The Politics of the South American Migration Regime: Notes from a Review of the Interdisciplinary Literature on Migration Policy in the Region since the Venezuelan Exodus

BAIOCCHI, MARÍA LIS

Toronto (modalidad híbrida)

Congreso; 2023 AAA/CASCA Annual Meeting: Transitions; 2023

American Anthropological Association (AAA) y Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA)

The importance that the study of Venezuelan migration in South America has recently acquired is related to its constitution as the most significant phenomenon of human mobility in the recent history of the region. The production of knowledge from the social sciences on the social, political, and cultural implications of Venezuelan migration in South America has run parallel with the increase, celerity, and scale of the phenomenon. Indeed, since 2017 there has been an exponential increase in the number of academic publications on this topic, published primarily in Spanish. This talk will present the results of a review of the anthropological, sociological, Political Science, International Relations, and Legal Studies literature on migration policy in South America in the face of the reconfiguration of the Venezuelan migratory flow in the region between 2015 and 2023. The literature reviewed is based on empirical investigations that shed light on the politics of the South American migration regime at the current unprecedented social, political, and historical juncture of intraregional migration within South America. The review of the literature provides evidence of a field of study in the making within the larger field of Latin American migration studies, highlights the centrality of Latin American academic production in both empirical and theoretical terms to this specific topic and to the field of migration studies more broadly, demonstrates the prevalence of studies based on documentary analysis for studies employing ethnographic approaches, and shows the need for studies that would examine this topic from an intersectional perspective.