Book Talk: Authors-Meet-Critics on "Skills of the 'Unskilled': Work and Mobility Among Mexican Migrants"

The International Institute and the UCLA Program on International Migration are pleased to present an Authors-Meet-Critics presentation for the new publication Skills of the "Unskilled": Work and Mobility among Mexican Migrants (UC Press, 2015), co-authored by Jacqueline Hagan, Ruben Hernandez-Leon, and Jean-Luc Demonsant.

About Book:

Most labor and migration studies classify migrants with limited formal education or credentials as “unskilled.” Despite the value of migrants' work experiences and the substantial technical and interpersonal skills developed throughout their lives, the labor-market contributions of these migrants are often overlooked and their mobility pathways poorly understood. Skills of the “Unskilled” reports the findings of a five-year study that draws on research including interviews with 320 Mexican migrants and return migrants in North Carolina and Guanajuato, Mexico. The authors uncover these migrants’ lifelong human capital and identify mobility pathways associated with the acquisition and transfer of skills across the migratory circuit, including reskilling, occupational mobility, job jumping, and entrepreneurship.

Jacqueline Maria Hagan is Robert G. Parr Distinguished Term Professor of Sociology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research interests include international migration, labor markets, gender, religion, and human rights. She is author of Deciding to Be Legal and Migration Miracle.

Rubén Hernández-León is Associate Professor of Sociology at University of California, Los Angeles, and Director of the UCLA Center for Mexican Studies. He is the author of Metropolitan Migrants: The Migration of Urban Mexicans to the United States (UC Press) and the coeditor of New Destinations: Mexican Immigration in the United States.