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Sálvese Quien Pueda: Structural Adjustment and Emigration from Lima

He is currently president of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and past president of the Population Association of America and the American Sociological Association.

Chiara Capoferro

A native of Italy, she holds a master’s in demography from Georgetown University and is coauthor, most recently, of "Measuring Undocumented Migration," published in International Migration Review 38 (2004): 1075-1102

Beginning in 1987, Peru imposed a regime of structural adjustment to transform its economy along neoliberal lines. This analysis suggests that a shift resulted in the odds of international migration and the motivations for leaving among inhabitants of Peru’s largest labor market. Before 1987, under the regime of import substitution industrialization, jobs at wages capable of sustaining a basic standard of living were widely available; those few who left the country self-selected for higher human capital and moved abroad to improve their earnings. Under neoliberalism, however, both employment and wages fell to levels that made it difficult for families to sustain themselves. In response, households—with the assistance of friends and relatives with foreign experience—diversified their labor portfolios away from the local job market structural adjustment zones. The number of migrants then rose, the diversity of foreign destinations increased, and migration became less selective with respect to human capital.

Key Words: structural adjustment • Peru • networks • neoliberalism • international migration • urban labor markets • social capital

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 606, No. 1, 116-127 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0002716206288105


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