data are entered in
Mexico. The entry programs perform initial screening, range checks, and simple tests for
logical consistency. The preliminary files are then transferred to Princeton University,
where additional data cleaning is performed, numeric codes are assigned to occupations and
places, and the final data sets are assembled into six primary data files, each providing
a unique perspective of Mexican migrants, their families, and their experiences. SIX
primary files have been created, each corresponding to a different unit of analysis: PERS,
MIG, MIGOTHER, HOUSE, LIFE and SPOUSE. Data at the community level have been compiled in
the file: COMMUN.
</p>
</div>
<div class="flex flex-col gap-3.5">
<h3 class="font-semibold">Weights</h3>
<p>
The MMP database provides community- and sample-specific weights. For each community, you
will see a single weight for all the households in the home country sample and another
weight for all the households in the US sample.
</p>
<p>
When working with pooled data from multiple communities, these weights give you the option
to adjust your estimates in order to take into account the relative sizes of all the
sampling frames. Whether you will need to weight your estimates or not will depend on what
your goal is.
</p>
</div>
</section>
</div>
</Layout>