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Migration Series | Precarity along the Colombia–Panama border: How providing healthcare services to transit migrants can foster new logics of inclusion and exclusion

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Transit migrants journeying the Americas to North America often pass through Necoclí, a seaside town close to the Colombia–Panama border and the Darien Gap. Upon their arrival, they frequently require medical attention but can only access emergency medical services. In this article, Carolina Aristizabal shows how a limited healthcare provisioning system designed for immobile populations has been reworked by humanitarian organizations to help transit migrants receive the care they need. She argues that new logics of inclusion and exclusion emerge as a result of such reconfigurations — a development that may lead in some cases to xenophobia in local communities.

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Traversing the Americas

On their way to Mexico, the United States, and Canada, irregular migrants coming from as near as Venezuela, Haiti, and Ecuador and as far as India and Senegal arrive at Necoclí, a seaside town located near to the Colombia–Panama border. Here, after crossing the Gulf of Urabá, they enter the Darien Gap, a geographic region in the Isthmus of Panama that connects South America with Central America. From there they travel further north. In 2022, around 250,000 migrants arrived in Panama through the Darien Gap; this year, by July 2023, around 252,000 people have already undertaken this journey.[1]

 

Health care provisioning: for whom?

When in Necoclí, transit migrants often require assistance, especially in the form of healthcare services. However, even though they may stay in the town for weeks on end, transit migrants are frequently seen as outsiders of ‘immobile’ social provisioning systems usually underpinned by citizenship. As a result, they have access only to limited medical services, which adds to the precarity they already face. Several humanitarian organizations have stepped in to fill the gap left by a lack of government healthcare services for this group of people. Yet, the local implications of this workaround remain underexplored.

For this reason, I decided to conduct research on the topic in the framework of the research paper for my Master’s degree in Development Studies. I observed and conducted interviews with healthcare providers and inhabitants of Necoclí last year because I wanted to understand the different ways in which the Colombian government and non-governmental actors organize and legitimize the provisioning of healthcare services to these transit migrants, especially in a context in which local communities are living under precarious conditions with unsatisfied basic needs. Some of my findings about precarity, categorization, and humanitarian action are highlighted below.

 

Continued precarity while waiting

When migrants arrive in Necoclí, a lack of reception facilities in the town add to the already existing, often precarious traveling conditions they face when making their way there. For example, while some of them can stay at hotels once they’ve arrived in the town, others have to sleep in tents and hammocks on the beach, close to the two municipal docks.

Staying close to the sea allows them to wash their clothes and bathe in its waters. However, they do not have a roof over their heads or access to running water or sanitary facilities, and they are less safe in public spaces. The border zone between Colombia and Panama is characterized by a weak governmental presence and the dominance of armed groups, especially the Gulf Clan (El Clan del Golfo), which controls drug and arms trafficking routes along this Colombian border (Garzón et al., 2018) as well as the migration dynamics in the territory to a large extent.[2]

Moreover, while some migrants are immediately able to buy boat tickets from a company offering transportation through the Urabá Gulf once they arrive, others must stay in Necoclí as long as needed to gather the necessary money to buy these tickets. This means that hundreds if not thousands of migrants may be stuck in the town for days or weeks on end before being able to travel further.

 

A lack of adequate healthcare services

Transit migrants typically undergo long and arduous journeys and upon their arrival in Necoclí may require medical attention to treat amongst others mental health issues, HIV infections, Covid-19 infections, rabies, and food or water poisoning. Pregnant women also need prenatal care. In 2022, Necoclí had one public hospital where migrants could receive emergency services for free, as well as some ‘low-complexity’ services such as vaccinations and laboratory tests for prioritized populations.

However, many of their health issues remain untreated partly because the government’s Principle of Universality does not apply to non-citizens. According to the Healthcare Law (Law 100 of 1993), under this principle everyone in Colombia has the right to access healthcare services at any moment of their lives, without any type of discrimination. Colombian nationals and migrants with resident permits can access any available public healthcare service. However, given the citizen requirement, migrants in transit can only access emergency services — highlighting the boundaries to the ‘Principle of Universality’.

