The Institute for International Urban Development (IIUD) is currently conducting a Sida-sponsored study on women migrants focusing on the following issues:

• The determinants of migration, objectives and strategies, decision-making, links to social networks and choice of channels and processes.
• Access to opportunity in the receiving country, remittance-sending patterns, and priorities regarding uses.
• Remittance-receiving female heads of households, decision-making processes regarding the use of funds remitted with a special focus on health, education and investment expenditures.
• Household strategies to improve their economic condition and living standards.
• The use of remittances to finance housing improvements or new house construction, taking into account the priority placed by women migrants and remittance-receivers regarding channeling remitted funds into housing.
• Contribution of migration to the empowerment of women through 1) providing an independent income, 2) giving a key role in decision-making regarding financial matters and 3) opening up opportunities to build assets.
  

The study relies on three interlinked field surveys documenting women’s migration and remittance patterns, women’s use of remittances to purchase land, construct or improve housing, and the impact of remittances on the empowerment of women.  Field work has been conducted in Central America, the Andean Region and the USA. 

Massachusetts is home to communities of Hondurans, Ecuadorians and Salvadorans.  With the help of community organizations and migrant associations, the Institute has conducted a survey of migrant women from these three communities designed to elicit information on women’s distinctive patterns of migration, remittance sending, use of remitted funds and investment in asset building, particularly housing and land. 

Working together with affiliates in Honduras, El Salvador and Ecuador, the Institute has organized interviews of recipient female heads of household in those countries.  IIUD has also collaborated with partners in Chile and Ecuador to survey Peruvian women migrants, focusing on educational level, occupation, length of stay in Chile and Ecuador, expenditures on lodging and subsistence, place of origin in Peru, remittances to family in Peru and decisions regarding expenditures of the remitted funds. 

The goal of the study is to provide the critical background documentation, based in large part on field interviews, needed to develop policies, projects and programs that enable women migrants or remittance receivers to build key assets to promote the economic stability of their households.