Unseen Workers: The Venezuelan Migrant Experience in Lima’s Informal Economy

Venezuelan migrants in Lima navigate a challenging informal economy, facing instability, low wages, and barriers to formalization. This story explores their resilience and their quest for decent work.

Informality in Lima is deeply ingrained, with around 70% of Limeños working in the informal economy, from taxi drivers to bodega owners. The relatively newly settled Venezuelan population is no exception; they, too, have had to navigate this informal landscape. However, they face distinctive challenges, and the consequences of informality have hit them the hardest.

Lorena Alcazar Valdivia, a principal researcher and director of projects at the Groupo de Analisis para el Desarrollo (GRADE), who recently worked on social development issues relating to migrants in Peru and Ecuador, describes informality in Peru as a challenge at the intersection of labor policies, poverty, and development. While it is a general issue for Peruvians, she notes that rates of informality are notably higher among the Venezuelan population.

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Venezuelans working informally tend to face worse working conditions than Peruvians working the same jobs, according to Alcazar. She says, “It’s basically that they [Venezuelan migrants] have non-decent jobs according to the International Labor Organization (ILO) definition. So, they get poor earnings, and that's what happens to migrants—in many cases, they are not real jobs, [meaning they] are unstable, unstable in terms of frequency, and of course with no protection—and even when they have a salary, they get no rights.”

Migrants working informally struggle to access the same social programs as formal workers. While Alcazar notes that unemployment might not be a significant issue, "people find work, precarious work. Still, they work.” The quality of that work remains a concern. The ILO defines informality as jobs that lack security, fair income, and social protections, making it clear that Venezuelan migrants are particularly vulnerable.

According to a report from the Joint Data Center on Forced Displacement, “Venezuelans work more hours per week than Peruvians, and except for those with no education, earnings per hour are significantly lower among Venezuelan migrants and refugees [living in Peru].” Formalizing would theoretically allow migrants to access labor protections and provide a more stable, equitable income.

Navigating Informality

Combis or micros are a mainstay of Lima’s public transport. They are privately owned and informal, usually consisting of a two-person team: the driver and the cobrador, who collects the fare. Many combi teams do not outright own their vehicles. Instead, they work directly for the vehicle owner or have informal arrangements to use them in exchange for a part of the day’s profits. This, in addition to the low cost of entry, has made the industry particularly conducive to informal labor.

Every day, two of Callao’s combis return through one of the two gates at the entrance of Jose Palma, a neighborhood in Bellavista—a district of Lima’s seaport Callao. The security guards at the gate, as well as the drivers and cobradores, have all come from different parts of Venezuela at various times but find themselves connected through their labor.

Alexander Jose Rojas arrived in Peru in 2017 and has been a driver, cook, and ambulante (street vendor) since. In Venezuela, he previously was a navy officer and worked as a mechanical engineer for PDSVA, the state-owned Venezuelan oil and natural gas company. Most recently, due to the instability of his other jobs, Rojas has returned to driving a combi for a living.

Rojas enjoys his job. He drives a combi named Paulina around the Bellavista district of Callao. “You see both crazy things and, well, sometimes, things that make you laugh.” He expresses gratitude for the opportunity in Peru to provide for his family in Venezuela.

As he drives, he explains why he hasn’t returned to work as an engineer: “To validate my studies, they ask me for a series of receipts, and the process is very tedious. As I have often discussed with passengers, Peru is a largely informal country." So, despite having a regularized migration status, Rojas faces difficulties verifying his degree, giving him the option of low-wage formal work or unstable informal work. “Well, if you look at a minimum wage, it's not enough to sustain a family.” So, he drives in the hopes of earning enough for his family.

Rojas emphasizes that because of this informality, he may not qualify for unemployment insurance or the pension provided by the Peruvian government to workers (AFP). In other words, he says informality “in some ways makes it hard to save money, hard to plan for a future. In informal jobs, you live day to day, and that doesn't give you the balance needed to save—it’s unlike what it was like there in Venezuela because, with a simple job, you got a house. Even a simple carpenter had his home with his family nucleus—that’s how it was before.”

