TASK FORCE ON MIGRATION AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY

Nairobi, Kenya

17^th - 19^th January 2007

Task Force on Migration and Cultural Diversity

Introductory Statement and Invitation to Participate

NIACE, as a member of the EAEA, has been invited to facilitate a Commission on Migration and Cultural Diversity for the ICAE World Assembly.
The main role of the Commission is to:-

• Prepare the programme of work to be done during the Assembly
• Identify speakers and successful experiences that can be presented at the Assembly
• Prepare materials for the Assembly.

We would like to invite adult educators with an interest and experience in this field to join us in this work.

Our experience and perspectives

Migration is a global phenomenon.  It is estimated that 175 million people in the world are migrants.  The flow of migration is either from poorer countries to richer countries or from poor countries to equally poor countries.  There are push and pull factors involved which cause people to leave their own country and move to another either for a temporary period or permanently. Migration also has a big impact on exporting and importing countries.

NIACE has undertaken some work in the field of migration and cultural diversity.  From our perspective the groups affected and issues which relate to adult education include:

Migrants seeking humanitarian protection

Migrants who have fled their country to seek asylum and humanitarian aid in another country suffer from multiple disadvantages which impact on their opportunities to begin a new life. They may have no financial resources to meet their basic needs and may be suffering from physical and mental stress and illness and family separation. They may need to learn the language and the culture of the new country before they can participate in the labour market and as members of a new community. The new country and ‘host community’ are likely to undervalue the skills and experiences that such migrants bring with them and perceive the new migrants as a burden. Early interventions to
value skills and support integration are therefore essential requirements to enable migrants to begin a new life.

Migrants seeking to improve their quality of life and income

Economic migrants, who move to another country to find employment, may also suffer from disadvantages. The employment that they gain may be below their level of ability, since the main labour market opportunities open to them are low paid, low skilled manual jobs that the host community has rejected. Such migrants may also need to improve their language skills and understand the culture of their new country.
Economic migrants are also vulnerable to exploitation at work. Other economic migrants fill highly skilled posts where there are insufficient people from the host community who are trained and qualified for the work.

‘Illegal’ migrants

Migrants who are living in another country, without official permission to do so, are the most vulnerable to exploitation and deprivation.
They have no protection in the legal systems and may be excluded from health care and other public services. They are essentially a hidden group, whose existence is not recognised. Among this group are adults, mainly women, who are trafficked for sexual exploitation and those working in private unregistered employment such as domestic servants. Included in these groups are women who believed that were moving to a new and better life but found themselves trapped in exploitative situations

Temporary migrants

Some groups of migrants intend to return to their own country when situations change and/or when they have sufficient money to do so.
The need to consider the integration of these short stay groups into the host country is sometimes ignored, yet it can be important to recognise that steps toward integration can help overcome hostilities to new comers.

Permanent migrant communities

Migrants and their families down several generations can suffer from discrimination and inequality of opportunity and treatment, which can result in low levels of educational qualifications, low incomes, poor job prospects and lack of political representation. ‘Second chance’ education and intercultural programmes are measures adopted in several countries to overcome the barriers to the integration of various community/ethnic groups.

The impact of migration upon host countries

The impact of new migration can be seen as positive by certain groups in host countries, where employment rates are high and there is a demand for new labour in skilled and unskilled occupations.   Migrants gaining employment also contribute to the tax revenue and are likely to make fewer demands upon public services because of their characteristics (they may be young, physically fit and unmarried). However, the public perception of migrants is often less positive and they may be stereotyped as a burden on services, using scarce resources and taking jobs from local people. They may be seen as being so different from the host community in terms of their language, religion, culture and appearance that they are regarded as unwelcome outsiders. Integration measures that involve adult educators can make a contribution to enabling migrant communities and host communities to understand and respect each other.

