Legislación sobre migración y refugio en América Latina archivos

Unpacking the ideational foundations of South American migration governance: a systematic analysis of the South American conference on migration (SACM)

Is there empirical evidence for a liberal paradigm that informs South American immigration governance? And how does this paradigm relate to other ideas on managing immigration? Based on Pécoud’s (2020) categorization of immigration governance philosophies, and the content analysis of all final declarations of the South American Conference on Migration between 2000 and 2022, we confirm a dominant liberal paradigm in the region. We further find that in South America, Pécoud’s global rights-based philosophy operates as a hinge between three other philosophies: the free (non) governance of migration, anti-migrant governance, and managerial/development global migration governance philosophy.

Through our analysis, we demonstrate the applicability of Pécoud’s (2020) immigration governance philosophies to a major immigrant receiving region in the Global South, and contribute to the ideational literature by showing how paradigms and philosophies represent ideational building blocks that can be combined, merged, and adapted by political actors to different regional contexts.

Unpacking the unintended consequences of European migration governance: the case of South American migration policy liberalization

Research on the external dimension of EU migration governance has focused on the EU’s interests, preferences, and policy efficiency and coherence. Little attention has been paid to the myriad ways both partner and third countries react to the union’s external action. We explore the European influence on immigration and refugee policy liberalisation in South America, a region not directly targeted by extra-regional migration governance.

Based on the analysis of 130 original interviews with government officials and NGO and IO representatives in eight South American countries we show that – although South American policymakers generally regard the EU as a model of ‘efficiency’, in terms of the EU’s intra-regional mobility regime – the remarkable legislative liberalisation in the region took place in the context of both political and moral opposition to restrictive shifts in EU extra-regional migration governance. The paper contributes to the literature on the EU external migration governance, policy diffusion, and Latin American migration policies by uncovering some of the unintended consequences of European migration governance in South America.

Symbolic refugee protection: Explaining Latin America’s liberal refugee laws

What drove an entire region in the Global South to significantly expand refugee protection in the early twenty-first century? In this paper, we test and build on political refugee theory via a mixed-methods approach to explain the liberalization of refugee legislation across Latin America. First, we use data from the new APLA Database, which measures legislative liberalization over a 30-year period, and test both general and region-specific immigration and refugee policy determinants through a series of nested Tobit and linear spatial panel-data regressions.

Our models do not support some consistent predictors of policy liberalization identified by the literature such as immigrant and refugee stocks, democratization, and the number of emigrants, but they offer statistical evidence for the importance of leftist government ideology and regional integration. We then shed light on the causal mechanisms behind these correlations for two extreme but diverse cases: Argentina and Mexico. Based on process tracing and elite interviews, we suggest that the reason that leftist political ideology rather than institutional democratization and number of emigrants matters for policy liberalization is that Latin American executives embarked on symbolic human and migrant’s rights discourses that ultimately enabled legislative change.

Voluntary and Forced Migration in Latin America. Law and Policy Reforms

A rigorous comparative study of the contemporary migration and refugee policies and laws of seven Latin American countries.

Latin America provides a compelling case for the study of migration policies and laws, with several factors – including both internal and interregional migration and refugee flows, the region’s progressive approach to the management of human mobility, and several forced displacement crises of the contemporary era – offering unique insights.

Despite the region’s heterogeneous migration flows and unique immigration and refugee laws, the academic literature has thus far lacked in-depth explorations of migration policy in Latin America. Voluntary and Forced Migration in Latin America presents a comparative analysis of the migration legislation of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru. For each country, the collection provides a historical overview of the evolution of migration legislation, an analysis of the migration flows and types of migrant profiles, and an examination of the country’s current immigration, asylum, and nationality legislation. The primary regional and international mechanisms that facilitate a normative approach to voluntary and forced migration, as well as to migrant and refugee rights, are also thoroughly interrogated.

Situating itself in the often progressive immigration policies of Latin America, Voluntary and Forced Migration in Latin America offers alternative solutions for other countries facing migration challenges in different contexts.

