Periplos. Journal of research on migration Vol. 5 no. 1, 2021
Periplos. Revista de pesquisa sobre migrações (Vol. 5 no. 1 2021).
Migration corridors in Latin America: New migration flows, new territorialities, new restrictions
Coordinators: Claudia Pedone, Bruno Miranda and Soledad Álvarez Velasco
CLACSO Working Groups on South-South Migration and Borders: Mobilities, Identities and Trade
2021
The call made by this Thematic Issue aimed to unravel the complex dynamics that constitute the various migration corridors currently emerging in the Americas. The International Organization for Migration (IOM)—whose influence is paramount in the global governance of migration and in the migration policies that the vast majority of states adopt to violently control mobility, particularly of migrants from impoverished and conflict-ridden countries (Geiger and Pécoud, 2010)—does not specifically define the term 'migration corridor' in its working documents or in its Glossary of Terms (2019). However, it does use this term to describe “an accumulation of migratory movements over time” that occur between a given country of origin and a destination country (UN DESA, 2019; IOM, 2020, p. 58).
In light of this vague conceptualization, the World Migration Report (2020), using only migration figures, identifies the “Top 10” so-called 'migration corridors' in each of the regions studied. The published numerical data (as well as the accompanying definition) actually suggest a supposedly unidirectional movement accumulated over time between a country of origin and a country of destination. For Latin America and the Caribbean, the same report confirms the existence of several 'migration corridors,' these being the most
Predominant ones: Mexico-USA; El Salvador-USA; Cuba-USA; Dominican Republic-USA; Guatemala-USA; Venezuela-Colombia, among others (IOM, 2020, p. 109).
The analysis of the advances and setbacks in migration matters, as well as the coexistence of progressive discourses and legal frameworks with repressive and restrictive policies during the “post-neoliberal” turn (the Ecuadorian case is iconic in this regard), allows us to understand the current formation and transformation of the migration corridors in question where “forms of soft power, ranging from legal provisions to biopolitical and necropolitical mechanisms”, as Yerko Castro points out in this volume, have been put into action targeting regional and transcontinental migrants and asylum seekers by exacerbating their risk of death.
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