The impact of migration upon countries of migration

Many countries are experiencing the migration of groups of people who are trained, qualified and needed in their own countries, in addition to groups of young people in the prime of their working lives. These groups may migrate in order to improve their quality of life and may intend to return at a future date. However, the skills gaps left behind cannot be easily filled. Some of the migrants may have false expectations about life and work in the countries that they migrate to and therefore it is necessary to ensure that full information is made available about the prospects
both in the home country and the intended country of migration.  This is particularly true for people whose migration plans may be based upon the promises of people traffickers and others that gain profit from arranging migration opportunities.

The issues briefly outlined above are ones that NIACE is contributing as a beginning of an agenda for discussion. There are other perspectives based upon the experience and history of the regions in the world.  We would like the perspectives of all regions to be included in the work of this Commission and to facilitate the development of the agenda for the ICAE World Assembly.

How can you participate in the work of the Commission?

If you would like to participate in the work of the Commission and/or can offer a paper or an experience of interesting practice please contact Sue Waddington of NIACE at the email address below during September/ October 2006. We intend to set up an email group of interested people and will be able to exchange ideas in preparation for the Assembly.

NIACE will seek to gain some finance to enable one or two Commission members to attend the World Assembly from regions that do not have the resources necessary.  We would invite other regions and organisations that can do so, also to seek resources to enable the relevant people from all regions to contribute to the Commission and to attend the World Assembly.

Sue Waddington
September 2006

European Development Officer
NIACE (National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (England and Wales))
21 De Montfort Street, Leicester, LE1 7GE, United Kingdom
T: +44 (0)116 204 4290
F: +44 (0)116 285 9703
Sue.Waddington@niace.org.uk
 

NEWS - 08/01/07

"Internal migratory flows, feminization of migrations and their impact on food security "

by Marcela Ballara

According to statistical data, in 1995 there were around 150 million international migrants worldwide, thus accounting for 2.3% of the world population. Their distribution is uneven, since most of them (55% in 1990) were found in less developed countries. In developed countries they account for circa 5%, compared to 1.6% in less developed countries. Between 1965 and 1990, male migration increased from 40 to 63 millions, while female migration grew from 35 millions to 57.1 millions from 1965 to 1990 . Even though it is true that, according to these figures, one might say that male migration was maintained at an identical proportion (2.4%), female migration experienced a slight increase (2.1% to 2.2%). In 1990, statistics showed that 48% of migrants crossing international borders happened to be women.

In this workshop I will not explicitly refer to international migration, which happens between the borders of the countries in the region but, for the sake of introducing the issue, brief references will be made to the situation from an international perspective. The presentation will address the movement that takes place within one country, known as internal shifts, country-city migration and its impact on food security (meaning the physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that allows people to meet their food needs and preferences in a way that permits them to lead an active and healthy life).

The female face of rural migration in Latin America: what figures tell us

Statistics show that migrations from rural areas are increasing in such a way that both internal and international migrations will come up as emerging issues in the development policies of the 21st century. Given that most migrations originate in rural areas, this issue has not been deeply studied nor understood, whether from the point of view of its relationship with poverty, its economic aspects, its impact on the families and women left in the rural sector, as well as the implications of the economic growth outside rural areas.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, during the past decades populations have concentrated in urban areas, with the consequential desertion from rural areas. Sixty percent of the urban population of the region lives in cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, and 30% lives in large cities with more than one million inhabitants .

At present, only one fourth of the total population lives in rural areas. The decrease in the proportion of the rural population has mostly been the consequence of migration. The latter shows different levels in the different countries of the region. Thus, while in Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica, 50% of the population still lives in the countryside, in Chile, Venezuela, Argentina and Uruguay, the percentage of people living in rural areas accounts for 20%.

In the rural sector a decrease in the demographic retention has been verified due to the precarious standard of living, indiscriminate use of natural resources and the environment, lack of employment opportunities, especially for the youth, and due to the age-old customary traditions of inheritance, the uses and customary practices prevailing in the rural sector, the conflictive situation existing in some of the countries in the region, plus the appeal of urban areas. In the past 15 years, in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean, rural youth migration has increased by 16.5%, with a decrease of one third of the rural youth population in the same period. Also, a female bias is observed in terms of employment opportunities, since women usually end up working as house maids and/or in the informal trade sector.