The struggle with working informally extends beyond financial instability; it touches the core of Rojas' identity and connections: “Sometimes, one is there [in Venezuela], but the body is here. Whereas the mind and the soul are not. Because that’s where your relatives are, your mother, your father, your grandparents, siblings, they are all there. So, it's complicated, right? I have my children and my wife, who, right or wrong, have a reasonably comfortable lifestyle. They can eat, they can prepare any food they like … Still, well, sometimes I want to go back.”

Vladimir Hill, a security guard who recently arrived in Peru, is still adjusting to his new life. Less than half a year ago, he worked for a Coca-Cola distributor, unloading merchandise at a warehouse. Now, Hill is getting accustomed to his new home, meeting his neighbors, and helping solve their disputes.

Despite this, Hill faces an imminent challenge to his ability to continue working in Lima. “As I am talking to you, I have little time left here to return to my country—to fix things properly as they should be,” he says. His migration status affects his job opportunities, forcing him to work informally. “They (employers) support you here, but you have to have your documentation up to date.”

Navigating this system has been difficult for Hill. “I don't have the DNI [ID] they ask for here. I have gone on several occasions to arrange those papers. Finally, this week, they were able to assist me. They told me that they could probably give me a DNI so I could be here comfortably—not like how I feel right now, like a cockroach at a chicken dance. I really would like to get everything [documentation]; it would make life easier and allow me to try other sources of work.” The uncertainty and instability of his current situation weigh heavily on him, highlighting the bureaucratic challenges many migrants face.

Hill is determined to integrate into Peruvian society and achieve economic freedom. “That's how I really want to live; I want to feel comfortable and happy and share ideas. Though I have nothing to complain about in my job, I would like to try other sources of work. I want to learn a little more about Peru itself, its beliefs, and its customs. I want to learn much more—in truth, I would.” His aspirations extend beyond economic stability; he seeks to immerse himself fully in the cultural fabric of his new home, embracing the opportunity for a better future.

Why are Venezuelans working informally?

Restrictive regulations in Peru present a significant hurdle for foreign workers. Only 20% of a Peruvian company’s personnel can be foreign, and the total payroll of these employees cannot exceed 30%. When conceived, laws like these were meant to protect Peruvian labor from being replaced with foreign workers and were not designed with the number of permanent migrants the country now has.

For many businesses with a small number of employees, like combis, this can quickly force the business toward informality or outright bar Venezuelans from employment. Regardless, laws like these remain due to an ineffective legislature and the concern that Venezuelan migrants might outcompete Peruvian labor due to the higher average level of education and lower wages they receive.

“There is [also] a legal issue: In many cases, in most cases, the Venezuelan immigrants come without legal documents,” says Alcazar. Even for migrants who received asylum or temporary legal status, maintaining their status is daunting due to financial concerns and constantly changing migration regulations.

Fernando Tavares Ramirez, a researcher for Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), says it is no surprise that the Peruvian legislators and migration system have been unable to keep up with the number of migrants they have received. He says Peru has historically been an exporter of migrants to the Global North—Lima by itself has had an influx of over 1 million Venezuelan migrants since 2013.

To accommodate the rapid influx of migrants at first, Peruvian authorities issued temporary documents, which served to normalize some migrants’ migration status in the short term but were seldom recognized in companies; most companies and public institutions required a carnet de extranjeria (immigration card). The barriers to acquiring the carnet de extranjeria proved too high for most migrants, forcing many like Hill to turn to the unreliable and frequently changing temporary documentation system.

Validating documentation, such as work experience, diplomas, or even medical records, is equally challenging and often requires cooperation from Venezuelan institutions or employers. Rojas’ situation represents a trend frequently seen among the wider Venezuelan population in Lima: overqualification due to the invalidation of degrees and work experience. The lack of documentation or validation of documentation has significantly contributed to Venezuelans' higher rates of informality.

An alternate perspective

Gustav Brauckmeyer, director and co-founder of Equilibrium CenDE, an independent research center promoting the socioeconomic development of the Latin American region, believes in the more achievable goal of partial formalization, a departure from the vision of widespread formalization for Lima’s workers. “In an ideal world—formalization is the solution,” he says. “In a realistic world where we live and when we're seeing that even in the most developed economies, formalization is now less and less [realistic] because the gig economy is growing, and people have more nontraditional jobs and so on—so I do not think it is realistic to assume that we can formalize most of the economy in Peru.”

