Migrations, the labour market and poverty in Greater Buenos Aires

This study analyses the labour behaviour of two segments of migrants - one coming from the provincial areas of Argentina and the other from neighbouring countries - in Greater Buenos Aires during the 1990s. Their labour trajectories were different: the economic activity of the migrants from neighbouring countries increased, but there was an expansion in the proportion of internal migrants in the ’not working” category. A process of replacement of internal migrants with migrants from neighbouring countries took place; the latter worked in precarious, poorly-paid occupations, while the internal migrants swelled the ranks of the “structural poor”: persons with no trade, only occasional employment, and few possibilities of improving their situation in the near future.