In Latin America, as in other regions of the world, the intensity and magnitude of different types of mobility, displacement, and settlement across borders has demanded the attention of various social actors (governments, international organizations, NGOs, academia, and the media), perhaps more so than at few other times in the recent history of migration and human mobility. The massive arrivals of migrants from diverse origins and for different reasons, in addition to demonstrating the reconfiguration of migration flows, highlight the measures that different countries have implemented, tending toward migration containment policies to protect their borders. The implementation of security-focused policies has led to the need to consider borders as dynamic social spaces undergoing profound redefinition, as they are territories with complex social, economic, and cultural dynamics.

Research conducted in countries with a tradition and expertise in migration studies such as Mexico (Durand and Massey, 2009; Ariza and Portes, 2010) shows that regional scientific production from the Social Sciences in the last decade has focused on documenting the so-called emerging mobilities and the migratory patterns that were already being forged in the subcontinent.

Examples of recent mobilities in the region are the arrival of Haitian migrants to Ecuador, Brazil and Chile between 2010-2014 (Handerson, 2017; Ceja, 2015), and from there to the border city of Tijuana in 2016 (El Colef - CNDH, 2017), and the displacement of the Venezuelan “diaspora” to different countries in Latin America that also opened a new and interesting scenario for (re)thinking border spaces (Pedone et al 2019; Alfaro and Ramírez, 2019; Bruno and Arrúa, 2019). On the other hand, the research carried out by the researchers who make up this proposed Working Group indicates that there is a continuity of certain migratory patterns that have been occurring in the region for decades, such as the Bolivian migratory circuit that includes internal migrations to the capital cities of Bolivia, and from them to the metropolitan area of ​​Buenos Aires and São Paulo (Díaz, 2016; Miranda, 2017).

In this way, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador, to name a few countries, have simultaneously become territories of arrival, reception, transit, expulsion and re-emigration, in a dimension comparable to the international overseas migrations from Europe to the Southern Cone between the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century.

Studies on “Brasiguayos” conducted by Albuquerque (2010) between Brazil and Paraguay, for example, indicate that, like other regional border areas, these communities have been less studied collectively. It is worth mentioning, on the one hand, the commercial vitality of the Brazil-Bolivia border and the emergence of new territorialities and identities based on the border imaginary, and, on the other hand, the Bolivia-Paraguay border region known as the “Upper Chaco,” which exhibits migratory, identity-related, and commercial dynamics about which little or nothing is known. Therefore, the Working Group could contribute to an interesting exercise in this area, especially for establishing comparative parameters. Other regions studied in isolation could make up the systematization proposed by this Working Group, such as the triple borders between Chile-Bolivia-Peru and Argentina-Chile-Bolivia (Garcés and Lube-Guizardi, 2013), or the borders involved in the route that connects the International Free Zone of Iquique in Chile, to the cities of La Paz/El Alto in Bolivia and Ciudad del Este in Paraguay (Tassi, 2016).

It is noteworthy how the mobility of “emerging” and “consolidated” contingents implies constant spatial and identity reconfigurations, whether due to the settlement of new groups in a specific urban or semi-urban location, or due to the return or re-emigration of locals (Prunier, 2017).

The more or less periodic movement of people, but also of goods, involves crossing borders that are not always included as a unit of analysis in migration studies, either because the theoretical and methodological lenses are focused on the flows themselves, or because cross-border mobilities, when they exist, are relegated to a secondary position compared to the importance given to the origin-destination dichotomy. However, some border regions, such as Tijuana and San Diego, have even promoted Border Studies at a regional level and in comparison with other transit regions in the world such as Poland and Turkey (Anguiano and López Sala, 2010), in addition to fostering discussions about the configuration and reconfiguration of identities (Rodríguez, 2010).

Having said all of the above, this Working Group intends to think about South American borders from three analytical axes: a) cross-border mobilities, b) the production and reconfiguration of identities and c) the commercial circulation of goods.