The persistence of migration from the country towards the city and to other countries is part of family subsistence strategies. This is one of the alternatives rural families resort to in order to deal with the situation of poverty. However, migration is also the result of progress in the education of those youth who do not envisage any development opportunities in their rural areas.

A survey recently carried out by the FAO Regional Office of Latin America and the Caribbean states that, since 1960, the internal migration trend is higher among women than men in Latin America as a whole. Even though it is true that the same survey shows that between 1970 and 2000 the gender ratio in the rural population from 19 countries in the region was higher among men (92.5 women every 100 men), these changes are inequitably distributed: while Paraguay, Venezuela, Bolivia and Honduras experience a relative decrease in the female rural population (ca. 5%), Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and Cuba show a 1% to 5% decrease in the male population. A favourable proportion towards rural women is found in Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Argentina, Panama and Costa Rica. These differences are based on different migration patterns that are inherently related to the female participation in internal migrations, if compared to international migrations, and are also related to the division of work according to sex among rural families, as well as the uses, habits and inheritance practices such as the prevalence of the eldest (primogeniture) and the youngest sons over other offspring, the destruction of natural resources, as well as the barriers for accessing land and credit.

Rural migration & gender: cause and effect

The factors determining the decision for an internal migration in both men and women are different. The subordination to and/or dependence of women on the family world is part of the aspects that determine their territorial mobility.

A survey carried out by Katz (2000) found that:
a) dependence indexes of young men and women reduce the migration possibilities of these population segments;
b) a flexible division of work by gender does not significantly affect migration of both men and women;
c) the effect of marriage is significant in the migration possibilities of men;
d) in those rural areas where non-agricultural work is offered, women have a 30% higher chance of leaving the rural areas compared to those where there is no potential for non-agricultural work.
e) the effects of agricultural irrigation and diversification encourage women to leave the rural sector due to the fact that they participate more in horticulture than in traditional crops (corn, wheat, grains) and stockbreeding (large animals);
f) the more land (private property) men possess, the lower male migration will be; and joint ownership of property has been shown to decreases female migration.

Transboundary rural migration shows slight differences with internal migratory patterns:
i) there is a tendency towards the masculinization of migration to developed countries (for example, the US), but there is a feminization of interregional migration, especially when there are working opportunities in the service sector;
ii) quite the opposite as men, the more educated women are, the more opportunities they have for female international migration;
iii) private ownership of land reduces both men and women’s tendency to migrate;
iv) if there is more female work in communities, it acts as a discouraging factor for male migration, since it replaces the potential benefits that would have been obtained with migration.

Even though female participation in the rural agriculture employment sector has experienced an increase in the past 20 years (from 21% to 27%), with regional differences (Bolivia-86%, Brazil-70% and Paraguay-43%, as opposed to 10% in Central America), rural non-agricultural employment is a major source of labour for women living in the rural areas of the region (rural industry, trade and tourism). The information provided by ECLAC (2002ª) regarding the total active national population indicates that female participation in agricultural employment fell by 20% (1970 to 1990). However, in the opinion of the ILO (2002) , the participation percentage of women in the agricultural labour force is higher and shows a feminization trend in 6 countries of the region, in a 1 to 4 ratio.

Male migration is one of the main incentives for increasing female participation in the rural economy. Labour and demographic data seem to indicate a feminization of agriculture and the rural economy, with its particular characteristics in sub-regions within Latin America. Indeed, the demographic changes in the rural population in the Andean sub-region and Southern Cone indicate a feminization of migrations, thus strengthening the male bias in the rural sector, also known as masculinization of agriculture. As opposed to Mexico and most of the Mesoamerican region, female migration is lower than male migration, and a dominant trend is appreciated with a higher number of women living in the rural sector. Many of them must often take on the role of paterfamilias.

