Poverty and Migration Networks: Paraguayan Workers in Forestry Industry in Argentina

PIZARRO, CYNTHIA; ESCOBAR DECOUD, CRISTIAN

Congreso; X International Scientific and Practical Forum "Migration bridges in Eurasia".; 2018

During the 1990s, the increase of migrants moving within the Southern Cone of South America brought about changes in the proportions of migratory flows in several countries. In 2010, Argentina ranked third in the world as a host country receiving Latin American immigrants. Most of them, about 75%, came from the State Parties of the MERCOSUR. Longstanding Bolivian and Paraguayan immigration flows significantly increased during the last decades of the 20th Century. Foreign population represented 4.50% of the total of Argentina and immigrants from neighboring countries represented 3% of that population and 69% of the total foreign one. Paraguayans ranked first, followed by Bolivians, Peruvians, Chileans, Uruguayans, and Brazilians.These immigrants usually come from impoverished social contexts and tend to integrate into marginal segmented labor markets, taking up jobs which are not accepted by natives because payment is very low and working conditions are extremely precarious. They generally insert in the construction industry, domestic service, apparel production and informal trade in urban areas, and agriculture and bricks production in peri-urban and rural ones. The informal nature of their labor agreements leads to lack of access to social security and healthcare services, as well as to fewer possibilities of education for children and young people.In this occasion we will refer to young Paraguayan men who migrate to the Parana Delta, located in the River Plate Estuary, Argentina, to work in forestry industry. Almost all of them were born in rural areas of the Department of Caazapá, located in the South East of Paraguay.We will analyze both macro and meso structural factors that influence their mobility: their increasingly impoverished way of life at their homeland and the role of migration networks.