Do low-skilled Mexican workers, working, say, in the construction industry in US learn on the job and upgrade their skills? If so, how do they transfer these skills when they return to Mexico? How does it changes their incorporation into the labor market? Migration -- particularly from countries like Mexico -- tended to be bifurcated sharply into two categories: low-skilled (and stuck at the bottom of job ladder) and high-skilled (and typically advancing in their professional carriers).

This study will document emergence of open migration chains -- sequences of educational or job opportunities which allows a migrant to move to progressively complex educational and job tasks necessary to work in the global environment. We hope, depending on availability of financing, to have a similar study focused on migration of African workers to South Africa' construction industry.

 

• Natasha Iskander and Nichola Lowe

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