Presenter: Kai Angel Augusto Sanchez-Pajuelo – Economics
Faculty Mentor(s): Iker Saitua
Session: (Virtual) Oral Panel—Read, Speak, and Act
“Not in Luxury, But to Get Along:” Economic and Political Aspects of Peruvian Immigration in the United States during the Late Twentieth Century”
The present paper studies Peruvian immigration to the United States during the late twentieth century. More specifically, it analyzes emigration from Peru caused by the sociopolitical and economic instability of the 1980s. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Peruvian economy went through a series of deep and prolonged economic crises that affected the country’s economic growth. The great depression of the Peruvian economy was mainly due to the negative effects of external shocks, political instability, limited national entrepreneurial capacity, and the lack of capacity to develop new export economic activities. Such depression pushed many Peruvians to emigrate to the United States to make a new start. Motivations of those immigrants were not limited to economic needs, but were framed in a wider context of lack of prospects in Peru. This wave of immigration into the United States was characterized by professional, qualified and semiqualified immigrants, remarkably working either in the service or clerical sectors. Educated people and skilled workers migrated from Peru to the United States during this period rather than unskilled labor force from rural areas. Furthermore, this immigration wave was characterized by family reunification and an occasional wave of refugees.