MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Migrants in Latin America are more likely to work in informal jobs despite having higher qualifications compared to native workers, hindering their integration, a joint report by three international organizations showed on Friday.
Over 50% of migrants in the region are likely to find informal work, the study by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) showed.
That trend has been registered in at least half of the 12 countries analyzed.
Migrants tend to end up with more temporary contracts and longer shifts, working 50 hours or more per week, than native laborers, 45% are whom work informally on average, the report added.
The poor quality of jobs found by migrants reveal a failure to take advantage of the opportunities that migration can bring to these countries, the report said.
It noted that in the last 10 years, only Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and the Dominican Republic have implemented special permits and visas to regulate the situation of immigrants.
Migrant women tend to be more educated than migrant men, the report said, but added that “the proportion of working-age male migrants who are employed exceeds that of female migrants by more than 27 percentage points.”
Mexico is the country with the second lowest proportion of migrants relative to its total population, with about 66% born in the United States and most of them children of Mexican citizens who returned to the Latin American country.
Mexico, however, is home to the precarious smuggling of migrants en route to the United States, which ended in notable tragedies in recent years.
(Reporting by Marion Giraldo; Writing by Carolina Pulice; editing by Diane Craft)
