Presentation

Migration is both a product and a driving force of the capitalist system. Since the 1970s, Latin American and Caribbean emigration has grown steadily, first to the United States and later to Southern Europe.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Spain became the main destination for migration from South American countries, especially Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, and later, Bolivia and Paraguay. Two of the distinctive features of these migrations were the high proportion of irregular migration and the presence of women as the first link in the migration chains, reflecting the process of precarization and feminization of the workforce at a global level (Sassen 2003). From 2008 onward, the consequences of the global socioeconomic crisis primarily affected emigration contexts, such as Europe, and disproportionately impacted young and immigrant populations. The loss of well-being of migrant families, along with the tightening of migration policies and controls, added to the growing problematization of the immigrant presence, generated changes in the projects and trajectories of the Latin American migrant population that included the selective and staggered return of its members and/or displacements to other European countries (Pedone, Echeverri and Gil Araujo 2014).

In the face of current political, economic, social, and territorial transformations in the transatlantic migration system between Europe and Latin America, countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia have become destinations for new population flows. These migratory dynamics in South America are currently redefining new geographies of mobility that respond to global phenomena, generating increasingly complex routes, many of them organized by trafficking networks. These new flows not only originate from intraregional population movements (Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti), but also from some countries in Europe, Africa (Senegal, Nigeria), and the Middle East (Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Palestine).

Over the past 15 years, with the rise of populist governments, changes were promoted in immigration legislation, where a rights-based approach permeated several new migration laws in South America, such as those in Ecuador, Argentina, and Brazil. This contrasted sharply with the persistence of a control- and restriction-based approach in Europe and the United States, traditional destinations for South-North migration. A turning point occurred in 2015., The right wing's rise to power through elections has reinstated neoliberal policies that entail restrictions on free human mobility and punitive changes to immigration laws and regulations. In this sense, immigration policies have shifted through presidential decrees that restrict migrants' access to social and political rights and facilitate the expulsion of foreigners. This is accompanied by media campaigns and rhetoric that reinforce the association between migration and crime (Pedone and Mallimaci 2019).

In the current migration scenario in South America, in recent years most members of the South-South Migration Working Group have analyzed these new migration dynamics that reflect these population, socioeconomic, political, and territorial transformations. Among them are those linked to circular migration and return migration, to so-called skilled migrations and new migration corridors, some of which are products of forced displacement. The economic crisis in Brazil has allowed us to observe the circular migration and re-emigration of the Haitian population in South America (Feldman-Bianco and Cavalcanti 2018); changes in the direction of migration flows have highlighted the problem of skilled migration in the region, many of these displacements linked to public policies of repatriation and attraction of highly qualified personnel (Pedone and Alfaro 2018). Family migration along the western and eastern migration corridors reveals complex migration strategies and trajectories, as well as new forms of family organization that bring migrant children and youth to the forefront, particularly in border areas between Chile and Peru (Pávez and Galaz 2018). Likewise, the region has been experiencing a complex situation for approximately a decade in terms of migration flows and the number of people in need of international protection seeking refuge from various situations of widespread violence, internal conflicts, massive human rights violations, and serious disruption of public order (Echeverri, 2016; Gómez Martín, 2016). Finally, it is important to highlight the growing significance of Venezuelan migration in our region, transforming countries that historically had been sources of migration, such as Peru, Bolivia, and Paraguay, into receiving countries. Receiving countries, such as Argentina, Colombia, and Brazil, have also developed special policies and provisions (Blouin 2019; Gandini, Lozano, and Prieto, in press). 

Given the political and economic changes taking place in some of the aforementioned countries, it is also worth asking how the visions and actions of the new governments will affect the direction of migration flows, as well as the lives, work, and rights of migrant populations.

Justification

Analyses of migration and migration policies often take the existence of nation-states as a given and natural fact (Torpey 2000) and typically focus their studies on destination societies. Analyzing migration processes from the transnational perspective However, this implies recognizing the existence of diverse types of social relations that cross borders, link contexts of origin and destination, and construct transnational social fields (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004) who place social practices in several places at once and transcend the limits of the Nation-State and its assumption as a privileged unit of analysis.

