“Young, Deported, and Learning to Code”
Rest of World
30 March 2021
“I can still picture the color of the sky in southwest Detroit,” he says. “I’m a grown man, but I cried. I felt like my life was over.” But three years after his deportation, Figueroa draws a salary double average in Mexico and lives in the country’s highest-income postal code. “I’m rockin’ it,” he says. Despite his earlier misfortunes, Figueroa seems to have found the “American Dream” — south of the Rio Grande, as one of Mexico’s new class of offshore coders.
Programming jobs are seen as abundant, stable, and well-paid — a surefire entry into the upper-middle class both in the U.S. as well as Mexico. But coding didn’t come to Mexico by chance. The outsourcing of software engineering is the latest iteration of a century-old pattern of U.S. industries moving labor-intensive operations to Mexico. Multinational companies profit from moving stable, middle-class work abroad. And in Mexico, return migrants — who are often fully bilingual and have experience working for U.S. companies — make particularly attractive candidates for this “nearsourced” work.
Rest of World
30 March 2021
“I can still picture the color of the sky in southwest Detroit,” he says. “I’m a grown man, but I cried. I felt like my life was over.” But three years after his deportation, Figueroa draws a salary double average in Mexico and lives in the country’s highest-income postal code. “I’m rockin’ it,” he says. Despite his earlier misfortunes, Figueroa seems to have found the “American Dream” — south of the Rio Grande, as one of Mexico’s new class of offshore coders.
Programming jobs are seen as abundant, stable, and well-paid — a surefire entry into the upper-middle class both in the U.S. as well as Mexico. But coding didn’t come to Mexico by chance. The outsourcing of software engineering is the latest iteration of a century-old pattern of U.S. industries moving labor-intensive operations to Mexico. Multinational companies profit from moving stable, middle-class work abroad. And in Mexico, return migrants — who are often fully bilingual and have experience working for U.S. companies — make particularly attractive candidates for this “nearsourced” work.
Caroline Eaton Tracey writes about the environment, migration, and the arts in the US Southwest, Mexico, and their borderlands. She speaks and works in English, Spanish, and Russian. Her first book, SALT LAKES, will be published by W.W. Norton.
Caroline’s reporting appears in the New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books, High Country News, and elsewhere, as well as in Spanish in Mexico’s Nexos.
In 2022 she was awarded the Waterston Prize for Desert Writing and in 2023 she received Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Fellowship in Journalism and Human and Civil Rights and a Silvers Foundation Work-in-Progress grant. In 2024, she received an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.
Caroline holds a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley. She lives with her wife, Mexican architect and sculptor Mariana GJP, between Tucson, Arizona and Mexico City.
She is represented by Bridget Matzie of Aevitas Creative Management.
Caroline’s reporting appears in the New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books, High Country News, and elsewhere, as well as in Spanish in Mexico’s Nexos.
In 2022 she was awarded the Waterston Prize for Desert Writing and in 2023 she received Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Fellowship in Journalism and Human and Civil Rights and a Silvers Foundation Work-in-Progress grant. In 2024, she received an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.
Caroline holds a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley. She lives with her wife, Mexican architect and sculptor Mariana GJP, between Tucson, Arizona and Mexico City.
She is represented by Bridget Matzie of Aevitas Creative Management.
Caroline Eaton Tracey escribe sobre el medioambiente, la migración, el arte y la literatura en México, el Suroeste de Estados Unidos y su frontera. Habla ingles, español y ruso. Su primer libro, SALT LAKES, será publicado bajo el sello de la editorial W.W. Norton.
Sus artículos aparecen en The New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books y High Country News entre otros lugares. En español escribe frecuentemente para la revista Nexos.
En 2022 ganó el Premio Waterston por Escritura del Desierto y en 2023 recibió la beca Ira A. Lipman de periodismo de derechos humanos y civiles de Columbia University y una beca de la Fundación Silvers. En 2024, recibió una beca para escritura sobre el arte de la fundación Andy Warhol.
Caroline es Doctora en Geografía de la Universidad de California–Berkeley. Vive con su esposa, la arquitecta y escultora mexicana Mariana GJP, entre Tucson, Arizona y la Ciudad de México.
La representa Bridget Matzie de la agencia literaria Aevitas Creative Management.
Sus artículos aparecen en The New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books y High Country News entre otros lugares. En español escribe frecuentemente para la revista Nexos.
En 2022 ganó el Premio Waterston por Escritura del Desierto y en 2023 recibió la beca Ira A. Lipman de periodismo de derechos humanos y civiles de Columbia University y una beca de la Fundación Silvers. En 2024, recibió una beca para escritura sobre el arte de la fundación Andy Warhol.
Caroline es Doctora en Geografía de la Universidad de California–Berkeley. Vive con su esposa, la arquitecta y escultora mexicana Mariana GJP, entre Tucson, Arizona y la Ciudad de México.
La representa Bridget Matzie de la agencia literaria Aevitas Creative Management.