During the XXI century, South America has been the epicenter of vibrant discussions on human mobility. A new vocabulary emerged with legal principles such as the non-criminalization of irregular migration or the right to migrate as a fundamental right taking central stage. The combination of the arrival of COVID-19 together with the important emigration of Venezuelans in the region, as well as economic and political crisis are putting into question some of these advances and present a complex scenario of migration governance in the region for the years to come.

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International migration is defined as a social and political process by the presence of states and their borders. Without state borders, there would be no such thing as international migration (Zolberg 1989

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Regional Consultative Processes (RCPs) have become the standard for multilateral migration policy discussion over the last two decades. RCPs are geographically bounded, non-binding meetings organized voluntarily by states and promoted by international organizations. Our chapter contributes to accumulating knowledge regarding the migration governance role of RCPs by Finn, Doña Reveco, and Feddersen (2019) doi.org/10.4337/9781788119948.00008 investigating the South American Conference on Migration (CSM). We conduct a thematic analysis of CSM documents from its first annual meeting in 2000 until 2017 to find the most salient themes. We then examine migration-related legislation to uncover to what extent national laws incorporate regional discussion and accords. We find that although multilateral cooperation has created a set of common standards and practices, their domestic incorporation remains uneven.This chapter sheds light on the synergy between regional-level priorities and national-level laws, revealing a limitation of regional migration governance.

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