 

A dual role for humanitarian actors

In 2022, to make up for the gap in the provisioning of healthcare services to transit migrants, non-governmental actors such as the Colombian Red Cross, the Colombian Institute of Tropical Medicine with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Mercy Corps, UNICEF, and HIAS started providing healthcare services that extend beyond emergency care. These services included 1) psychological assistance, 2) sexual and reproductive health services, 3) children’s growth and development programmes, and 4) dentistry — services that are considered ‘non-essential’ and were therefore not provided to transit migrants by the government.

In this way, humanitarian actors assumed two different roles: on the one hand, they supported the state in its responsibility to provide emergency services, and on the other hand, they complemented this service based on a more dynamic reading of the needs of transit migrants and of the types of health provisioning necessary.

For humanitarian actors, these services were provided based on the Principle of Humanity, which refers to the aim of saving lives “in a manner that respects and restores personal dignity”[3] for any person, as well as the IOM’s mission to promote “humane and orderly migration that benefits migrants and societies”.[4] Moreover, non-governmental actors also made use of the resident/migrant binarity to define their criteria of eligibility, since some of them provide healthcare services just for transit migrants, while others also provide medical attention to permanent residents under particular circumstances.

As an example from my fieldwork, a Colombian child living in Necoclí could not be part of the Red Cross growth and development programme, even though she or he had been insufficiently attended to by the Colombian health system due to a lack of resources. On the other hand, both a Colombian woman living in Necoclí and a transit migrant had access to Mercy Corps’s programme on sexual and reproductive health.

 

The need to maintain a delicate balance

The dynamics of transit migration changed the healthcare system in Necoclí since governmental and non-governmental responses to the needs of transit migrants are based on their principles and their capacities. They made use of the resident/transit migrant duality as an eligibility criterion to define medical attention. The importance of this research lies in the possibility to understand how governmental and non-governmental actors, as well as Necoclí residents, reconfigure and problematize the criterion that is used to define the accessibility of transit migrants to the healthcare provisioning system.

In a context in which inhabitants face big challenges to access basic healthcare services, the use of this criterion requires maintaining a delicate balance between responding to the needs of transit migrants and the needs of residents. The provisioning of medical attention for transit migrants arriving to Necoclí allows us to understand not only how an immobile social system responds to the needs of a mobile population but also to analyze how the precarious conditions of migrants and residents shape and legitimize the eligibility criterion to this system. When non-governmental actors exclude residents from their services, this can lead to perceptions of unfair treatment and acts of xenophobia by residents, which could deteriorate even more the precarious conditions of transit migrants.

In the framework of migration governance, the eligibility criterion that is used by governmental and non-governmental actors to provide healthcare services should go beyond their principles to also consider the imaginaries and relationships that they reinforce in local communities and that end up (de)legitimizing health provisioning for transit migrants.

[1] https://www.migracion.gob.pa/inicio/estadisticas

[2] https://voragine.co/las-victimas-de-la-selva-asi-trafican-con-migrantes-en-necocli/

[3] United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2022

[4] International Organization for Migration, 2022

This is part of and concludes the Migration Series. Read the previous topics on the migration series:

How does a place become (less) hostile? Looking at everyday encounters between migrants and non-migrants as acts and processes of bordering.

From caminantes to community builders: how migrants in Ecuador support each other in their journeys.

From branding to bottom-up ‘sheltering’: How CSOs are helping to address migration governance gaps in the shelter city of Granada

“Us Aymara have no borders”: Differentiated mobilities in the Chilean borderlands

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.


About the author:

Carolina Aristizabal is a Colombian political scientist and holds an master’s degree in Development Studies from the ISS. She has worked with non-governmental organizations and the local government in the city of Medellín, her hometown.

Are you looking for more content about Global Development and Social Justice? Subscribe to Bliss, the official blog of the International Institute of Social Studies, and stay updated about interesting topics our researchers are working on.

