Latin Americans’ path to a new country
This week as part of #MakeoverMonday, we analise Global Flow of People and I personally decided to focus on Latin America and the reasons driving people – like myself – to emigrate in search of a better path or future.
Like me, some of us will bump into the opportunity of working abroad and getting an enrichment experience (with its ups and downs) of what it means to live in a different culture with people from all all over the world.
Others, like this article from Gallup shows, will have complete different reason to emigrate.
Unemployment and poverty force Latin Americans to leave their countries
Unemployment and poverty are certainly driving factors in the region’s poorest and least self-sufficient countries. In countries with per-capita GDP of $5,000 or less, 21% of respondents, on average, say a member of their household has recently gone to live in another country, and 31% say they themselves would move to another country given the opportunity. In countries with per-capita GDP of $10,000 or more, the percentages are somewhat lower, at 14% and 22%, respectively.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">"Where did Latin Americans emigrate?" a late <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MakeoverMonday?src=hash">#MakeoverMonday</a> submission! - Interactive <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/viz?src=hash">#viz</a> on <a href="https://twitter.com/tableaupublic">@tableaupublic</a>: <a href="https://t.co/GAVxVasKV3">https://t.co/GAVxVasKV3</a> <a href="https://t.co/eInJ637rNL">pic.twitter.com/eInJ637rNL</a></p>— Pablo Gomez (@PabloLGomez) <a href="https://twitter.com/PabloLGomez/status/806093920925057024">December 6, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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From 1990 to 2010 a total of 1,187,176 people emigrated from Argentina …
However, from a region-wide perspective — and particularly when it comes to Latin America’s larger economies — desperate conditions can’t fully account for the desire to migrate. In many countries, those who wish to emigrate do not necessarily view their current lives more negatively than those who wish to stay in their country. Respondents were asked to rate their lives on a scale from “0” to “10,” with “10” being the best possible life for them. Those across the region who wish to emigrate are not heavily clustered at the low end of the scale — even those who give their current lives a 10 are only slightly less likely than those who give a very low rating to say they’d like to move.
It seems that job satisfaction in Latin America matters more than job availability in terms of driving migration intent. A follow-up question asking employed respondents whether they are satisfied with their current jobs produces an important distinction: 39% of those who are dissatisfied would like to emigrate, versus 24% of those who are satisfied.
Further, there is data to suggest the search for better jobs and opportunities to achieve more in life, rather than desperation and an inability to “make it” in their home countries, leads many Latin Americans to want to emigrate.
Data Source: http://www.makeovermonday.co.uk
Text Source: Gallup
