Understanding migration and borders in Latin America and the Caribbean from a critical perspective must be situated within a system of production and reproduction of life sustained by capitalist, patriarchal, and colonial structures. In this context, poverty, inequality, and various forms of violence stem from a neoliberal logic and an extractivist model that prioritizes certain interests over the well-being and rights of migrant, displaced, and refugee individuals and communities.

Consequently, recovering history and memories, and challenging dominant narratives that present migration as a merely temporary phenomenon and reduce it to an anomaly or a social problem, constitutes an ethical and political imperative. In response, we advocate for an understanding of human mobility as a heterogeneous, multi-temporal, and multidimensional social force that recognizes the agency of migrants, civil society, and international organizations. This implies addressing migration as a politicized process and focusing on migrant and social struggles that transform territorial dynamics and reconfigure power relations at borders. Using alternative narratives to recover histories and experiences of mobility allows us to make these dimensions visible and counter simplistic and exclusionary discourses.

In this sense, considering the current regional context, this critical and situated perspective requires paying closer attention to the following scenarios and trends present in the region:

Resurgence of the far right and the reconfiguration of migration policies: Since the mid-2010s, the region has experienced a consolidation of right-wing governments that have reinstated neoliberal policies, promoted restrictions on free human mobility, and implemented punitive migration policies. This situation has been exacerbated by the resurgence of the far right, which has intensified expressions of xenophobia and racism. The urgency of this analysis lies in understanding how these conservative discourses and ideological frameworks impact migration management by strengthening control and exclusion at the expense of human rights-based and protection-oriented approaches, thus affecting migration governance in the region. Specifically, these governments have reinforced containment policies based on the differentiation between “regular” and “irregular” migrants, “legal” and “illegal” migrants, “citizens” and “non-citizens,” and “nationals.” or "foreigners", thus affecting unequal access to basic rights.

The use of technology in border control and securitization: the increase in intra-regional mobility dynamics in recent decades and the tightening of migration controls have led to more complex migration corridors fraught with multiple risks and forms of violence. Border management (South-South and South-North) has been transformed by technologies that expand the state's capacity to register, classify, and monitor migrants. The digitization of databases, biometric technologies, and the centralization of information online have accelerated processes and broadened the reach of migration control. These technologies also reinforce policies that institutionalize the invisibility and neglect of migrants considered "undesirable," promoting practices akin to necropolitics, manifested in detentions, deportations, or abandonment. Thus, the use of technology in mobility management contributes to sustaining a view of migration as a problem to be contained, sometimes justifying practices that violate rights and reproduce dynamics of exclusion and social death. Digital technologies become governmental tools for producing "illegality" and a permanent state of "deportability" for migrants, and some applications, such as Customs and Border Protection - CBP One, become mechanisms of "exclusion disguised as inclusion."

Climate crisis, environmental degradation, and forced displacement: In recent decades, the effects of climate change and environmental degradation have become increasingly visible. According to United Nations data, 250 million people have been displaced by environmental factors in the last ten years. These impacts are not affecting all populations equally: they hit vulnerable communities in the Global South, as well as rural, racialized, impoverished, or historically marginalized groups, the hardest. The climate crisis alters ecosystems, intensifies extreme weather events (such as floods, droughts, and land degradation), and reduces access to essential resources, affecting food security, health, and livelihoods, and driving internal and, in some cases, cross-border displacement. These movements create challenges for both displaced communities and receiving territories. Given this reality, it is necessary to adopt a critical perspective on the relationship between territory, space, and the environment, analyzing how extreme weather events and environmental degradation are shaping up to be a new driver of forced displacement and an additional layer of vulnerability, especially in the most exposed countries of the Caribbean and Central America. In response, it is essential to promote solutions that address these inequalities and recognize affected populations as active agents in the defense and demand for climate justice.

Cities as destinations for migration flows: In our region, migration flows are primarily urban phenomena. Cities, transformed into highly dynamic spaces, offer a vision of opportunities while simultaneously confronting migrants with numerous challenges. The migrant condition intersects with axes of inequality such as national origin, gender, ethnicity, class, age, and immigration status, placing them in positions of social and spatial disadvantage. This translates into the daily creation of material and symbolic borders, especially in access to healthcare, education, and employment. Access to housing, in particular, constitutes one of the main barriers: in contemporary Latin American cities, there are widespread practices of rejection, segmentation, segregation, and residential discrimination, especially toward those in the most vulnerable situations. Added to this are the limitations and barriers to the use of certain spaces, reproducing forms of urban otherness that condition their quality of life. However, migrants actively challenge these borders through community organizing, social production of habitat, the struggle for the appropriation of space, exercising their right to participate in and transform the city.

In recent years, the Working Group on Migration and South-South Borders has focused on analyzing contemporary migration dynamics in the region—which reveal demographic, socioeconomic, cultural, political, and territorial transformations—as well as the management of mobility and migration regulation in border areas of the Americas. To this end, the Working Group promoted four lines of work that will be continued in the 2026-2028 plan: 1) Intersectional migrant experiences; 2) Migrant policies, organizations, and activism; 3) Theoretical and methodological perspectives on borders and South-South migration; and 4) Territories, trade, and borders. The consolidation of these lines of work over the past three years has strengthened the Working Group's internal dialogue and enabled the development of thematic and cross-cutting activities.

