Men in a Developing Society is the definitive report on a large scale study of migration and social mobility carried out by Harley Browning and his associates at the Universities of Texas and Nuevo León. The study is clearly a major contribution, essential reading for students of social mobility, comparative stratification systems, and social change in Mexico. Its importance for an understanding of Mexican society appears comparable to such basic works on the U.S. as Bendix and Lipset’s Social Mobility in Industrial Society or Blau and Duncan’s The American Occupational Structure. Among the very few studies of its kind focused on Latin America, it ranks with Tumin and Feldman’s Social Class and Social Change in Puerto Rico. This work merits high praise.
The study deals with migration, mobility, and stratification in Monterrey, Mexico, the nation’s third city boasting a remarkable experience of industrialization. The basic purposes of the analysis include a detailed description of each of these three processes, as well as showing how they are interrelated across time. As the title suggests, the analysis seeks to convey the experiences of men engaged in the development process and, further, to combine those experiences for a portrayal of social structural change. The introductory chapter sets out these objectives and provides the reader a solid grounding in those theoretical issues that inform the research design. Of particular merit is the recognition that industrialization in Latin America cannot be understood through the adoption of Western models, that underdevelopment is not a natural evolutionary stage, “but rather a particular historical reality resulting from the expansion of capitalism into backward, pre-capitalist and preindustrial countries” (p. 15).
Methodologically the study is rigorous and innovative. In the Monterrey metropolitan area a two-stage stratified cluster sample of 1,640 was drawn with particular attention to males of specified age and income categories. Because of the interest in migration a novel procedure was to sample also 380 men from Cedrai, San Luis Potosí, which represents a more or less typical source of Monterrey migrants. Here, as in few migration studies, it was possible to compare migrants in the urban center with rural nonmigrants and return migrants. Other compelling features of the design include an emphasis on the life cycle through the use of cohort analyses, occupational career histories, and a focus on generations. Finally, there are two chapters that absorbingly set the stage for the data analysis by describing Monterrey’s historical development and characterizing the communities from which migrants originate. In short, the design of the study is both technically sophisticated and holistic.
Chapters 4-9 report on the results of the survey in detail that is beyond the scope of this review. Chapter 6 on “The Social and Economic Context of Migration to Monterrey” is most intriguing for its repudiation of many myths about the traumatizing and personally disorganizing consequences of urban migration. For example, in the initial periods of urbanization migrants represent an educationally and occupationally select group from rural society; they come to the city with some pretty good ideas about job opportunities; and typically kin and friends assist them in a variety of ways that make the transition to a new life style smooth. Chapter 8 indicates that, while for most men migration does not lead directly to vertical mobility to any marked extent, the change involves a number of nonvertical shifts in work settings that the migrants find satisfying.
The concluding chapters move up to a social structural perspective. Chapter 11 deals with patterns of social stratification using path analytic techniques that may, unfortunately, lose the general reader. Essentially it is found that the socioeconomic level of the respondent’s family is closely associated with his educational attainment and, therefore, the status of his first job. However, the importance of this relationship is declining in more recent age cohorts—suggesting an increasingly open system—and for all cohorts education is less important in determining occupational status than one’s previous job as one gets older. The final chapter may be the most interesting of all. Here earlier findings are assembled to explain why Monterrey workers are relatively satisfied with their occupational lives and why there is an absence of class conflict in the city. In addition to experiencing some mobility and satisfaction, especially with regard to the life chances of their sons, the men’s migration itself is interpreted as having a dampening effect on class conflict. In the communities of origin migration serves as a safety valve for potential dissidents; migrants along with natives have found satisfaction in Monterrey for the most part and those that have not may migrate back. Moreover, the smooth transition process serves to stave-off any disorganizing or radicalizing consequences of migration. Yet, it should be noted that this analysis simply assumes the absence of any distinct working class-consciousness using impressionistic evidence. While it is provocative, it can be little more given all the difficulties in measuring radical sentiments in a cross-sectional survey. Aware of such issues the discussion ends on what may be a more perceptive note. The fact that opportunities for mobility are becoming more constricted and that jobs depend increasingly on educational credentials may mean that earlier satisfaction will give way to class conflict. As the authors note: “It seems clear to us that, for virtually all the groups we have reviewed, what made for acceptance of authority and a smooth transition in the past will be much less effective in the future. Thus, we arrive at the somewhat paradoxical conclusion that the very success of Monterrey’s development over the past several decades, far from ensuring a continuation of the ‘formula’ that has worked so well in the past, has created the conditions for a rise in discontent and an increase in group and class conflict” (pp. 330-331). Subsequent researchers will profit from the extensive and carefully organized presentation of data that informs these projections about the larger political process. The book of Balán, Browning and Jelen is one of the best studies on Mexico and the sociology of development available to date.
