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Exploring patterns of environmental injustice in the Global South: Maquiladoras in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico

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Abstract

Decades of research in countries of the Global North have revealed distinct environmental injustices whereby industrial hazards tend to be located in poor and minority neighborhoods; few studies have investigated similar relationships between humans and hazards in the Global South. This study uses conventional quantitative environmental justice methodology to investigate spatial relationships between residential socio-demographics and maquiladoras (i.e., final assembly plants) in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. When predicting maquiladora density using percent children and social class in a spatial error regression model, we find that percent children was a positive and significant predictor, while social class was not significant. Adding formal residential development to the model, social class becomes a negative and significant predictor. Formal residential development and percent children are also positive and significant. As is the case in the Global North, relationships between neighborhood characteristics and transnationally operated maquiladoras along the northern border of Mexico are linked to urban development.

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Notes

  1. Of the 50 largest maquiladoras in Mexico in 2002, 36 were owned by American Corporations; Japanese Corporations owned the second largest share with seven (Frey 2003).

  2. The Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) is a publicly available database compiled by the Environmental Protection Agency. Federal facilities and certain industries are required to report annually on toxic chemical releases and waste management activities. The TRI database facilitates public access to these data (see www.epa.gov for additional information).

  3. While race/ethnicity is typically used alongside social class in studies done in the US, this information is not reported in the Mexican census and therefore not included in the analysis. Race and ethnicity are less commonly employed in studies done outside the US, and even if they had been available here, this study makes transparent the socially constructed nature of these categories in environmental justice work. Hispanic, for example, would not be a very meaningful indicator of social marginality in a study in Mexico, despite its applicability in the US context. A more useful variable in the Mexican context would be the proportion of indigenous people living in each neighborhood, although this information is not collected by the Mexican census.

  4. Mexico collects income data in four categories: number of persons making less than minimum wage, one-to-two times the minimum wage, three-to-five times the minimum wage, and over five times the minimum wage. To create a mean income variable using these categories, we took the following steps. We first took the daily minimum wage in Mexico in 1999 and 2000 ($3.99 in US dollars) and created actual monetary income categories using that figure. Then, the number of people in each income category was multiplied by the mid-point income value and then the groups were summed and divided by the neighborhood’s employed population. We felt it necessary to create this mean income variable because it is the most commonly used measure of social class in environmental justice studies.

  5. We ran a third model testing an interaction effect between social class and formal development, but the coefficient was not statistically significant (beta = −145; p = .156).

  6. Had we used classic OLS regression as opposed to the spatial error model, we would not have uncovered this negative effect between social class and hazard. When using OLS regression (in SAS 9.2), we found that social class had a significant and positive effect (p < 0.04) on maquiladora density when controlling for formal development and percent children. This sign change underscores the importance of accounting for spatial autocorrelation in environmental justice analysis using regression. Findings for children and formal development were similar between the OLS and spatial error regression model.

  7. This shift is not related to the consideration of percent children. In a bivariate spatial error regression model predicting maquiladora density using only social class, social class was not significant (beta = −.073, p = .298).

  8. Davis (1999) contrasts the facilitation of Malibu elites with that of the poor predominantly Central American immigrant population residing in the inner city tenements of Los Angeles’ Westlake district. This socially marginal community has been subject to a vicious cycle of inadequate regulation and negligent enforcement that has contributed to an urban fire crisis of extraordinarily lethal proportions (Davis 1999).

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the Regional Geo-Spatial Service Center housed at the University of Texas at El Paso for funding this project. We also acknowledge Dr. Diane Sicotte at Drexel University and Dr. Jayajit Chakraborty at University of South Florida for their assistance in dealing with the spatial autocorrelation.

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  1. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Texas at El Paso, 500 W University Avenue, El Paso, TX, 79968, USA

    Sara E. Grineski & Timothy W. Collins

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Correspondence to Sara E. Grineski.

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Grineski, S.E., Collins, T.W. Exploring patterns of environmental injustice in the Global South: Maquiladoras in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Popul Environ 29, 247–270 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-008-0071-z

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