The situation of poverty and the survival difficulties of the product obtained from farming have led the working poor in the rural sector to resort to seasonal migrations in order to increase their family income. Elderly women and girls remain in their place of origin, thus facilitating the temporary or almost permanent migration of the fittest, who send the necessary remittances home to support the whole family. “Temporary” employment has become, in many cases, a type of work that is carried out all year through, yet women continue in a “seasonal worker” condition from a contractual point of view, without welfare or health care, and exposed in many cases to indiscriminate use of agricultural toxicants, with the corresponding impact on their health.

The sustained population shifts towards urban sectors in the past decades have meant transformations in the productive rural structures, as well as the incorporation of labour into the urban market of salary-earners, in a mostly informal economy. This has entailed deep changes in the family structures and in the insertion of women in the working world. Yet quite paradoxically, the migrant population continues to live in conditions of marginality, political and economic segregation, and in some cases, ethnic segregation in the cities. In a nutshell, they do not succeed in overcoming their problems; they just trade them for others.

The incapability of governments to create policies, formal structures or enact laws that regulate seasonal migrations, together with the transboundary migration restrictions in some countries in the region and the profit made by employment agencies acting as intermediaries in the labour market have all resulted in an increase of the international traffic of migrants. Said traffic has become institutionalized in employment agencies that offer jobs with easier procedures and less bureaucracy in competitive labour markets, usually controlled by mafias. In this scenario, the vulnerability of migrant women increases, and in many cases they become the victims of labour exploitation by being underpaid, by being subject to unsuitable working demands and conditions or by facing job situations that had not been agreed on beforehand.
Many of them may end up in sexual exploitation working environments.


Do remittances help to overcome poverty and do they support food security?

Migration towards an urban economy with higher income may reduce poverty and increase food security in a poor rural population if sufficient remittances are sent. These might mitigate liquidity restrictions by promoting agricultural and farming production. The return of migrants to their places of origin may also stimulate the local activity.

However, that optimistic approach is challenged with the effects that the country-city migration might have on both families and women. The absence of one of the family members may have a negative impact on the family income due to the absence of the migrant’s labour, and critical levels may be reached if the rural work performed by the family members who remained in the place of origin becomes less productive. If the migration has a negative impact on the local production and on the family income, a downward spiral might take place in the local economic activity, with negative repercussions for poor families. This might even fuel the situation of poverty and food insecurity.

Even though it is true that remittances may partly compensate for the lack of labour, if they are not invested in the acquisition of the goods and services offered, the reduction of poverty is restricted .

The migration of one family member results in the need to reorganize production activities. Consequently, if women become paterfamilias, they are overburdened with both the productive and reproductive work, which might also mean that they need to take on community activities that increase even more their already scarce time availability. This situation, combined with insufficient remittances, becomes an element that further contributes to food insecurity.

Recently, the FAO carried out a survey in Nicaragua (2003 and 2004) on the estimates of the use of migrants’ remittances. They are predominantly used for meeting basic family needs in the country of origin (health care, housing and education), thus contributing to the improvement of their wellbeing. The second most important category is the amount of money spent in housing (acquisition, improvement, enlargement or construction thereof); and a less significant proportion of resources is allocated to the so called “productive investment”.

Women concentrate sending their remittances to urban households, where almost 55% of those households receiving the support of women are located. In urban or suburban households, they are typically invested in small shops, with the seed capital provided by remittances, which can promote the creation of micro-enterprises.

As opposed to the remittances sent by women, the percentage of rural households receiving remittances from men accounts for 77%.

The survey also identified different moments within the process of sending remittances:

In a first stage, resources are used to pay travel-related debts, as well as to meet basic family requirements in the place of origin (food, clothing, health care, education). Furnishing the home, buying land or cattle are left for a further stage, and “productive investments” are only made once the migrant is already fully integrated in the receiving country. This trend is also seen in surveys from other regions, since the receipt of remittances for long periods of time in the rural sector favours the accumulation of farming resources and thus contributes to the substantial increase of crops.

