Description: "Texas-Style Exclusion shows that Mexican immigrants, the nation's largest contemporary immigrant group, encountered an inhospitable environment when they started settling in Texas in the early twentieth century. It was far more repressive and offered far fewer opportunities than those provided to the millions of children of immigrants living in the Northeast and Midwest. Moreover, the initial disadvantages for Mexican immigrants living in Texas in the 1920s and 1930s were transmitted to their children, and to some extent their grandchildren, leading to their slow rates of upward mobility and social integration. The authors focus especially on educational attainment since it is a major indicator of a group's socioeconomic position in the United States. Educational attainment is strongly related to a person's access to schooling and is a crucial predictor of other important life outcomes, including income, occupation, health, and even length of life. Unlike other indicators of immigrant integration such as income, occupation, or residential segregation, education is easily interpretable and is measured consistently across all the census data sources examined"--
Review Quotes: "Do not underestimate Mexican immigrants, argue Jennifer Van Hook and James Bachmeier, who offer a sweeping account of the 37.4 million Americans of Mexican origin in the United States. Tracing Mexican immigrant families over eight decades and three generations, they go beyond purely optimistic or pessimistic portraits and show how geography mattered. Mexicans in California had access to expanding educational systems during the Industrial era and nearly closed the educational attainment gap with native-born whites. Those in Texas did not, resulting in 'Texas-style exclusion.' High per capita investments helped level the playing field for Mexican immigrants of yore. It can do so again."
--Jennifer Lee, Julian Clarence Levi Professor of Social Sciences, Columbia University