International migrations must be understood within the context of a capitalist, patriarchal, and colonial system of production and reproduction of human life. The inseparable link between these three axes has generally been ignored in migration studies, particularly in perspectives produced from the Global North (geographic, methodological, and epistemological), which tend to view cross-border mobility as an anomaly, a social problem in itself, rather than as a phenomenon rooted in histories of domination and exploitation of various kinds.

Until the mid-20th century, Latin America and the Caribbean were regions that received intense migratory flows from Europe. The social structures that formed largely corresponded to ethnic and racial relations based on the domination of European metropolises. Then, with the reversal of the direction of migration, the bridges between the past, present, and future of transatlantic circular migrations were torn down, giving way to discourses and interpretive frameworks that reduced the figure of the Latin American and Caribbean migrant to a threat to the well-being and development of the population of the Global North (Papadopoulos & Speroni, 2022). Recovering this history and retelling it is an ethical, political, and analytical necessity.

Since the 1970s, emigration from most Latin American and Caribbean countries has steadily increased, initially to the United States and later to Southern Europe. However, in the last two decades, various global phenomena have impacted migration and migrants in our region: ongoing economic crises, political instability, the resurgence of the far right, the rise of hate speech against migrants, the intensification of climate change, and, more recently, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, which highlighted and exacerbated inequalities and the lack of social protection (Culebro, González, and Román, 2021). Consequently, in recent years, intra-regional migration dynamics have increased considerably, creating new migration corridors that generate new territorialities, spatialities, and migrant experiences.

Thus, the dynamics of racialization and domination among countries in the region are combined with vulnerabilities stemming from the migrant condition, which are exacerbated at their intersections with forms of domination derived from classism, sexism, LGBTQ+phobia, ableism, racism, anti-indigenism, and ageism (Diez and Novaro, 2020; Moreira, Palomino, and da Silva, 2018; Pávez and Galaz, 2018; Feldman-Bianco et al., 2017). Understanding these interfaces from a critical, systemic, engaged, and situated perspective of the Global South is an urgent and pending task.

Faced with these profound political, economic, cultural, social, and territorial transformations, as well as their implications for the different migration systems and regimes in and from the Global South, countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, and Costa Rica consolidated or transformed themselves into destinations for new population flows. These recent migratory dynamics redefined geographies of (im)mobility and generated increasingly complex migration routes and corridors, many of them organized by human trafficking and smuggling networks, and fraught with multiple risks and forms of violence. These new flows not only originated from intraregional population displacements (such as those originating in Bolivia, Paraguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba, and Haiti), but also from some countries in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The so-called "Venezuelan exodus" This situation has become even more complex, with people of all ages undertaking their overland journey south, risking their safety as they cross borders that have become dangerous and reflect the perception of migrant lives as disposable, highlighting the necropolitics of state sovereignty (Álvarez Velasco, Pedone, Miranda, 2021; Gómez Martín and Malo, 2020; Cavalcanti and Faria de Oliveira, 2020; Araujo and Santi, 2019; Joseph and Miranda, 2021). In this sense, mapping and understanding migration flows in (and from) Latin America and the Caribbean and border management (South-South and South-North) are necessary actions for producing more comprehensive and just migration policies.

In the last two decades, changes were promoted in migration legislation, with a human rights approach permeating several new migration laws in South America, such as those in Ecuador, Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil, in contrast to the persistent control and restriction approach in Europe and the United States. Since the mid-2010s, the rise to power of the right wing in several countries has reinstated neoliberal policies, which have been accompanied by restrictions on the free movement of people and punitive changes in migration laws, regulations, and policies. Expressions of xenophobia and racism have multiplied in this context. Therefore, we believe that the Working Group should commit to collaborating on the inclusion of migration issues in the region's progressive agendas.

In this context, in recent years, the members of the Working Groups "South-South Migration" and "Borders: Mobilities, Identities, and Trade" have analyzed the region's new migratory dynamics, which reflect population, socioeconomic, cultural, political, and territorial transformations, as well as the "management" of mobility and migration regulation in the border areas of the Americas—aspects we seek to continue and expand with this proposal for merger and renewal. In the new three-year period, the Working Group on South-South Migration and Borders will present activities that foster academic collaboration among all participants, as well as collective dialogue and reflection on the study of migration and borders. This will enable the development of scientific knowledge production and dissemination, and research training through platforms such as the journal Periplos and the newsletters "South-South Migration Movements: Borders, Trajectories, and Inequalities" and "(Trans)Border." But this proposal also reflects a renewed ambition to consider migration and border processes from epistemologies of "of," "with," and "in the" South. In this sense, we are interested in addressing certain epistemological challenges that are fundamental to the purpose of this Working Group: What is the South? What are South-South migrations? How can we think about the borders of the South from a Southern perspective? What methodologies does this critical perspective demand?

