The Evolution of Authoritarianism and Restrictionism in Brazilian Immigration Policy: Jair Bolsonaro in Historical Perspective

Abstract

Research on immigration politics has been focused on countries of the Global North. Latin America is often discussed only as a migrant‐sending region. This study offers a comparative‐historical analysis of Brazilian immigration policy from national independence to the present day. Based on archival research and synthesis of multiple documentation sources, the study finds an affinity between authoritarian politics and immigration restrictionism in the country, which is consistent with theories that link liberal democracy to pro‐immigrant policies. Brazilian authoritarian leaders have framed immigrants as threats to the security, order, and culture of the nation to justify tighter controls on immigration. The study concludes that immigration restrictionism can develop in the Global South with discourses strikingly similar to those circulated in the Global North. The findings also suggest that Brazil is still far from the ideal of a multiracial liberal democracy.

Connections between populism and nationalism: Evidence from Jair Bolsonaro's speeches

“…Although Bolsonaro assumed a stance against human rights‐based migration policies in unofficial interviews, livestreams and tweets, it is noteworthy that the issue of immigration is always intertwined with other themes, such as anticommunism (Filomeno & Vicino, 2021) and alleged threats to Brazilian culture. Recently, while attacking France, Bolsonaro claimed that: ‘President [Macron] opened his arms and welcomed everyone, such a beautiful, wonderful thing.…”

Tunisia’s migration politics throughout the 2011 revolution: revisiting the democratisation–migrant rights nexus

“…Yet the 'regime effect' debate has recently been revived from two sides: On the one hand, qualitative researchers have sought to pin down the distinctiveness of autocratic im-and emigration policy by emphasising how population control, and thus coercive migration policies, are key to assuring autocratic regime survival (de Haas and Vezzoli 2011;Filomeno and Vicino 2020;Natter 2018;Tsourapas 2018). At the same time, quantitative scholars have mobilised large-scale databases to explain the openness or restrictiveness of migration policies through countries' categorisation as either autocratic or democratic (Miller and Peters 2020;Ruhs 2011;Shin 2017).…”

“…On the other hand, case study research from across the globe has yielded contrasting insights on the role of democratisation for migration policy and reopened the debate on the 'regime effect' from the perspective of regime transitions: research on South Korea (Chung 2010;Mosler and Pedroza 2016) and Latin American countries such as Ecuador, Chile, Argentina and Brazil (Acosta Arcarazo and Freier 2015;Álvarez Velasco 2020;Filomeno and Vicino 2020) has shown that civil society groups central to these countries' democratic transitions were key in mobilising for migrants' rights and triggering liberal migration policy reforms once migration became politicised in the public sphere. In contrast, the work by Milner (2009) on asylum policy in Tanzania, Guinea and Kenya, by Brobbey (2018) on the place of xenophobia in Ghana's democratisation, or by FitzGerald and Cook-Martín (2014) on ethnic immigration selection criteria in North and South America has shown that democratisation also provides an opportunity for restrictive migration policy reform, particularly when newly empowered voters showcase clear anti-migration preferences.…”