Mexican Repatriation: New Estimates of Total and Excess Return in the 1930s

Brian Gratton, Arizona State University
Emily Merchant, University of Michigan

Social scientists and historians regularly claim that American authorities coerced 500,000 persons of Mexican origin to return to Mexico during the Depression. Using microdata samples from the U.S. Census, we show that figures of this magnitude cannot be sustained, finding instead that about 360,000 persons permanently repatriated between 1930 and 1940. We also find that a large proportion of immigrant Mexican repatriates were young men known to follow a pattern of circular migration. We develop a new approach to estimate the excess level of return prompted by special financial assistance, coercion, or high levels of deportation. By contrasting Mexican and French-Canadian repatriation and correcting for mortality, we conclude that the outer bound for excessive return is about 246,000, a figure still likely to be too high given the age-sex structure of the Mexican immigrant population.