However, the particular context in which they are taking place reconfiguration of migration flows in South AmericaThis raises the limitations inherent in the origin-destination notion (Álvarez Velazco 2011). The migratory trajectories of the migrant population in the western and eastern migration corridors demonstrate the emergence of new territorialities and the simultaneity of multi-sited processes, strategies, and practices.

We also consider that the perspective of the intersectionality It has explanatory potential, as it opens the analysis to the network of differences that emerge when considering the dimensions of race/ethnicity/nationality, class, and gender at the macro, meso, and micro levels. In this way, intersectionality focuses on multiple and simultaneous articulations in order to find points of convergence in a given time and space (Anthias 2006).

Regarding the relationships between the regional integration processes, the senses and functions attributed to the national borders And as changes in policies aimed at regulating migration emerge, certain regimes of practices arise that operate and transform themselves, in order to show that current ways of thinking about and intervening in (that is, governing) migrations They are the product of a history that needs to be reconstructed. Exploring the theoretical assumptions and objectives that nourish current ways of seeing (and dividing) borders and migrations in South America implies considering public policies, and especially migration policies, as tools for classifying populations (Thayer 2017).

These three theoretical and methodological axes guided the initial discussions and research of the South-South Migration Working Group, from an interdisciplinary perspective on the new transformations of migration in South America. Our main objective was to carry out the publishing project. PERIPLOS: Journal of Migration Research[1]Launched in 2017, the journal aims to foster reflection and debate within the regional sphere in the field of international and internal migration studies. It promotes the publication of research from a critical perspective, considering South-North, South-South, and North-South migration flows. In this regard, the Working Group's output has made significant theoretical and methodological advances in the following areas: a) Haitian migration in South America, focusing on its circularity and re-emigration to other countries in the region following Brazil's economic crisis[2]; b) skilled intraregional migration from a comparative, transnational, and intersectional perspective, and its connection to public policies on repatriation and the attraction of highly qualified personnel[3]; c) indigenous migration, a neglected issue in the field of international migration studies, investigated through the lens of international borders in South America[4]; c) the debates, practices and regulations in South America concerning migration policies and population control in the 20th century[5] and d) the complex situation of people in need of international protection in Latin America, investigating the contradictions and tensions between international law and state sovereignty[6].

Furthermore, research findings from some members of the Working Group further explored the relationship between new migration flows in the region and public policies on border control, education, health, labor, and childhood within the context of regional integration. These analyses highlighted how the visions and actions of new governments influence the direction of migration flows, as well as the lives, work, and rights of migrant populations.

From April to October 2018, the Thematic Network on Mobilities and Migrations (Migrare), UNAM, Mexico, coordinated the project Crisis and migration of the Venezuelan population: Between vulnerability and legal security in Latin American citieswhere members of the South-South Migration Working Group participated. This joint work consolidated the theoretical and methodological approaches of the Working Group, as well as professional and inter-institutional links that have allowed us to incorporate two national teams from Paraguay and Peru.

In this new three-year period, the South-South Migration Working Group proposes activities for knowledge production; training in research and dissemination of scientific production:

a) In the reconfiguration of interregional migration flows, analyze: migration policies and their impact on the migrant population; family organization in the trajectories and strategies of the migrant population in South America; the role of international organizations and the politicization of migratory experiences such as the Venezuelan one; and the labor and legal trajectories of the migrant population from transnational and intersectional perspectives.

b) Special emphasis on the pre- and postdoctoral training of students and young researchers. In this regard, postdoctoral researchers will be responsible for organizing training activities and disseminating early-stage research projects in order to promote the development of theoretical and methodological components for doctoral theses and provide a space for the presentation of completed research that fosters debate and the dissemination of results.

c) Continue with the publication of PERIPLOS. Journal of Migration Research. Three monographs are planned between the end of 2019 and the end of 2020: International Protection System in Latin America; Migration, Youth and Education; Migration Corridors in Latin America.

d) Strengthen links with social organizations of migrants and those working with migrant populations and contribute to the design of public policies on migration in the region.

[1] Publishing project with logistical and financial support from the University of Brasilia. http://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/obmigra_periplos

[2]http://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/obmigra_periplos/issue/view/646

[3]http://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/obmigra_periplos/issue/view/1528

[4]http://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/obmigra_periplos/issue/view/1527

[5]http://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/obmigra_periplos/announcement/view/61

[6]http://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/obmigra_periplos/announcement/view/142