Thirteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Neoliberalism, informality, and migration are all inextricably linked and the Venezuelan refugee crisis, one of the most critical humanitarian issues of recent years, is also significantly gendered. In the early 1990s, both Colombia and Venezuela implemented structural adjustment policies that disproportionately affected women but Hugo Chavez’s extensive public spending programs from 1998 onwards served to dramatically reverse the negative impact of neoliberalism and the feminization of poverty. However, the severe economic crisis that ensued after Chavez’s death in 2013 has meant that millions of Venezuelans, over half are women, have had to leave their homes in search of better-paid work to send family remittances and increase their purchasing power on their return. Analysis of oral history interviews with sixteen Venezuelan women who migrated to four distinct Colombia cities (Bogota, Medellin, Barranquilla, and Cartagena) highlight how given the distinctly neoliberal structure of Colombian society, female Venezuelan migrants often have little choice but to engage in precarious informal earning strategies in order to survive and also often experience reduced access to public services that can result in substantially increased domestic labour and outgoings. Moreover, many women have to endure exploitation, discrimination, and poverty. In many ways they are better off in state interventionist Venezuela, thus highlighting how neoliberalism exacerbates gender inequality and poverty in both Latin America and in the Global South.