The theoretical and methodological reference for beginning the study of borders in South America will be taken from migration and border studies carried out in Mexican research centers, recognizing their extensive experience and the contribution they have made to the subject as a country that shares a long and critical border with the US, in addition to forming a territory of conflicts and violence towards Central American migrants.

To address the first of these axes, we are interested in considering mobility in a broader sense, beyond whether it involves permanent settlement or the implications of assimilation or social integration. Similarly, we consider borders in an expanded way, taking into account their geopolitical dimension and extending it to the identity borders that produce “legal” and “illegal” migrants (De Génova, 2002), and classify skilled and sought-after migrants on the one hand, and precarious migrants on the other (Pedone and Alfaro, 2018). We see how the identities at play as borders are crossed create and dismantle social hierarchies of various kinds. Finally, the trade axis aims to account for the cross-border movement of goods that supply imported products and clothing to the popular markets of South America's largest metropolitan areas, such as La Salada in Buenos Aires, Feirinha da Madrugada in São Paulo, the textile hub of Sulança in Pernambuco, and the Feria 16 de Julio in El Alto. The economic importance of these popular circuits and the actors and social networks they activate largely define the way of life for thousands of families in the region, as well as enabling the consumption of countless everyday products at low prices.

We recognize that Bolivia is at the heart of these migration patterns. We are interested in examining this from the perspective of Bolivia, focusing on the movement of people and goods to and through Bolivian territory, and to and through Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Paraguay. To this end, the Working Group is proposing the names of researchers and students with experience in fieldwork in this region of the continent.