 

Migration Series | “Us Aymara have no borders”: Differentiated mobilities in the Chilean borderlands

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In Chile, recent initiatives to manage migration have been based on nation-state and sedentary imaginaries. These approaches to migration are challenged by the traditionally mobile and trans-national lives of the Aymara indigenous population residing in Colchane and Pisiga Carpa. Focusing on the Aymara residents of these so-called transit communities and initial reception points for migrants and refugees upsets pre-supposed differences between ‘migrants’ and ‘non-migrants’ and invites us to reconsider approaches to mobility.

Although ‘migration’ in all its guises is part and parcel of our human condition and world, there has been increasing surveillance of human mobility and normalization of difference between ‘citizens’ and (undocumented) ‘migrant others’ since the inception of nation-states.[1] The focus on difference not only justifies securitization and deterrence approaches to the governance of migration, but it also fails to acknowledge how ‘migrants’ and ‘non-migrants’ co-exist in societies characterized by everyday forms of violence, marginalization, and displacement. Following a de-migranticization approach,[2] my research that took place in 2022 and focused on the traditionally mobile lives of Aymara border residents of Colchane and Pisiga Carpa (villages located close to the Colchane-Pisiga border crossing between Bolivia and Chile) is particularly useful because Aymara narratives and cross-border practices challenge sedentary and nation-state assumptions that underpin mainstream approaches to migration. By juxtaposing a traditionally mobile indigenous population with discourses on the governance of migrants and refugees, this article invites us to reconsider approaches to mobility and the structures that render movement normal for some but ‘abnormal’ for others.

 

Trans-national mobilities in the borderlands

The Aymara are an indigenous community that has historically engaged in mobility practices that seek to take advantage of the variety of ecological floors present in the Andean space, which transcends rigid national borders and includes territories from northern Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru. As Aymara communities were arbitrarily separated following the establishment of nation-state borders after the War of the Pacific (1879–1884), the Aymara in Chile have historical or familial ties with their neighbouring countries Bolivia and Peru.  Moreover, due to a history of cultural and social exclusion of Aymara indigenous identity and practices, their territorial marginalization from the centres of the Chilean State, and their neglect in terms of infrastructure and public services, Aymara border residents have traditionally been  dependent on their relationships across the border.

Thus, for them, instead of representing concrete and non-negotiable physical demarcations, borderlands are places of interaction and connection: “Us Aymara have no borders,” an Aymara woman working at the health centre of Colchane stated. An example of this dynamic is the bi-national market, which an Aymara woman from Pisiga Carpa described as follows:

“Every other week, here in the border with Bolivia, between Pisiga Bolívar (Bolivia) and Colchane, we have an ancestral market where we barter and exchange things. We also bring things from the Iquique Free Trade Zone, and things also arrive from Ururo that we buy, like pasta, rice, and things, to not have to go down to Iquique.”

Since the 1990s, Chilean central governments have acknowledged the historical and cultural practices of indigenous peoples (with varied ethnicities) and their right to self-determination and maintenance of cross-border practices. The approval of the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention No. 169 in 2008 demonstrates the acceptance of Aymara mobility, as the international system and its actors including the Chilean State recognize their responsibility to facilitate the economic, social, spiritual, and environmental contacts of indigenous groups across borders.[3] However, the lives and traditional practices of highly mobile Aymara residents of Colchane and Pisiga Carpa increasingly co-exist with different migrant populations from outside the Andean region and related Chilean securitization dynamics that create disruptions to indigenous livelihoods.

