Stakeholder Expert Panel (SEP) and Seminar in Chile

Pablo Zuleta ( PhD.); Liliana Acero (PhD.) and Claudia Dides (Doctoral Student)*

During March 2024, two interesting activities that were developed by the Chilean team.

First, on March 11th  we had our first meeting with the advisory committee of stakeholders during one and a half hours by zoom.  It was formed by a mixed group of official policymakers at the national and municipal levels ( 2 and one ex-official), academics (2), an ex member of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and one representative ( the President) of a Venezuelan collective. A total of 7 people participated (out of 8 invited) : 3 women and 4 men.

The purpose was to have a first contact between the local team and the group and present the main objectives and perspective of the Belmont research project, of the Latin American conglomerate financed by the Inter-American Agency for Global Change (IAI) and the main contents of the clusters.  Previously, a brief background material had been sent to invitees on those issues, as well as, on the main concerns of the Chilean study.

Our main aim as a team was to focus on discussing priorities in our own project and establishing what type of contributions the participants were willing to make to the study. However, this proved a very difficult task, mainly due to the present situation at the national level.

Migration in Chile has become an ultrasensitive issue, partly due to the polarization of political forces: a government that reached power based upon quite a radical socialist perspective versus a Congress led by the far right.  This polarity was also at stake at the moment when a new Law on International Migration and Refugees was passed at the end of 2022, and it is at its implementation  phase– a matter of analysis in the next Chapter of our second year Technical Report for IAI.

This law, in our understanding, has a focus on control and internal security, is very restrictive towards migrants´ registration, delays documentation processing ( especially, regarding illegal migrants), not as humanitarian as it claims to be and objectively, – versus its explicit manifestation- shows little concern for migrants´ and refugees´ rights.  The group included a wide array of political positions and professional responsibilities which sometimes ‘crisped’ the debate climate. However, the specific topic of health and, mainly, of mental health and resilience was in general welcomed as a field of study and considered as a flaw within local public policy and scarcely pursued in academic work. However, most participants tended to divert the discussion to other issues they were more familiar or concerned with. They dealt with the law mentioned, political resistance and confrontation, the profound suffering and dissocial discrimination of migrants and stated the need to carry out extensive practical work. In some sense, the meeting ‘mirrored’ what is happening in sectors of government, opposition and civil society.

Also, the stakeholder group did not seem to realize how small our own project and resources are and in what type of specific issues we could contribute theoretically, empirically and practically. Maybe we did not make this explicit enough. It was concluded that the two future meetings in the year had to be planned further ahead, time schedules changed,  the topics more explicitly structured and that, according to this, the participants would decide if they felt it suitable to attend. 

Our own team decided to include in the future invitation other participants more dedicated to the topics of our research and also that had more freedom to express their opinions openly ( i.e. not in such high level positions in government).  Also, to take into account we needed a larger representation of migrant collectives – an issue we had already considered but not found people available for this meeting (mainly, due to excessive work loads and schedules). We also decided to make, during future meetings, short presentations of work-in-progress, specially relating the analysis of migrant interviews and, maybe, distribute a brief questionnaire or apply any other group work technique to be decided upon, so as to centre the debate around the most relevant topics in the research project.  

The second activity, carried out on March 20 th, 2024, was much more useful as well as gratifying for us. It consisted of a two and a half hour Seminar on the Chilean project and with two relevant speakers invited from the community.  It was in Spanish,  held online and open to the wider public.  Interviewees and other interested parties were summoned through the team´s professional contacts, using the snowball technique, or else, addressing the principal institutions in the field.  It was very successful – by Chilean standards - as 40 people subscribed in our website and 28 attended the full meeting during their working hours!! It is interesting to observe that there were many participants associated to the social service professions, something we had not foreseen and must be taken into account in the future, as they tend to deal directly with migrants and migrant collectives.

The questions posed by the audience during the Seminar, as well as after the event, were extremely relevant and it could be considered that the Seminar might have fruitful social repercussions.  We enclose to this report the invitation sent, where the topics presented are mentioned.

The main speakers were Prof. Alvaro Ramis- Rector of the Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano (and an academic on human rights), University that granted us the Ethics research consent for the project.  He discussed the often forgotten “human face” of migration, the need for adequate migrant integration and exercise of rights and  Prof. Leonardo Polloni.  The latter is a specialist in regional migration, former staff at the OIM-Chile and presently, consultant to that institution and others. He mainly addressed migration statistics at a regional level and results of an important quantitative study on the routes, characteristics and behaviour by gender and age of 300 Venezuelan migrants, aided by a very interesting power point.

Pablo Zuleta and Liliana Acero also made brief presentations with visual aids; Pablo on the general Chilean project, the plight of migrants, different losses faced by them and mourning processes, expectations, cultural integration, social discrimination and re- territorialisation.  The second presentation, by Liliana, discussed different theoretical perspectives on resilience from an intersectional critical approach and illustrated the issues on the cultural integration, health and mental health experiences of the migrants interviewed in Chile.  The presentation forms part of a longer article in English that will be published shortly (around June this year) in the journal Issues in Social Sciences: Acero, L (2024) “Examining resilience, subjectivity, and trauma: the case of migrants´ mental health in Chile”. The third presentation was a summary of Claudia Dide´s work on the Chilean past and present context of migration. The Seminar was taped – you are welcome to access the complete Seminar tape  published in our website-  and from this tape, a short video in Spanish was produced which we enclose.  Sorry, we had not enough resources for translation.  I still hope you enjoy it and get a general idea of the Seminar.