Migrant workers contribute to our days' global economy in significant ways because by, on the one hand, making up a cheap and flexible labor force and taking up jobs shunned by national citizens in the First World and, on the other hand, remitting their savings to family and friends in their home regions and thus constituting a main source of income in the Third World. This paper discusses the strategies that Peruvian migrants use to travel to and find work in the US, Japan, Spain, Italy, Argentina and Chile and the economic roles they occupy as low paid and unskilled workers in agriculture, industry and the service sector in these countries. More specifically, it explores the economic and social importance of this work for the labor market in the receiving country and migrants' own possibilities of contributing to the development of their country of origin. The paper argues that Peruvian migration takes the form of a global hierarchy of destinations that in different ways profit from migrants' labor but also offer migrants different opportunities to save capital and achieve social mobility. It concludes by comparing the examining data with studies of other Latin American migrations and discussing their implications for current attempts to theorize transnational migration and global mobility.