But the magnitude of effects that contribute to mitigate poverty depends on the profitability of the investments in productive activities. However, remittances are not always continued and often, the second generation of migrants tends to cease sending remittances to their family members.

Another survey by Taylor (2002) indicates that in rural home surveys within rural communities with high migration levels, remittances account for a substantial portion of the income of rural households, with a ratio that is usually between 15% to 20% or even higher .

Even though it is true that one cannot generalize, border-crossing or rural migrant women, due to their gender, ethnic and race condition, may face specific problems related to inequality in terms of accessing basic public services (health care, education, housing, welfare); for accessing information about their rights and services; difficulties for their insertion and development in the labour market, discrimination and disadvantageous conditions, precarious situations in terms of their labour rights (salaries below the national level, unhealthy jobs, long working hours, sexual harassment and assault); deterioration in their standard of living; human rights abuse in their condition of both migrants and women; loss of cultural identity, difficulties for getting organized and exercising leadership.

To delve into the role played by migration in terms of food security, agricultural productivity, rural poverty, non-agricultural rural work, the impact of the loss of labour and human capital and the impact on the social wellbeing of the families that have remained in their place of origin, it is necessary to promote surveys in order to determine the interaction between migration-development-food security- poverty relief.

Methodological needs in the study of female migration

Are there any change perspectives in the gender relationships between female and male migrants?

Migration is an experience that may impact on the social identity process of people by modifying referential coordinates. It might provide opportunities for recreating or redefining both collective and individual identities. One of the first gender approaches on the female migratory flow is the recognition of women as working migrants, rather than mere companions or “associate” migrants.

Yet, does migration promote changes in gender relationships? Is it capable of altering the asymmetries between men and women? And, if a change does take place, on which direction is it?

Experience shows that a positive change does not always take place. Migration might open up personal opportunities and restructure gender inequalities, thus modifying the relative position of women in certain domains and their situation vis à vis men. Recently, a survey done by Guarnizo (1995) on the return migration to Dominican Republic documented the contradictory effects of migration on the children of migrants, and the conflicts it generates in the relationship with their parents, as well as the possibility of integration in the society of origin.

It is also argued that female migration promotes a higher influence in the private and public sector, thus strengthening women’s position in the household due to the external recognition of their skills. This also has an incidence in the management of the family budget, where a shared approach prevails. Yet such change in the relationship spheres does not always entail positive results for women. However, this situation should not be generalized, since surveys done on Haitian migrations to the United States have shown that these did not translate into an improvement in the household domain, but an extension into full-time work instead.


Quoting Mijiana Morokvasic (1983), the impact of migration, whether transboundary or from the rural sector to the urban sector, shall depend on the pre-migratory experience of every woman, which is unique and cannot be repeated, in which the cultural context of origin plays a major role. The survey by Hondagmeu-Sotelo (1994) with Mexican women in Los Angeles (USA) reasserts this approach, emphasizing that the social community context has been a significant element in modifying the intra-family dynamics of these women by taking on more incidence in family decision-making: women have thus won, while men have lost in the arena of “family politics”.


Does migration alter the asymmetry between men and women?

There is room for change, but there is always the concern about the direction of these changes, since they affect the person’s structure of opportunities, even though they seem to lack direction. Some researchers hold that the new scenario acts by restructuring gender inequalities and modifies the relative position of women in certain domains and their situation vis à vis men. This improvement is often associated with salary-paying employment within intra-family power relationships. However, the cultural milieu of origin of female migrants plays a major role in their relationship with the receiving country and how they become integrated therein.

The impact of migration on gender relationships may improve, deteriorate or restructure asymmetries in the situation of women. Return migrations may yield unfavourable results in terms of gender relationships where women lose a portion of the spaces and autonomies they had previously won, and old relationship patterns are thus re-edited.