Brauckmeyer maintains that two significant obstacles prevent widespread formalization: disinformation and policy. Policy change has not kept pace with current needs at the governmental level. In the private sector, employers often find themselves at a loss when hiring migrants, hindered by a lack of familiarity with the relevant laws and documentation required. Compounding this issue is the lack of incentive for these employers to invest time and resources into learning these processes.

On the other hand, individual migrants like Rojas and Hill face their own set of challenges. Many are unfamiliar with the intricacies of the hiring process, from knowing where to find job openings to understanding how to obtain the necessary documentation. These barriers collectively create a significant hurdle in the formalization of migrant labor.

Partial formalization would aim to achieve a similar result to the widespread formalization and integration of Venezuelan migrants by focusing on formalization for those who would benefit the most under the current system and providing similar protections for informal workers who currently lack labor rights and fair wages. This would provide a framework to approach the most significant challenges for Venezuelan migrants without overhauling the labor market structure.

As Brauckmeyer explains, “The main economic problem with [Venezuelan] migration is that when policies are bad, and people are not able to access the sort of jobs that they should be accessing and are not able to fulfill their potential in this economy, they generate tensions in the low-income informal market. That's the main problem that we have had because migration has put a strain, especially on the low-skill informal jobs that have affected the local population.”

Empowerment through practical solutions

While Brauckmeyer views policy change as unlikely in the near future, he suggests practical solutions at the individual level. He recommends less saturated government programs from the Ministry of Labor that help individuals tackle the “main economic problem.” Job orientation centers and technical programs are among the services that anyone with legal status in Peru can access for free or at low cost; in this aim, he proposes the country's institutions as a long-term solution.

“A lot of the services NGOs provide are not going to exist in a couple of years, but public services are, and they're not saturated. They're underused in so many cases,” Brauckmeyer says. “If you look at the public job orientation system, technical formation offering and technical training system, those things are not saturated at all. They're unknown, and they're barely used by locals or migrants, so there's a huge opportunity there.”

However, while NGOs continue operating in Lima, cooperation between them and institutions results in beneficial programs like La Caravana Del Emprendimiento, held by the Municipality of Lima in collaboration with World Council of Credit Unions and USAID. In this program, emprendedores (entrepreneurs) can showcase their skills and goods to consumers, attend classes, and connect with investors who may provide seed capital.

Lenny Rivero, a Venezuelan teacher turned emprendedor, participated in La Caravana del Emprendimiento. For five years, Rivero has worked informally as an ambulante (street vendor) artisan in Lima’s Chorrillos district. “Teaching is my profession; I am an artisan out of necessity,” Rivero says, saying it is a means to provide for herself and her family. “I lost my documents when moving during the pandemic—so I couldn’t teach anymore.”

Necessity doesn’t take away from Rivero’s pride in her craft; you see it in her dedication to weaving hundreds of wires together to make her art. For many, including Rivero, formalizing their small business is viewed as a necessity in the long term despite the barriers present. Without legal permission to sell in some places, Rivero says, “sometimes, they mistreat us because we are illegally in the business—sometimes, it's time to run away as if we were delinquents. So, it is harder for us to get ahead because sometimes there is no support.”

“It is very difficult for foreigners to get permission because they ask for a series of requirements and, sometimes, ask for money,” Rivero says. “Since we are an informal business, we cannot obtain the necessary resources to pay for those permits and the requirements.” Through working with the event organizers, she hopes to receive seed capital to expand her small business and eventually formalize it.

Still, Rivero remains hopeful.

"If more people learned a profession,” she notes, “we could improve our society and improve our quality of life.” This serves as a reminder that Venezuelans in Lima remain undeterred from pursuing decent work and economic freedom.

Lima's Venezuelan population is here to stay and work, despite policy challenges, disinformation, and lack of documentation. It will take the combined efforts of Lima’s NGOs, employers, and policymakers to build the required legal infrastructure and enact feasible solutions to provide decent work opportunities for the newest community in La Ciudad de Los Reyes.