Malinowski Award Lecture, 2003. Regions of refuge in the United States: Issues, problems, and concerns for the future of Mexican-origin populations in the United States

This address provides a conceptual heuristic of "regions of refuge" as a means of understanding the complex and dynamic processes responsible for the great growth and emergence of Mexican-origin populations in the United States. Such processes are transnational, national, and regional, but at their center are economic issues of production and labor that have their genesis in the 19th century and will be even more important in the next century. By 2100, the Mexican-origin population will make up slightly less than a third of the entire U.S. population and will face issues of increasing economic inequality, steep social stratification, and modest educational attainment. The multiple methodological approaches of applied anthropology are crucial to the solution of what I have termed the "distribution of sadness" that accompanies such growth and issues.