| This dissertation brings standard social science methods, and both public-use and original data-sets at different levels of analysis (individual-, municipal-, and state-level), to bear upon the question of whether, and how, contemporary migration from Mexico to the United States has reshaped a variety of political outcomes in Mexico: from political engagement and political participation (Chapter 3), to partisan competition for local office (Chapter 4), to the heavily gendered nature of politics in Mexico (Chapter 5).;This dissertation first identifies (Chapter 2) the channels through which migration may influence domestic politics in source countries, discusses them in detail with regards to the Mexican case, and establishes the plausibility of a link between out-migration and the three substantive political outcomes analyzed in the dissertation.;Chapter 3 analyzes the relationship between out-migration and political engagement, broadly construed. In contrast with extant research of a more ethnographic nature, we find that out-migration (in particular having relatives abroad, receiving remittances, and attaching a positive probability to migrating to the U.S. in the near future) depresses political engagement in Mexico, whether proxied by political awareness, frequency of political talk (inside, or outside, the household), or even electoral participation.;Chapter 4 analyzes what, if any, have been the consequences of out-migration on party competition and electoral outcomes at the local level in Mexico. Thanks to a municipal-level data-set that allows us to estimate a difference-in-differences model (thanks to which we can escape many of the inferential threats -- i.e. unobserved heterogeneity -- that have plagued previous research), we find that the PRI's local hegemony is increasing in out-migration.;Lastly, Chapter 5 examines how out-migration has contributed to the gendered nature of politics in Mexico, in particular with regards to women's political engagement, participation, and descriptive representation. Exploiting insights from the household economics literature, we show that: females living in unfavorable marriage markets (i.e. in municipalities with high migration rates, which lead to a shortage of males) are less politically aware, and talk about politics less often, than otherwise similar females; and high migration municipalities, which are characterized by heavy female-to-male sex ratios, tend to have lower proportions of females serving in local governments, even after controlling for some potentially confounding variables. |
