Revisiting Mexican migration in the age of mass migration: new evidence from individual border crossings

This paper introduces and analyses the Mexican Border Crossing Records (MBCRs), an unexplored data source that records aliens crossing the Mexico-United States land border at diverse entrance ports from 1903 to 1955. The MBCRs identify immigrants and report rich demographic, geographic and socioeconomic information at the in¬dividual level. These micro data have the potential to support cliometric research, which is scarce for the Mexico-United States migration, especially for the beginnings of the flow (1884–1910). My analysis of the MBCRs suggests that previous literature might have inaccurately described the initial patterns of the flow. The results diverge from historical scholarship because the micro data capture better the geographic composition of the flow, allowing me to characterize the initial migration patterns with more precision. Overall, the micro data reported in the MBCRs offer the opportunity to address topics that concern the economics of migration in the past and present.