Instead of focusing on the border itself, that is, on "the line" or the wall that defines the geopolitical limits between two states and two populations, our attention is placed on the material and symbolic construction of the border zones or regions. The above does not mean that we ignore the filtering power of borders, which contain and prevent certain mobilities (Mezzadra and Brett, 2017). Nor do we ignore the security infrastructure operating through the so-called "migration stations" and military camps on the southern and northern borders of Mexico, and in the Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama through which Central American, Caribbean, African and Asian migrants pass towards the US. Or then the southern and northern borders of Ecuador, preventing the movement of the Venezuelan population, mainly. Complementary to the studies on governance, governmentality and the human rights abuses practiced in the border areas, we consider it important to initially consider them from the perspective of their mobility. Since the 1990s, in particular, research conducted both within and outside of Latin America has reflected the diversity of migrants, their gender, ethnic-racial, class, age, and place of origin identities, as well as their routes, networks, motives, and reasons for leaving one place for another (Castles and Miller, 2004; Hinojosa, 2006; Sassone and Mera, 2007; Vartabedian, 2014). In contrast to the classic pattern of migration analysis, which for many decades has emphasized elements such as points of origin and destination as fixed and deterministic containers of human mobility, and highlighted the trends toward the integral or segmented assimilation of migrant groups (Portes, Fernández-Kelly, and Haller, 2006), new perspectives and new methodologies have emerged that shed light on migrations composed of concatenations of poles that are distant from each other (Lara Flores, 2011). Our proposal as a Working Group suggests considering other profiles and types of human mobility to understand the different processes that construct borders and the dynamics that occur within them, observed in terms of their territorialities and the identities at stake. In this way, we adopt border mobility as a specific field of study, because it promotes encounters between groups, families and individuals with each other, with the “native populations” and with the space through which they travel (Tarrius, 2000). Furthermore, mobility studies allow us to glimpse migrations that tend to be mobile, circular and/or temporary, as they travel through points of departure and arrival in a repeated and circular manner (Ramos, 2014). Or then those mobilities marked by documented and undocumented transit, through continental or subcontinental corridors such as the routes taken by groups of Haitian migrants between Brazil, Chile and Mexico and the Central American transit from the Northern Triangle to the USA (Anguiano, Hernández López and Villafuerte Solís, 2018; Álvarez, 2011). It is also appropriate for studying population movements facilitated by permeable borders, as is the case with the Mercosur borders. What these theoretical lenses privilege is precisely the movement, or the journeys and social processes triggered by and within them, such as racialization, the production of transnational identities, or illegalities. New approaches to the so-called “mobile turn” (Urry and Scheller, 2006; Jirón and Imillan, 2018; Jirón, Zunino and Giucci, 2017) or to “regimes of mobility” (Salazar and Glick-Schiller, 2013) disrupt the notion of mobility from its hegemonic meaning in sociology (social mobility), towards spatial mobility, related to the flows of movements (Freire-Medeiros, Da Silva Telles and Allis, 2018). Social, economic, cultural or affective interactions directly influence, first, the material, symbolic and imaginary construction of the border as a territory, and second, the maintenance or change of individual and collective identities in border zones or regions. In that sense, we are interested in investigating the different identity configurations and commercial dynamics that are woven into the circular movement, in transit migration or in border settlements. Migrant identities (national, ethnic, or regional) are often reconfigured according to their environment, meaning that they subscribe to certain identities to overcome difficulties along the way, during their transit through the cities and towns that make up their route, or to negotiate their stay in border regions. It should be noted that the intersection between the variables "migration", "border" and "ethnicity" is not analyzed in all Latin American countries. For example, in Argentina there are few who emphasize cross-border migration, thus hiding their indigenous belonging and identity (Grimson, 2006; Caggiano, 2010; Mardones, 2015; Díaz, 2018). It is equally important to know how and under what conditions these opportunities arise, what identities are staged, and which ones are assumed or not. We are attentive to the relationship between identities and borders (Anzaldúa, 1987). Thus, when viewed contingently, identities and borders mark the division between a “us” and “them,” being themselves changeable (Giménez, 2009, Elias, 2003). Used within the group and according to convenience, the identities account for a game in which successful participation is defined by the appropriate use of the rules and codes of conduct of the environment. The above forms strategies that are more or less consolidated informally and transmitted in a network among individuals and families on the move or temporarily settled. Living a cross-border life in Latin American regions involves a constant negotiation of identities, hence the importance of transversally addressing gender, ethnic-racial and generational perspectives. As Albuquerque (2018) reveals, sometimes nationalisms based on stigmas are reinforced; other times, what is observed is a transnational identity, such as the “Chicana” or the “Brazilian-Guaya”. How one lives and moves through transborder spaces (Irazábal, 2014) involves understanding how this liminality is experienced. Beyond the mobility of people and families (migrants, refugees, commuters), the socio-anthropological approach to the circulation of goods and everyday objects has attracted the attention of the social sciences within and outside the region (Appadurai, 1986; Ingold, 2012; Rabossi, 2015; Ramos, 2014). From supposedly neutral and passive, goods and objects have come to be considered by these authors as agents and articulators of complex social networks. When it comes to the commercial circulation of legal goods (especially electronic products, household utensils, clothing and accessories, processed foods and industrialized hygiene products), borders can become Special Economic Zones or Free Zones where exceptional customs tariffs are practiced and where true strategic border markets are developed. These border trade regions can also serve as spaces for smuggling and/or illegal trafficking of products (Asian or regional) to local trading centers. Retailers or wholesalers often cross several borders repeatedly and circulate, involving other actors such as transport networks, customs agents, and police; they develop routes that connect, almost underground, the ports, factories, and popular markets of the capital cities and provinces of South American countries. The literature on so-called “globalization from below” (Alba Vega, Ribeiro and Mathews, 2015; Portes, 2012) or “neoliberalism from below” (Gago, 2014) shows that the volume of products and the capital involved in these popular circuits eventually surpasses the circuits of large transnational companies. Far from the major financial centers, and organized by tens of thousands of small businesses, the region's popular markets put into circulation superfluous products that nevertheless allow large segments of the Latin American population to enjoy the products that characterize globalization. This is what is revealed, for example, by Freire da Silva's (2018) studies at Feirinha da Madrugada/Rua 25 de Março in São Paulo.