From integration to securitisation: the Venezuelan migration crisis and the paradigmatic change of migration policies in South America

The Venezuelan crisis that has been fuelled by political unrest and economic strife has led millions of people to flee the country in conditions of extreme vulnerability, most remaining in Latin America. The Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants in Venezuela (2023) reports that, as of September 2023, the number of displaced persons reached 7,710,887. Of this number, 6,527,064 reside in Latin America and the Caribbean. These figures are critical, given that between 2018 and 2023 the percentage of intra-regional Venezuelan migration increased by approximately 426 per cent. The problematic scope and speed of this phenomenon, however, must also be examined as embedded in a regional context traditionally deficient in public goods and services, which has generated conflicts within the host communities characterised by pockets of violence and institutionalised xenophobia. The migration crisis has thus led to a paradigmatic change in regional migration policies in South America, which shifted from favourable policies permitting freedom of mobility to a securitisation approach of restricting the freedom to live and work in Ecuador, inhibiting the socioeconomic integration of migrants. This chapter uses analytical categories from Hall's (1993) types of change of public policy to analyse the context of the recent intra-regional migration in South America, identify changes in discourses on migration, examine the displacement of the locus of state actors that traditionally managed migration policy, and finally to identify the expressions of change through new partnerships and policies.