Berkeley Planning Journal

This article examines the relationship between regional development and labor migration to the United States in the context of NAFTA. The article develops two principal arguments. first, the current migration process between Mexico and the United States is not only the result of push­ pull economic factors, as is generally assumed, but also the result of well-developed social networks and the implementation of U.S. and Mexican government policies as manifested by the formation of a number of "transnational communities. This observation leads to a second and related argument: the additional job creation resulting from NAFTA will not necessarily stem the international migration flows from regions with a long tradition of migration to the United States.