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Emigration and Remittances. Latin America and the Caribbean is the #1 receiving region of remittances in the world at $53.6 trillion in 2005,
representing approximately 2.7 of the GDP of the region.
According to the International Organization for Migration, 4 of 10 people living outside their country of origin send remittances to their family members.
A recent study of this organization recognizes that despite the lack of official figures, a clear majority of the beneficiaries of remittances are women.
Women are not only recipients.
In Latin America, they make up more than half of the migrant population sending the money.
UN-INSTRAW recently published the results of a case study in Dominican Republic.
The report indicates that 62.3% of Dominican migrants in Spain are women.
We recently spoke with Carmen Moreno, director of UN-INSTRAW (now part of UN WOMEN), about this study.
Carmen shared more details on recent statistics on migrant women.
Carmen Moreno, UN-INSTRAW Director: In the Dominican Republic, 62% of migrants (to Spain) are women.
In 1985, 85% of migrants were women.
Now they make up only 62%, but they are sending 54% of remittances.
To whom are they sending the remittances? Do they leave their families behind like other migrants do? Or is that not necessarily the case?
Yes, women are assuming new roles.
Women do leave their families behind, and now they are sending money to other women in their families.
They send it to their mothers, sisters, because they no longer prefer to send it to the men.
The men turned out not to be very good administrators,
and the women decided to send it only to other women.
We are talking about US$2.4 billion in 2005,
62% of migrants were women, sending 54% of remittances.
Have you been able to determine how this money is used in countries like Dominican Republic?
Yes, the women want their children to graduate from university and they sacrifice a lot to achieve this.
They want their daughters to study and to have better living conditions, better houses, and more job opportunities.
Before, women were emigrating in order to follow their husbands. Is this still the primary reason for migrating?
Before, women migrated as family members.
Now, they are migrating as family providers, or those responsible for providing economically and guaranteeing management of their families.
Regarding the profile of these migrant women, what is their socioeconomic level? What kind of work do they do? Where are they travelling to?
We are talking about women who are just above or below the poverty line, from rural areas.
An interesting phenomenon is that now there are women with university degrees migrating due to the lack of job opportunities.
They migrate to work as domestics or caretakers of children and the elderly – jobs that are unrelated to their skill set.
A large part of remittances to Latin America comes from the U.S. Where are the women migrating to in your study?
We studied the women migrating from Dominican Republic to Spain, as a case study.
Most of the people migrating are women, and we would like to see if the same trend is happening elsewhere.
It is also happening in the Philippines, Ecuador, Colombia. Women are already the majority of remittance senders to these countries.
In this feminization of migration, do the women return to their countries of origin after a certain period of time?
All of them want to return.
Of the Dominican women who have returned, in this study 100% of them have opened businesses.
They showed us what they are doing, some small stores selling food or clothing, or simple activities like producing gelatin.
Speaking of the families of migrants, whether male or female...Do the women migrate alone? Do they bring their oldest children with them?
The women go alone, but they go within a network built within the Dominican over 20 years, and later they send for their children or families.
I told you that before 85% of (Dominican) migrants in Spain were women, and this has gone down to 62%.
This is because they are bringing the men from their families.
There are 2 more topics I’d like to cover.
The study, as part of a larger effort. What will you do with the research results? Where are you directing your efforts?
Our first objective is to make migrant women visible.
We want there to be equal opportunities for men and women in the world, and for migrant women not to be invisible as they have been to date.
The second objective is to identify policies
to help governments, civil society, and women themselves to identify solutions to improve their situation.
Ultimately, the objective of our agency is to improve the situation of women in the world,
and case by case, we would like to contribute toward this.
How present is the phenomenon of trafficking of women in these migration flows?
This is a serious problem affecting many women,
because many countries do not recognize that they need a female labor force,
so they do not allow them to migrate legally.
This exposes them to conditions of slavery for forced labor or sex work.
Lastly, in the study in the Dominican Republic, are there any institutes or authorities that are working to support migrant women and their families?
If not, what is your organization working on?
On one hand, governments have begun paying attention to the volume of remittances.
On the other hand, in the DR with the Ministry of Women and other authorities,
we are identifying concrete measures to help these women,
through financial literacy training,
by identifying industries where they can create jobs,
thereby contributing to broader goals of development.
You know that the volume of remittance inflows in the DR represents 16% of GDP.
Those were the remarks on the feminization of this phenomenon of Carmen Moreno, director of UN-INSTRAW (now part of UN WOMEN).