Lejos de concebir que seguridad y derechos humanos, por un lado, y restricción y protección, por otro, son dos perspectivas excluyentes en el manejo de las migraciones internacionales, este artículo argumenta que ambas se articulan y alimentan mutuamente. Exploramos esta articulación desde los estudios sobre gubernamentalidad, y analizamos las políticas antitrata y antitráfico, centrales en las agendas migratorias regionales e internacionales. Nos enfocamos en el caso de Ecuador durante el gobierno de la “Revolución Ciudadana”. Con base en un estudio etnográfico, mostramos el rol de la trata y el tráfico de migrantes como estrategias de producción de “migraciones riesgosas” y de la “irregularidad migrante”, y como justificativos de medidas excepcionales en coyunturas definidas como “crisis humanitarias”. Concluimos que las políticas migratorias formuladas en el periodo “post-neoliberal” ecuatoriano no son totalmente autónomas ni disidentes, sino funcionales al hegemónico régimen neoliberal de control global de las migraciones.
Before Covid-19, countries in the Americas deeply unequal spaces historically determined by migrant mobilities had hardened their migratory policies, provoking the rise in the number of undocumented migrants and limitations on the right to refuge. Based on the initial findings of a collaborative and comparative research project encompassing twenty-one countries in the Americas (www.inmovilidades.org), this article argues that the current pandemic justifies a perverse intersection between health policies and politics to control mobility that has configured a de facto state of exception in migration matters, which only magnifies the existing tension between mobility and control. By reviewing press material and policy documents, and complementing those with the testimonies of regional and extra-continental migrants, this article proves that common situations are arising across the Americas that disproportionately affect regional and extracontinental undocumented migrants and asylum seekers, consigning them to daily hyper-precarization and dispossession of rights. It also shows that new forms of migrant mobility are emerging. The article thus focuses on five intertwined common situations: 1) border closures and increased internal policing; 2) suspension or limitation of the right to refuge; 3) selective hyper-nationalist aid programmes; 4) the adoption of a new anti-migrant legal architecture; and 5) new forms of migrant mobility and struggle. As the article suggests, against the current pandemic and hyper-control migrant mobilities are strategies for resistance with spatial effects on national and transnational scales across the continent.
Based on ethnographic research in the Ecuadorian Highlands, this article puts the mobility, migration, and smuggling practices of Ecuador’s indigenous people in historical and contemporary context. The people of Ecuador’s Southern Highlands have been on the move for generations, and migration is deeply embedded in the social and cultural landscape. In the rural communities of Cañar, indigenous coyotes are more than facilitators of migration: they are community members operating amid broader structural constraints, which have led to the emergence of specific trends in the facilitation of irregularized migration, yet they are expected to adhere to communal principles of reciprocity and trust. We place indigenous migrant narratives of mobility and identity at the center of our analysis of human smuggling, articulating a counternarrative to that of criminalization prevalent in transnational debates of irregularized migration, national security, and border control.
Resumen En base a un análisis etnográfico multisituado conducido en Ecuador entre 2015 y 2017, este artículo analiza cómo en el marco del mayor progresismo constitucional en materia migratoria, en el país de la “ciudadanía universal”, varios mecanismos legales y sociales fueron adoptados y terminaron confinando a migrantes y refugiados regionales y extracontinentales a encarnar situaciones de ilegalidad, posible deportación y desechabilidad. Se parte de una revisión teórica sobre el régimen de control fronterizo neoliberal global y sobre cómo la producción legal de la ilegalidad migrante es nodal en su funcionamiento, para después analizar por qué inmigrantes caribeños, africanos y de Medio Oriente escogieron a Ecuador como su destino, cuáles fueron los principales reveses e incongruencias en la política migratoria y cómo éstos impactaron en la cotidianeidad de esos inmigrantes hasta multiplicar sus salidas irregularizadas posteriores. El artículo constata que el giro progresista ecuatoriano no estuvo exento de mecanismos análogos al régimen de control fronterizo neoliberal global, hecho que ayuda a comprender el rol que el país andino cumple en la geopolítica de las migraciones contemporáneas: ser un espacio de producción de migrantes ilegalizados o mano de obra barata en ruta a EE.UU., rol que confirma su funcionalidad como un nodo conector dentro de un sistema mucho más amplio y complejo de control neoliberal de la movilidad.
Unlike other transit countries, Ecuador’s position as a transit country has just begun to be publicly addressed, having been more of a strategic public secret than a topic of public interest. Based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2015 and 2016, this article discusses the dynamics of the (re)configuration of Ecuador as a transit country used by both immigrants and Ecuadorean deportees mainly from the United States to reach other destinations. It argues that this process should be interpreted in light of a series of historical and political elements in tension. The article suggests that the subtle presence of the United States’ externalized border, together with national political inconsistencies, have a repressive as well as a productive effect, which has functioned to produce a systemic form of selective control of transit mobility.
Beyond the domination of the Mexico-U.S. corridor as the prototypical example of Latin America’s space of transit in the Americas, in the past years a new migratory transit corridor has begun to take shape. Drawing on ethnographic data collected between 2015 and 2019, the dynamics at work in the configuration of the extended migratory corridor Andean Region-Southern Cone countries and Brazil are here inquired. The compared experiences of African, Caribbean, and South American regularized and irregularized migrants within long and short terms transits, will allow an analysis focused on: (1) the causes that triggered such mobilities; (2) its social and digital organization; and, (3) the emerging control policies against it. With empirical data regarding new mobilities and forms of control within South America, the chapter contributes therefore in a wider debate regarding the new geography of transit states and transit migration from a multi-scaled perspective.
Este artículo repasa de manera sucinta los debates en los que converge la geografía crítica en las tradiciones latinoamericanas y anglosajonas, así como las principales líneas de discusión en ecología política; geografía feminista; geografía poscolonial y decolonial; y geografía de la movilidad y las migraciones, con el afán de contribuir a delinear una geografía crítica latinoamericana. Además, se indaga en torno a por qué ciertas líneas investigativas han tenido mayor o menor acogida en la región, con énfasis en la importancia de abrir un diálogo transnacional que, con base en investigaciones críticas locales, retroalimente, cuestione, proponga nuevas vías en la producción de conocimiento geográfico desde, en y sobre la región y, en línea con la teoría crítica, se comprometa con las luchas políticas y territoriales en América Latina.
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