Uncertain Citizenship. Megan Ryburn
(GDP) in 2007.82 Of the remittances sent back to Bolivia in 2007, 46.2 percent came from Spain and 21.7 percent from the United States.83
There were many Bolivians on lower incomes, however, who could not afford to leave the continent for places like Spain and the United States, but who nonetheless still considered it vital to leave the country. While there had been marked improvements in access to health care and education since the 1970s, as Bolivia entered the twenty-first century it remained one of the poorest countries in Latin America, having suffered years of economic turmoil and neoliberal policies unfriendly to those not in the upper echelons of society. In the early 2000s, 29.7 percent of the population lived on less than US$1.90 per day, and 66.4 percent of the population lived below the national poverty line. Life expectancy at birth was just fifty-five years, and the infant mortality rate was eighty per one thousand live births.84
For Bolivians with limited economic resources and little formal education who were seeking better opportunities, Brazil, and particularly São Paulo, increased in popularity as a destination within Latin America from the early 2000s onward. In São Paulo as in Buenos Aires, many migrants have found work in garment manufacturing, working under similar conditions to those in Buenos Aires.85 Demonstrating the increase in the Bolivian migrant population in Brazil, the 2010 Brazilian census recorded 38,816 Bolivian migrants resident in the country, compared to 20,394 in 2001.86 It is likely that this significantly underrepresents the Bolivian migrant population, however; in 2011, it was estimated that there were between 50,000 and 80,000 Bolivians resident in São Paulo alone, many of whom held irregular status and were thus not recorded in the census.87
Further indicating the growth of the Bolivian population in Brazil, remittances sent back to Bolivia from Brazil have increased notably, from 0.6 percent of the total in 2007, to 3.8 percent in 2013, to 10.4 percent in 2017. By contrast, remittances coming from Spain decreased to 33.8 percent of the total in 2017, and those from the United States to 17.1 percent.88 This change can be attributed to a considerable degree to the impacts of recession and austerity on Spain and the United States since the 2008 crisis, which have played a role in reducing migration to these countries and encouraging those intending to migrate to consider destinations within Latin America.89
The other major shift in Bolivian migration away from Argentina within Latin America has been to Chile, although there is far less information available on Bolivian migrants in Chile than on their counterparts in Brazil and Argentina. This is in spite of the significant numbers entering Chile, especially when one considers the markedly smaller population of Chile in comparison to Brazil (17.8 million and 200 million, respectively).90 The most recent Chilean CASEN (Caracterización Socioeconómica Nacional, National Socioeconomic Characterization Survey) data estimated the Bolivian population in Chile to be 47,100 in 2015, showing a significant increase from an estimated 24,116 in 2009.91 The remittance data for flows from Chile to Bolivia is also telling. In 2007 remittances from Chile to Bolivia accounted for just 1.6 percent of total remittances to Bolivia; by 2013 this had increased to 6.1 percent, and in 2017 this figure reached 9.5 percent.92 As is the case for Bolivian migration flows generally, Bolivian migration to Chile is highly feminized, and in 2014 54.5 percent of all Bolivian migrants were women.93
The flow of Bolivian migrants into Chile seems set to continue and potentially to increase further as part of a rapidly shifting landscape of migration patterns within Latin America. As for why this may be so from the Bolivian perspective, as already outlined, the economic, social, and political outcomes of the period under Evo Morales since 2005 have been mixed, and in different, complex ways, they may contribute to the continuation of Bolivian migration. First, there have been some very marked improvements in key poverty indicators in Bolivia in the past decade. The number of those living on less than US$1.90 per day had decreased to 6.8 percent by 2016, and the number of those living below the national poverty line had also decreased, to 38.6 percent. Life expectancy at birth has increased to sixty-six years, and the infant mortality rate has decreased to thirty-eight per one thousand live births.94
It would be reasonable to assume that these improvements might make Bolivia a more attractive place to remain. In one of the apparent paradoxes of migration, however, there is evidence that—broadly speaking—as poverty in a country decreases, out-migration increases. This is because growing numbers of people have the necessary resources to leave the country for somewhere that is still better off than the home country (out-migration then decreases again once a country hits a certain economic level).95 As will be made clear throughout this book, although the migrants with whom I worked were generally from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and many came from contexts of multidimensional poverty, they were not the very poorest in society (see particularly chapter 4). As this sector of the population in Bolivia expands, it could be expected that so too would out-migration flows. Other factors may also contribute to continued migration flows from Bolivia, however, and as Hein de Haas reminds us, while “economic forces often play an important role as one of the root causes of migration … this alone cannot explain the actual shape of migration patterns.”96 In the Bolivian case, one sociopolitical factor that may have an impact is the sense of dissatisfaction among a growing proportion of the population who think that change under Morales is not happening fast enough, or that it is not the type of change they hoped for (see chapters 4 and 6).
In terms of Chile as a migration destination, as indicated above, part of the story behind the reduction in migration to Spain and the United States and the concurrent increase in intraregional migration in Latin America to countries such as Chile has been the impacts of recession and ongoing austerity measures. Within South America, the unrest in Brazil due to the ongoing corruption scandal at the highest levels of politics and the severe economic downturn, in addition to ongoing economic instability in Argentina, may well position Chile as an increasingly popular destination for those migrating in search of economic opportunity and relative social and political stability.
This would be consonant with the general shifts in migration to and from Chile over the past forty years. As a consequence of the exile of tens of thousands during the Pinochet dictatorship, the number of Chileans outside the country grew rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s, increasing what was already a negative net migration trend. Furthermore, very few foreigners moved to Chile during this period. While Chileans who had been in exile did gradually return following the end of the military regime, in 2005 it was estimated that over 850,000 Chileans resided outside the country.97
Today Chile remains a country of negative net migration, but the number of migrants residing in the country has increased exponentially since the 1990s. In 1992 there were an estimated 114,597 foreigners living in Chile, or 0.9 percent of the total population. This number has more than quadrupled, with conservative estimates putting the migrant population at 465,319 in 2015, around 2.7 percent of the population.98 The majority—90 percent—are from other Latin American countries, and there is increasing diversity in the range of migrants’ countries of origin. As already indicated, the increase in migration to Chile can largely be explained by the relatively steady economic growth and the political and social stability that Chile has experienced since the fall of the dictatorship.99 Moreover, once a certain number of “pioneer migrants” select a destination such as Chile, their social networks across borders facilitate the arrival of more people at the same destination.100
Chile became a member of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) in 2010 and was the first (and to date, only) South American country to join. Thus, in some respects it is perhaps more comparable with countries considered part of the global North than with those of the global South, and this is undoubtedly part of its allure for migrants from other parts of Latin America. Nevertheless, Chile is consistently well below average with respect to many OECD social indicators.101 The effects of years of neoliberal polices continue to reverberate; while experiencing sustained economic growth, Chile has a Gini coefficient of 0.49, making it the most unequal country in the OECD and average within Latin America.102 Public social spending is also very low, and 14.4 percent of the population lives below the national poverty line.103 It is thus situated in an ambiguous position between global North and global South. Migrants, and particularly Bolivian migrants, are