The Work of the Chilean Team and Photos of Venezuelan Migrants Interviewed in Chile

International migration towards Latin America has significantly changed direction and composition in the last two to three decades.  Previously, the mobility of migrants was usually from Europe and selected Asian countries towards Latin America.  Lately, the growth in foreign migration has been within the region itself, entailing the forced displacement of populations, mainly for economic, political reasons and climate change, from the Northern countries to those in the South. The relevance of migrations from Venezuela and, earlier on, from Haiti has severely impacted the Southern Cone countries, as well as Brazil. The Venezuelan diaspora, the largest in numbers in the last decades, has been towards:  Colombia, Perú, USA, Ecuador  and Chile, in order of magnitude ( Latinometrics).

In Chile, Venezuelan migration occupies the first place among settlements, while Haitian migrants the third one.  The qualitative case studies developed in Chile for this project include semi-structured interviews with both migrant groups that have distinct cultural, racial and language characteristics. Secondly, semi-structured interviews are being carried out with public and international policymakers, as well as with migrant organizations that represent these groups. The study´s aim is to analyse migrants´ narratives and experiences, especially on health and mental health, resilience strategies, coping, existential belonging and agency, in the light of the socioeconomic and cultural contexts they live in. Public migration policies that intervene to enhance and/or hinder their rights, in terms of eventual protection and multicultural integration such as, housing, employment, education, documentation and the like, are also addressed.

A theoretical paper has been presented in October 2023 at an International Migration Symposium called MIGRA FORUM, carried out at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). The study is a critical discussion on different conceptual approaches to resilience that could be relevant for the study of foreign migration.  It was developed from an intersectionality perspective, considering mainly gender, religion and race – as these represent the main differential characteristics among the migrant populations under study.

* Dr. Pablo Zuleta (PI);  Dr.  Liliana Acero, principal researcher and Doctoral Student Claudia Dides