El elemento situacional de violación masiva de derechos humanos de la definición ampliada de Cartagena: hacia una aplicación en el caso venezolano

En un contexto de liberalización de sus marcos normativos, la mayoría de los países en América Latina han incorporado la definición ampliada de refugiado de la Declaración de Cartagena de 1984 en su legislación doméstica. Sin embargo, esta definición se ha aplicado pocas veces. Frente al éxodo de personas venezolanas, y en un contexto de endurecimiento de las políticas migratorias en general, y hacia la población venezolana en especial, es necesario discutir sobre la posible aplicación de esta definición a dicha población.

Sin negar la importancia de las implicancias políticas de la aplicación de Cartagena, este artículo aborda, desde una mirada jurídica, los retos para conceptualizar sus elementos situacionales, enfocándose en el de violación masiva de derechos humanos. Para ello, el artículo propone desarrollar un marco conceptual de este elemento situacional y su aplicación al caso venezolano.

Special Issue: Policies and Politics of Venezuelan Migration in Latin America

This special issue of International Migration brings together seven articles that deepen our understanding of Latin American political and policy reactions to Venezuelan displacement at a national level, the role of regional protection mechanisms for displaced populations, such as the Cartagena Declaration refugee definition, as well as Venezuelans’ perceptions of such policies. More specifically, the articles offer analyses of the policy reactions of five South American countries (Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru) and Mexico, as well as a regional perspective regarding the applicability of the Cartagena refugee definition to the Venezuelan case. The articles in this issue originate from discussions that took place during two panels that were organized by the co-editors in the 2019 Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Congress, titled Venezuelan International Migration in the Americas: Origins and Challenges.

Overall, the special issue’s contribution is threefold. First, a South-North bias continues to underlie mainstream migration theories, leaving the dynamics of, and the political and policy reactions to, south-south flows substantially understudied. This lacuna is particularly worrisome considering that, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), by 2020, countries in the Global South hosted 86 per cent of all forcibly displaced people (UNHCR, 2020). The focus on Latin American governments’ reception of Venezuelan migrants and refugees, thus, serves to remedy this void in the literature. Second, both scholars and specialists have pointed out that the refugee definition of the 1951 United Nations (UN) Convention on the Status of Refugees excludes many situations of forced mobility. Therefore, extended regional definitions seek to provide special protection in situations of broader humanitarian crises. The present issue aims to better understand the application of regional protection mechanisms, as well as related challenges, for the case of the Cartagena Declaration refugee definition. In addressing these points, the articles in the special issue also allow us to better understand the political and practical barriers to the implementation of exceptionally progressive immigration and refugee legislation, contributing to the literature on implementation gaps in the region.

Políticas y reformas migratorias en América Latina. Un estudio comparado.

El aumento exponencial de los flujos migratorios sucedido en los últimos años en América Latina se convertirá en uno de los grandes retos que la región deberá abordar en las próximas décadas, ya que, lejos de ser un fenómeno coyuntural, la dinámica de movilidad iniciada es estructural y supondrá una transformación de la sociedad a largo plazo. En esta línea, el libro analiza con gran rigurosidad y profundidad uno de los temas clave de la agenda política y ciudadana que se están discutiendo actualmente en el terreno de la investigación, en las instituciones gubernamentales y en los espacios de lucha por la ampliación de derechos. Así pues, esta publicación ofrece un estudio completo de la regulación y las políticas migratorias en América Latina bajo tres ejes: la ampliación en el reconocimiento y garantía de los derechos; una mayor apertura que promueva la movilidad humana segura; y el desarrollo de políticas de integración que favorezcan el reconocimiento mutuo.

Es un libro que identifica los avances y retos en las normativas internas de los Estados y describe en clave comparativa las propuestas, políticas y soluciones que están desarrollando los diferentes países para la mejor gestión de los flujos migratorios, en especial, en el momento de escribir este libro, el reto de la migración venezolana.