Thinking about migration in Latin America and the Caribbean requires a perspective "from," "in," and "with" the Global South, one that is both analytically and politically engaged with the region's problems (see point 4) and its history of coloniality. Drawing on contributions from the Global South, the Working Group delves deeper into theoretical tools for a critical approach to the current migratory context in its new work plan, emphasizing the need to understand migration as a dynamic process of multiple mobilities. The intersectional approach (Viveros Vigoya, 2009; Magliano, 2015; Pedone et al., 2021; Galaz et al., 2023) is revisited as an essential heuristic tool, allowing for an analysis of how contemporary migratory dynamics combine the logics of racialization and domination between countries with the vulnerabilities of the migrant condition, exacerbated by classism, sexism, racism, and other forms of discrimination, in the production of inequalities at the macro, meso, and micro levels. Furthermore, the mobility approach is integrated to examine the trajectories, networks, and territorial transformations generated by individuals on the move (Margarit-Segura, 2024; Miranda and Joseph, 2021). Related to this, the migration autonomy approach (De Génova et al., 2014; Varela and Alvarez, 2025; Stang, 2021) proposes viewing migrant struggles as forms of resistance, ranging from organized actions that openly challenge policies of control and deportation to more subtle, everyday strategies. These struggles are key to claiming rights and transforming racist and xenophobic policies in the face of violence and the securitization of migration flows. This framework is part of the global governance of migration, where the securitization approach (Pereira and Domenech, 2021; Pereira and Clavijo, 2022) constructs migration as a national security threat, justifying restrictive and control measures at borders, which intensifies barriers and limits mobility to the detriment of more humane approaches. Likewise, it is important to pay attention to migrant children and youth to recognize their agency and their active role in building their own life projects, but also to understand the specific dilemmas this population faces regarding issues such as access to education, the disruption of their emotional development, and the risk of losing their cultural identity (Glockner, 2021; Glockner and Álvarez, 2021).

In conjunction with these theoretical tools, the social relevance of this proposal lies in its commitment to an innovative and situated methodology for research, knowledge transfer, and contribution. We propose a participatory, collaborative, and interdisciplinary approach that transcends traditional academic boundaries, linking the Working Group's work with social actors, civil society organizations, migrant movements, and public agencies in the region. These methodologies contribute significantly to the study of migration patterns by fostering active and horizontal collaboration with the communities and individuals directly involved. Through in-depth interviews, creative workshops, and collective work, these frameworks facilitate the construction of situated narratives and knowledge that reflect the complexity of the experiences lived by migrant communities. This approach seeks to generate knowledge and develop methodologies that enable innovation and creation to ensure the social relevance of the research and the Working Group's work, with the potential to impact the defense of human rights and the development of more equitable migration policies in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Regarding intellectual and institutional relevance, we propose three strategies: 1) production and dissemination; 2) training; and 3) inter-institutional and inter-Working Group strengthening. With respect to the first strategy, the Working Group has worked to enhance the reach of editorial products such as the journal "PÉRIPLOS" and the newsletters "(Trans)border" and "South-South Migration Movements," as well as dissemination resources such as the podcast "Reflections in Motion," promoting the dissemination of high-quality regional scientific knowledge and the visibility of the Social Sciences and Humanities, which has allowed the topics addressed to be positioned within the global debate. For the 2026-2028 plan, the podcast is organized into three strands: a current affairs series, which highlights current issues through voices within and outside academia, with an emphasis on activism by and for migrants and refugees; a theoretical-methodological series, which serves as a didactic resource for the field of human mobility; and a dissemination series dedicated to sharing publications, working materials, and documents produced by the members of the Working Group. Regarding the Bulletins, it is proposed to merge the two existing ones into a new Bulletin entitled "Migrations, Borders, and Inequalities," to improve the editorial process and broaden its reach to a wider audience: the academic sector, civil society, public policy decision-makers, and international organizations. Published quarterly, the Bulletin aims to be a resource for learning and dissemination on migration studies and borders.

Also, and linked to training, several activities focus on the training of young researchers with a critical and situated perspective, through different spaces of dialogue and collective reflection promoted by the GT, such as the Young Researchers Seminar, talks, workshops, panels with experts and informal meetings where we encourage GT colleagues to discuss the progress of their research projects.

Finally, the work plan focuses on institutional strengthening through two specific articulations:

Articulation with CLACSO member and associated centers: the aim is to enhance dialogue between the GT and the centers through the implementation and dissemination of activities and the consideration of joint editorial products.

Inter-GT articulation: establishing an agenda of joint activities with other GTs to enhance collective and critical dialogue. The proposed work seeks to connect with the following GTs active during the 2023-2025 period, with which we established links at the CLACSO 2025 Conference:

Working Group on International Health and Health Sovereignty

Working Group on Afro-descendants and Counter-hegemonic Proposals

Working Group on Critical Studies on Disability

Working Group: Labor in Contemporary Capitalism

For the new period, the plan is to enhance interaction with colleagues whose fields of study, although different, allow us to explore points of convergence, enrich the analysis on mobility and South-South / South-North borders, and generate joint projects that broaden the scope and impact of our debates.

The work plan is positioned as a transformative proposal that not only enriches the regional theoretical debate, but also seeks an active impact on social and political life, consolidating the GT's trajectory as a key actor in the study and defense of the rights of migrant populations in Latin America and the Caribbean.