Access to Labour and Social Provisions for Young Venezuelan Migrants in Quito-Ecuador.

Abstract

<p>The emergence of "post-development" politics in the region has led to increased efforts to address the needs of these populations. However, as demonstrated by the recent Venezuelan displacement crisis, there are concerning patterns emerging: instead of seeing migrants and refugees as having rights and including them in long-term inclusion policies, countries are passing this responsibility to humanitarian aid from international cooperation and local initiatives. Ecuador is noteworthy because it hosts one of the largest populations of Venezuelan migrants and refugees and has adopted a human rights perspective in conjunction with public investments in social policy, health and education. Despite efforts to legalize the work status of Venezuelan migrants, a more restrictive policy began to be implemented in 2019, which limits their access to formal labor. In order to survive and eventually cover the cost of obtaining legal work status, most of them end up with precarious jobs in the informal sectors. Nevertheless, instead of seeing these young migrants and refugees as “victims” we analyse their strategies of access to social provisions while coping with informality and irregular status. Using four real-life stories as examples taken from of a larger ethnographic study, this article analyses these different strategies. The case studies are complemented with structural explanations from six thousand Household Surveys collected for the “Labour Situation and Economic contribution from immigrants in Quito” project, coordinated by the author in 2017-2020. </p>