Final Considerations

1. The excessive emphasis on economic and labour aspects has prevented from seeing the multidimensional spheres to which the migration process is related. The perspectives that prevailed not long ago were the balanced and structural analytic approaches, which have generated quite fragmented knowledge and have prevented from retrieving the diversity of the social universe, while incorporating migration as a response to structural conditionings as an individual option. The social building process, linked to the issue of social relationships entailing a gender concept, influence the ways in which migrations take place, the reason why it can be concluded that surveys on female migration should not only restrict the sex variable in demographic analyses, but case studies with qualitative approaches should be integrated, since they provide valuable information on the cause, impacts and effects, whether at a family level or at a broader level.

2. The impact of these dimensions is not neutral, especially when State services and institutions weaken or disappear, and when women need to take on more responsibilities in the generation of income for supporting the family and providing food security.

3. The top priority task is to achieve the conceptual integration of gender in migratory movements and in population dynamics. As a hierarchy structuring agent, gender plays a decisive role in the social fabric and it is important to determine which articulating relationships take place with other social domains, and through which mechanisms they are established.

4. In the existing data on migratory flows there is scarce information on the gender specificity of the process. Explanatory models need to be established, models which are alien to the instrumental-economic rationale. In that sense, it is necessary to elaborate tools for generating information that reflects the importance of gender mediation in the migratory dynamics of both men and women. Information tools should also gather data on female movements, including their origin (urban, rural), age, ethnicity, education and workplaces.

5. Women’s migratory process has several stages (decision-making, transfer, insertion in the labour market, return) and leaves a footprint in their families and children. Every woman’s experience can be very different, some of them are empowered, others renegotiate gender relationships within their families, while others face losses and additional burdens that affect their options when they decide to return. One important aspect on which few surveys have been done is to get to know the effect on those children who are left behind when women migrate: what happens with their children’s food security? How are those women-generated remittances invested? Which educational opportunities are children afforded? What is the academic performance of those children? How do they perceive their mother’s migration? Which is the role of grandparents and partners?


Marcela Ballara
ICAE-GEO


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Commission on Migration and Cultural Diversity

List of Contributors

Ashley William Gois is an educator, sociologist and human rights advocate. He has been working on Human Rights education for more than a decade and has been teaching social consciousness among University students across the Asia Pacific Region. From 1990 to 1995 Mr. Gois has worked extensively with Religious and cross cultural dialogues in Pakistan. He was a member of the Pax Romana Asian Regional Team from 1995-2000.
Mr. Gois has completed his Masters Degree in Sociology and is currently working on his PhD on Cosmic Anthropology.  He is also a team member of the Center for Conscious Living.
Currently Mr. Gois is the Regional Coordinator of the Migrant Forum in Asia, a regional network of migrants' organizations, NGOs, advocates, grassroots organizations and trade unions working to promote the rights and well being of migrant workers and members of their families (www.mfasia.org).

Marcela Ballara main area of work are formulation of national policies and strategies for gender specific needs for women and men, adult education, curriculum development, demography (migration), rural development, research, mainstreaming gender into international institutions and organizations of the civil society. She has participated in major UN Conferences of the decennium in advocacy and lobbied for gender issues . She is also part of  several gender global network  and organizations of the civil society where she has  participated as panelist, organizing seminars, workshops and other training activities addressed to women and men. Marcela has been working  in the United Nations at international global and regional level in Sub Sahara Africa, Central Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean regions, developing and implementing field projects,  research, negotiating with governments and donor agencies.

List of Presentations

Rob Mark:
Migration and the development of literacy skills among adults: an examination of the social and economic impact of migration on literacies policies and practices in  host communities.

Sofia Valdivielso:
The migration of people from Africa to the Canary Islands. A presentation about the problem and the steps being taken by the governments of the Canary Islands, Spain, and the European Commission.

Mamadou Mané
Presentation of the findings of the Research Group on Clandestine Migration.

Marcella Ballara:
"Internal migratory flows, feminization of migrations and their impact on food security "