Family status, labor market integration and remittances. Bolivian families in Spain

Rafael Grande Martín, Universidad de Salamanca
Luis Alberto Del Rey Poveda, Universidad de Salamanca

The aim of this paper is to analyze the transfer of remittances by immigrant families taking into account the labor market integration and family status in the country of destination. Our main hypothesis is that the migrant-family status affects both the labor market integration and the transfer of remittances to the country of origin. In this study we focus on analyzing the case of Bolivian families in Spain. This is an immigrant group highly feminized, with a lower time of residence, and it presents a weak family reunification process. These features define a particular framework for the study of remittances. The data used in this study are mainly from National Immigrant Survey 2007 from de Spanish National Statistics Institute. Using logistic regression models we estimate two relative risks: the labor market integration and the transfer of remittances considering socio-demographic, family and employment characteristics of migrants. The results indicate from one hand that the Bolivian labor integration is very weak compared to other immigrant groups because of its recent arrival and their individual and family socio-demographic conditions. On the other hand, given their particular family status, with many married women with children, but living alone, the flow of remittances is much more intense than other immigrant groups with better labor market integration. The main finding of this study is to see that family status of immigrants, marital status and residential status, are more important than labor market position in order to send remittances.