The internal migration processes have contributed to a changing demographic profile,

Bolivia has shifted from a predominantly rural nation, through 1976, to a country with an

urban majority at present. This phenomenon, which brings us closer to the Latin American

demographic profile of growing urbanisation, in the Bolivian case has obeyed the acute

dismantling and pauperisation of the peasant economy and rural society as a result of the

still unequal and exploitive terms of exchange between the countryside and the cities, and a

progressive expansion of the agricultural frontier to the detriment of the communal

territories of origin.

The significant decline in the relative importance of the agricultural sector in the

national product as well as the important decline in traditional agrarian economies, which

are the major exporters of rural population and originators of the migration flows that give

rise to new patterns of occupation of the urban space, human settlements, and social

mobility that widen the breach of social differentiation in the cities, paralleling urban

growth and the continuous pressure of a contingent of job-seekers in the labour force.

The resulting urbanisation rate has been climbing, reaching 16 per thousand during

the 80s, placing the country among the group of the fastest urbanisation in Latin America

(UNDP, 1998), in spite of the enormous shortfall in service provision.

In 1900, the urban population was just 15 per cent; today it is over 60 per cent, and

the three major cities (La Paz, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz) hold over 37 per cent of the

country’s population. An additional 21 per cent reside in the 112 remaining cities and

about 40 per cent live in the rural zones, with a declining trend, as shown in the estimated

data for 1997 (39.5 per cent).

The structural changes have had an impact on the labour market, reducing

employment in the public sector and in the private industrial sector, increasing service and

commercial employment and generating linkages among formal enterprise and family and

semi-entrepreneurial units around consignment sales, sub-contracting, part production,

home-made piecework, etc. This maintains the high levels of employment in the family

and semi-entrepreneurial units, which when taken together are giving rise to hidden and

open forms of wage labour.

Between 1993 and 1997, the family and non-paid worker categories

grew as modes and specific conditions for female labour force insertion.

In 1993, two-fifths of the population were occupied in small family units and over

one-half of female employment was concentrated in this sector (Montaño, G.; 1997). By

1997, this sector had incorporated more than three-fifths of the jobs, corresponding to 51

per cent of the women.

Linked to this phenomenon we also find a growth in the proportion of female heads of

household, which reached 24.26 per cent of households by 1992. Among this group, about

82.8 per cent were single, widowed, or divorced women, conditions forcing these women

into the labour market.

The urban occupational insertion of women is concentrated in services, social

services, education, health, social security, and commerce (teachers, nurses, secretaries,

saleswomen, etc.), among the better educated; while the less-educated or un-schooled

women only have household employment and small-scale trade as their principal

alternatives

The growing difficulties in the conditions for reproduction of the ma le and female

rural productive units promote growing rural emigration flows towards the cities, although

there are also some rural zones of migration attraction with dynamic economic activities,

where there are agricultural firms producing flowers and fruits in el Valle (principally heart

of palm), agro-industry in the Oriente (cotton, soybeans, and sugar), and the production of

coca and other products.

Thus the rural labour market structure is defined by the agrarian structure still

predominating in the rural milieu, the survival of traditional agriculture, the agricultural

modernisation processes, rural-rural and urban-rural migration processes, as well as rural

settlements of alien origin, modernisation with urban influence, expansion of the markets

for land, capital, and labour, availability of natural and forest resources, and a certain

growth in the market for consumer goods in the most modern regions.

An important characteristic is the temporary and permanent labour supply coming

from the smaller agric ultural units that feed the migration streams with a growing presence

of young rural women whose main occupational destination is employment as household

workers or in small-scale commerce, principally in the cities. Nevertheless, 47 per cent of

working women have stayed in the rural areas.

Given the seasonal character of agricultural employment and the difficulties for

achieving subsistence levels in rural agricultural, the male and female workers are forced

to seek employment alternatives in the rural market and/or in the urban market.

Opportunities and access to other sources of labour, however, are crossed by the

differential conditions between men and women in educational and linguistic terms. Rural

women present very high illiteracy rates (49.9 per cent) as compared to the men (15.5 per

cent), as a result of their greater monolingualism in their native tongues and, of course,

lower levels of schooling, which lower their future expectations.

Bolivia has important structural and circumstantial factors that are incentives for

internal migration streams in different directions, but principally rural-urban ones, which

have accelerated since the 70s. Similarly, the scant productive and industrial calling in the

country and its entrepreneurial class have been the permanent cause of international

migration flows of different types, due to the impossibility of absorbing the population

expelled from the countryside or for “re-localising it” elsewhere, such as the case of the

colonial countries in the past. These circumstances have generated massive migration

flows motivated by the search for work to survive, but also the professional and labour

alternatives impossible to find in the country, as a result of its basically primary and

tertiary productive structure.

These conditions have converted Bolivia traditionally into a sending country,

providing immigrants to other countries, with a negative international migration balance.

In general, the migrations have been oriented to the surrounding countries in South

America (principally Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Peru), North America (United States,

Mexico, and Canada), and several European countries.

The migration flows mentioned have arisen principally from labour and professional

causes, without excluding other motivations. After the decade of the 60s, important flows

can be seen with an urban origin whose main protagonists have been the middle -income

levels. Migration has also been important among mid-upper income strata, for purposes of

residence and studie s; these flows have been oriented fundamentally towards the United

States, Great Britain, France, and Spain. In this case, for these social strata, the selection of

a country of destination is linked to its social, economic, and historical value, and their

significance as models for society.

The reasons for migration have been constant: work and better income; a search for

better living conditions, to climb the social ladder, prestige and new opportunities;

acquisition of new symbolic and cultural elements with differential meanings according to

their social strata, but different from their connotations in the country of origin. There are

also reasons linked to differential opportunities for occupational insertion according to

qualifications, economic situations, and the different networks that exist, whether these be

regional, ethnic and cultural, or national.

Studies have found that rural emigrants fit into urban occupations after prior

migration experiences in rural zones of the receiving country, or supported by a social

network based on blood or nationality relationships, which also play an important role in

housing access and basic social footing in their new milieu.

The decision to emigrate obeys a multitude of circumstances, primordially a lack of

satisfactory labour options. For almost all of them, the decisions are made by the family,

since emigration is assumed to be a family project, which follows specific family

strategies, whether these are referred to its survival, prestige, or alternatives for improving

family maintenance.

It was also clear that the family with members abroad is proud of the fact, so that

migration by women is not restricted, given that in some way she will be linked to her

relatives, the family will benefit from her labours, and her labour begins to be seen as

something ever-more common and necessary. The exit restrictions fall within the new

requirement frameworks for female labour performance, but in general, they consider that

the emigration will be beneficial for their future and the future of the rest of the family.

Source: http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_emp/documents/publication/wcms_117926.pdf

Note: Document was simplified and only main points were taken out.