171 CEPAL REVIEW 82 • APRIL 2004 Migrations, the labour market and poverty in Greater Buenos Aires Rosalía Cortés and Fernando Groisman 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 eco- nomic 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 Rosalía Cortés Research Professor place: the latter worked in precarious, poorly-paid occupations, ✒
[email protected] while the internal migrants swelled the ranks of the “structural poor”: Fernando Groisman persons with no trade, only occasional employment, and few possi- Guest Research Fellow bilities of improving their situation in the near future. ✒
[email protected] Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Economics and Technology Section) and National Council for Scientific and Technological Research (FLACSO-CONICET), Argentina 172 CEPAL REVIEW 82 • APRIL 2004 I Introduction This study analyses the differences that occurred in the to cyclical swings in the economy and employment.3 course of the 1990s in the labour situation of recent In the 1990s, however, the behaviour of internal internal migrants and migrants from neighbouring and cross-border migrants to Greater Buenos Aires took countries (hereinafter also referred to as “cross-border on different features from those prevailing in the previ- migrants”) who arrived in Greater Buenos Aires dur- ous period.