Three
percent of the global population is made up of migrants, and half of these
are women. In many countries, transnationalism is a daily reality among
households where one or more persons has emigrated, and whose unit spans both
origin and destination countries. Consequently, on this day of male and
female migrants, it is important to call attention to the persons who are
directly or indirectly involved in the migratory process.
Migrant women come from diverse backgrounds in terms of education, family
composition, socioeconomic situation, age or ethnicity. Despite this
diversity, the most important labor market niche is care work, such as
domestic help or personal care for dependent persons.
“Care chains, which form when a woman emigrates to care for someone in the
destination country, leaving behind her own dependents in her country of
origin for another woman to care for in her absence, make explicit the
deficiencies in the social organization of care. The tasks of care work form
the invisible base of the socioeconomic system. However, they are extremely
undervalued,” explains Amaia Pérez Orozco, lead researcher of the UN-INSTRAW
project “Building Networks: Latin American Women in global care chains.”
UN-INSTRAW, the United Nations International Research and Training Institute
for the Advancement of Women, emphasizes on this date that migration is of
critical importance to national and international political agendas with
regard to gender-equitable development.
In 2009, a year of financial and economic crisis, preceded by the petroleum
crisis of December 2007 and food crisis of mid-2008, the employment situation
has presented the greatest challenge of the current moment. According to the
International Labor Organisation (ILO), it is predicted that the number of
unemployed in 2009 will reach 59 million workers, almost 30 million more than
in 2007.
Migrants have been adopting various strategies to cope with this crisis.
According to a World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank report, migrants
in destination countries who have lost their jobs or have suffered pay cuts
are now using their savings and/or unemployment compensation in order to
continue sending remittances to their families.
In other cases, migrants whose working hours have been reduced or who have a
family member who has lost his/her job have resorted to accepting an
additional job to compensate for lost income. Some reports indicate that many
domestic workers who used to work for a few hours a day are now accepting
full-day and weekend jobs, in order to increase their income. The informality
of the service sector and especially domestic work, reinforces the
vulnerability of migrant women. Because they are located in the
private/domestic sphere, they are more likely to have their working rights
violated, not to mention the overload that having more than one job entails.
In addition, the World Bank indicates that those who have lost their job run
the risk of losing their regular migration status, which translates into
lower earnings and less guarantees, in order to avoid having to return.
Anecdotal reports suggest that unemployed migrants have started to set up
small businesses selling food on the street or for home delivery, in order to
compensate for lost jobs.
On the side of those who receive remittances, their spending in categories
such as education and health may decrease, which can have a substantial
impact on the potential for human development of these households. In this
regard, many analysts predict that the medium-term effects of the crisis will
seriously compromise the advances made in recent years in terms of human
development, and as a result, will slow down the process of achieving the
Millennium Development Goals.
The redistribution of remittance spending will have serious consequences in
terms of their impact on poverty reduction, especially poverty which is
already feminized in nature. Due to the reduction of employment in origin
countries, many workers end up in the informal sector. There has also been
reverse remittance sending wherein families in origin sustain the migrant in
destination.
“Migration, the human face of globalization, is one of the multiple scenarios
in which the crisis has shown no mercy. The domino effect of the crisis has
shown that the structural elements of globalization and capitalism are poorly
oriented, and that they are deepening the divide between developed and
developing countries, rich and poor,” said Diana López, migration expert of
UN-INSTRAW.