This renewal proposal is the result of the joint work of the South-South Migration Working Group and the Borders: Mobilities, Identities, and Trade Working Group. The ongoing collaboration between these Working Groups in recent years has culminated in the decision to merge them for the period 2023-2025, thus creating a network of researchers spanning Latin America and the Caribbean that addresses migration dynamics and borders in a holistic, integrated, comparative, and critical manner. The collaboration between these two Working Groups will enable the production of research, dissemination, and intervention activities that include researchers and activists from across the region. Finally, this collaboration has significant theoretical and methodological implications, as it will facilitate a valuable and innovative debate on the heuristic categories underlying migration studies and border analyses, thereby contributing to the development of critical conceptual and methodological frameworks constructed from a Southern perspective.

Social life has become transnational. Despite the ongoing efforts of nation-states to strengthen their borders and control human flows across them, women and men are constructing new maps and questioning the idea that the limits of a nation-state are the limits of a society. In this sense, the analysis of contemporary migrations must begin from a transnational perspective, recognizing the existence of diverse social relations that cross borders, link contexts of origin and destination, and construct transnational social fields (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004). However, the complexity of the migratory phenomenon requires an approach capable of considering specific regional dynamics. In the particular context in which the reconfiguration of migratory dynamics is taking place in Latin America and the Caribbean, dichotomous notions, such as mobility-immobility, origin-destination, forced-voluntary, and legal-illegal, which have populated classical migration studies, prove insufficient. The trajectories of people on the move in the region demonstrate the emergence of new territorialities and the simultaneity of multi-spatial and intersectional processes, strategies and practices.

Thinking about migration in Latin America requires a perspective “from,” “in,” and “with” the South (De Sousa Santos and Meneses, 2014), one that is analytically and politically engaged with the region’s problems and its history of coloniality. The relationships between regional integration processes, the meanings and functions attributed to national borders, and changes in policies aimed at regulating migration reveal the ineffectiveness of the governance structure of migratory mobility, which operates at the cost of human rights violations. Therefore, it is important to explore the theoretical assumptions and objectives that inform current ways of viewing (and dividing) borders and migration in Latin America and the Caribbean. This implies considering public policies, and especially migration policies, as tools for classifying and subjugating populations. To that end, adopting an intersectional perspective (Magliano, 2015) is a heuristic necessity, as it opens the analysis to the network of markers of difference (nationality, gender, ethnicity/race, class, sexual orientation, age, and disability) that are woven into the production of inequalities and domination at macro, meso, and micro levels. But intersectionality also gives rise to collective resistance and articulations that lend meaning to the migrant struggles that traverse the countries of the region.

These three theoretical-methodological axes (transnationality, epistemology of the South and intersectionality) guided the beginnings of the discussions, research and collaborations between the working groups of "South-South Migration" and "Borders: mobilities, identities and trades" (hereinafter GT Borders) from an interdisciplinary logic, on the recent transformations of migrations in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In its early stages, the South-South Migration Working Group focused on launching the journal Periplos, with the primary objective of creating a space for reflection and debate within the regional sphere in the field of migration studies. In its short existence, this journal has become an international benchmark for regional migration studies. Meanwhile, the Borders Working Group organized the (Trans)fronteriza newsletter, which quickly became a key resource for the necessary dialogue and cooperation among diverse actors involved in migration issues, including academics and civil society. In this sense, by fostering collaboration between the two Working Groups, a potential synergy is generated for each group's main outputs. Beyond a significant improvement in the dissemination capacity and quality of the resulting publications, the Working Group exponentially increases the potential impact on theoretical, political, and methodological reflection.

In this sense, this joint proposal represents a commitment to continue making the necessary theoretical and methodological advances for the analysis of migrations and South-South borders, which means developing products and activities in the next period around the following themes:

a. Interdisciplinary dialogues such as the history, sociology and anthropology of migrations and borders;

b. Public policies on migration, border control, education, health and social protection, with emphasis on the issue of work and childhood in the context of regional integration and the debates, practices and regulations concerning migration policies and population control in the 20th and 21st centuries;

c. The various types of migratory mobility in the region, as well as the characteristics of the different groups: women, children and adolescents, people in need of international protection, LGBTIQ+ populations and indigenous populations.

d. The multiple dimensions and intersections of inequalities that affect migrants, such as those arising from different qualifications and professional occupations, generations, sexual dissidence, gender, xenophobia and racism;

e. The situation, condition and implications of emerging migratory movements such as those of Venezuelan, Haitian, Senegalese, Honduran, Guatemalan and Salvadoran people;

f. The emergence of new migration corridors and their link with the emergence of new territorialities and forms of border control by States;

g. The work trajectories of people who migrate in the region and their connection with the persistent intersectional stratification of the regional world of work;

h. The processes of constitution of south-south borders (as in Chile, Bolivia and Peru, or Brazil and Venezuela or Central America and Mexico) and south-north borders (as between Mexico and the United States);

i. The effect of transnational mobility and migration policies on the daily lives of migrants and their families;

j. The analysis of the relevance and experience of care in migrant populations (particularly women) from and in the region;

k. The link with territory, space and environment of migrant populations in Latin America and the Caribbean;

l. The struggles and resistance of migrants who leave, cross or arrive in Latin America and the Caribbean.

These lines of work will highlight how structures of inequality, government visions and actions, and market logics influence migration patterns and the lives, work, and rights of migrant populations, simultaneously driving and hindering strategies and horizons of resistance and collective organization.