Over-qualification of migrant workers from the Southern Cone of Latin America

SALA, GABRIELA ADRIANA

Marrakech

Conferencia; IUSSP 26th International Population Conference, Marrakech, Morocco 27 September to 2 October of 2009; 2009

IUSSP

This article proposes to describe the level of over qualification of migrant workers of the countries in the Southern Cone of Latin America, residing in Argentina and Brazil, departing from the information provided by the latest population censuses in these countries. To determine the over qualification of the bordering migrants residing in Argentina two methodologies will be applied: the first one compares the qualification of the occupation and the maximum level of education that has been reached, whereas the second one matches the years of study of each worker and the average schooling of the occupation group to which it belonged. The latter methodology will also be applied to Brazils census information.  This essay concludes that in Argentina, the estimation based upon the relationship between the maximum level of schooling that has been reached and the qualification of the occupation shows a higher percent of over qualified workers among migrants from bordering countries and, especially, among women. On the contrary, the second methodology detects that the schooling of the majority of workers was compatible with the average education requirements of the occupational groups and that sub qualified workers had a more considerable weight among bordering migrants than among native workers. In Brazil, this modality of estimation detects higher levels of over qualification among migrant workers in the Southern Cone than among those who were born in this country. It is important to make clear that it is not possible to compare the levels of over qualification in Argentina and Brazil due to the different nature of the classification systems that have been used. The Users Base of the Argentine census describes the nature and qualification of the occupation departing from different variables, whereas the micro-data of the Brazilian census offer this information in a sole variable. On the other hand, in the Argentine census, the variable published nature of the occupations of the Users Base has a remarkable degree of aggregation of the occupations. Those categories that concentrate most migrant workers do not consider different functions in the labor hierarchy. These heterogeneities are present to a lesser extent in the classifying system of the micro data of the Brazilian census, which orders occupations according to the functions and the position in the occupational hierarchy, following international guidelines.  The combination of both methodologies is highly enriching and it allows to overcome the problems arising from the heterogeneity of the categories of the variable published nature of the occupation of the Users Base of the Argentine Census. On the other hand, the variable qualification of the occupation is not present in the micro-data of the Brazilian census, and for this reason it was not possible to employ the methodology based upon the relationship between that variable and the level of schooling.