The Mental Health Effects of Maquiladora Work on Mexican Women

The Mental Health Effects of Maquiladora Work on Mexican Women: Sources of Stress and its Consequences

“The U.S.-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. . .”-- Gloria Anzaldua

Introduction

Submerged in the impoverished urban border culture which they helped create, the maquiladoras draw young women north from all over Mexico’s interior. The women migrate with hopes of acquiring jobs in the booming foreign-owned factories and are plunged into a new border “country” that is far from a promised land. Maquiladoras are a financial endeavor for foreign industrialists who hope that by situating factories in Third World countries they will substantially cut production costs. The industrialists have been accused of taking advantage of Mexico’s cheaply accessible labor force and less restrictive health and safety codes in order to achieve these lower production costs. While preliminary surveys on the effects of maquiladora work on women’s physical health show little to no adverse side effects, researchers and advocates are not completely convinced that long term health effects will prove positive.

The emotional and psychological stresses of working in a maquiladora are tremendous and should be examined just as seriously as the physical effects. The female workers live a life of insecurity, instability, oppression, submission, and exhaustion. They face jolting lifestyle changes and even when working full time, have trouble making enough money to cover basic living costs. They are pawns in a First World economic strategy that hopes to wring as much cheap labor out of the women as it can, paying female workers in Mexico’s northern states an average of only four dollars a day for workdays that typically run from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.. High levels of stress accountable to both working in the maquiladora itself and the to lifestyle it promotes attribute to depression, substance abuse and even physically manifested ailments. This paper will examine the different sources of stress that affect the mental health of female maquiladora workers in an attempt to understand the overall health issues of the border culture.

Overview of Potential Stressors Affecting Mental Health

A great majority of maquiladora employees are young women who have migrated to the border area from “supporting agricultural [regions]” (Cravey, 6). Migration, itself, is a complicated process which could have profound affects on the mental health of maquiladora workers. Migration has been found to have negative effects