The Rise and Demise of Mexico’s ‘NAFTA-plus Approach’: the Scope and Limits of a North American Agenda Coming from the South

This chapter will review how Mexico attempted to put forward its own agenda under a new post-NAFTA North America. The Mexican case becomes salient for many reasons because it shows the possibilities and the limits that weaker partners have in order to push forward their own interests within trade and political alliances. Since Mexico was reaffirmed as a cheap labor space looking for new opportunities through North-South integration (by enhancing trade specialization, attracting investment, or by exporting labor), from year 2000 migration became the major post-NAFTA issue to be negotiated by Mexico with the US. In spite of the formal integration of commodity and investment markets, and the informal integration of labor markets between the two countries, the migration agenda became subordinated, if not abandoned, once homeland security became the major concern of the US at the end of 2001. This chapter shall explore the rise and fall of Mexico’s major post-NAFTA initiative called ‘NAFTA-plus’.