Immigration in Peru

Migration and Immigration in Peru

Peru is the number one mineral exporter in the world. Therefore, many mine workers are needed because Peru has been introducing new mining technologies and is on the lookout for more mining opportunities. For this, more laborers are necessary. This has caused the migration within Peru to change. The most popular mining places are in the Andes. The change in mining and its new opportunities is due to Peru becoming more liberal and therefore more attractive to international investments during the last decades. In 2000, 2/3 of the entire production of Peru was mining.

During the first part of the 20^th century, the Peruvian population mostly still lived in rural areas. This has changed and nowadays more than 70% of the entire population lives in urban areas in order to be closer to work. Also, more than 1/3 of the population alone lives in Lima, the capital of Peru, where more than 40% of the inhabitants are immigrants.

Another aspect of migration is that some migration is only temporary where male and female household members move to the larger cities, live with relatives, make money, and send this money back to their families in the rural areas. This behavior reflects on the family back at home. Meaning they have more disposable income at hand in order to better their own life, as well as wanting to contribute as much as the family member who moved away. Households where a family member is living somewhere else can actually focus on other things now (e.g. health and education) instead of just wondering how to feed themselves. Some migration is still permanent though. This occurs when rural families send their children to Lima in order for them to get an education. Usually, these children decide that they do not want to return to the rural areas and stay in the bigger cities.

Due to the highly technological aspect of mining (machines, managemet etc), international immigration is very common as well. These international immigrants display the high foreign interest in Peruvians mining business. Usually, these immigrants form their own kind of settlement and do not live with the average Peruvians. This leads to increasing land prices, as well as new housing types.

In 2010, Peru had a population of 29.5 million of which 0.1% were immigrants. Within the last 10 years, about 2 Million people migrated to other countries; more than half of these migrants were women).