New rurality and migration in Mexico’s Mixteca Alta region

Abstract

This paper studies the characteristics of a new rurality in nine municipalities of Mexico’s Mixteca Alta region, centering on the issue of migration. We observe a rapid process of depopulation in these municipalities during the second half of the twentieth century, linked especially to rural-urban migration, followed by a demographic stabilization in recent years. This contradicts some perspectives in the new rurality literature, which posit the rise of out-migration in Latin America’s rural areas. The paper explains this stabilization through the analysis of demographic and socioeconomic statistics, as well as semi-structured interviews with local residents. The results show that commuting to nearby cities and local tertiarization have provided alternatives to the rural-urban migration that prevailed in previous decades. The possibility that commuting and tertiarization may be factors that retain people in their communities has not received adequate attention in the new rurality literature in Latin America, creating an interesting line of future research.