 

The arrival of increased migration and securitization dynamics

Ongoing displacement (particularly from Venezuela since the late 1990s) and amendments to Chilean legislation on visa policies in 2018 already gradually led to an increase in ‘irregular’ migrant entry, but with the closing of borders due to Covid-19 this reached a new height in 2020. The majority of the unauthorized paths of entry to northern Chile are concentrated near the villages Colchane and Pisiga Carpa, making these towns places of (interrupted) ‘transit’ for people crossing the Colchane-Pisiga border. In a context of local incapacity for reception and limited to no assistance from the central government, the increasing numbers of border crossers initially sparked empathy and acts of solidarity by border residents. However, they soon began to feel disappointment about the role that they felt forced to assume due to limited legal, logistical, and infrastructural preparation by the Chilean government, whom they considered ultimately responsible for border crossers’ fate.

On 18 October 2021, the government provided a response by merging migration and Covid-19 as one ‘crisis’ to be managed to protect the nation-state. The government’s health department moved groups of people camping in Colchane and Pisiga Carpa to a refuge located at the border. People who entered Chile through unauthorized paths were redirected by police officers to the refuge to self-report their ‘irregular’ entry to the Police of Investigations (PDI).[4] This meant that people could only access healthcare, shelter, food, and transportation services by self-reporting themselves as ‘irregular,’ a process that facilitates immediate expulsions that disregard the right to asylum established in international treaties (such as the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol) and Chilean Law (No. 20.430 of 2010). Moreover, expulsions were made legal by the government when it approved the new Migration Law No. 21.325, backed by a state of emergency in 2022 and increased militarization at the Colchane-Pisiga border. The government also financed the construction of a zanja (ditch) at the border to increase barriers for crossing.

This response coincides with the securitization of migration, which considers mobility as threatening.[5] The mobility (of some) becomes synonymous to criminality, and thus the migrant is criminalized due to difference – for being a ‘dangerous other’ in opposition to national citizens. This practice creates perverse consequences, which an NGO worker in migrant reception at Iquique described as follows:

“The focus is set on expulsions, delinquency, security, and at the end we know that [this response] does not deter mobility nor the root of migration. […] There is no commitment to the lives of people who are dying at the desert […]. The government needs to admit that we are allowing the death of women, children, newborns, elderly… Están dejando morir.”

 

Differentiated mobilities, interrupted livelihoods

While migrants are the group most visibly vulnerable to securitization measures, increased militarization and border control directly affect the dynamics and previous agreements of the Aymara living at the border. Several Aymara explained that especially initially, officials policing the border did not understand the traditional practices and exchanges that happen at events like the bi-national markets:

“We couldn’t do our markets, they didn’t let us cross to buy a kilo of rice, vegetables, meat… and nothing po, we have to tell complete stories to the officials and show our identification cards. And we began to think, how is it that Venezuelans are crossing with no documents, and we have Chilean nationality, but they start implementing rules for us?”

Coupled with poverty and exclusion, these controls on mobility exacerbated resentment and hostility particularly towards Venezuelan migrants. Border residents stopped previous acts of solidarity and often reproduced state concerns by portraying migrants as ‘others’ to protect their own belonging to the nation-state and sustain traditional border crossings. Moreover, with time, officials policing the border have become acquainted with Aymara culture and features that distinguish them from supposedly ‘dangerous migrant others,’ effectively creating a border that is marked by differentiated mobilities. While mobility is an essential aspect of human life, government actors define categories, infrastructures, and hierarchies that organize the practices and experiences of (im)mobilities at the borderlands.

Ultimately, while traditional Aymara mobility in the borderlands has been challenged by nation-state and sedentary approaches, enhanced border securitization leads residents to disassociate from other people on the move and subscribe to state and media narratives that criminalize mobility. These narratives reinforce the securitization logics that, paradoxically, disrupt the trans-national practices of Aymara border residents, making their lives, livelihoods, and mobilities less secure.

[1] Malkki, L. (1992) ‘National geographic: The rooting of peoples and the territorialization of national identity among scholars and refugees,’ Cultural Anthropology, 7(1), pp. 24–44. doi: 10.1525/can.1992.7.1.02a00030; Thanh-Dạm, T. and Gasper, D. (2011) ‘Transnational migration, development and human security,’ in Thanh-Dam, T. and Dasper, D. (eds.) Transnational migration and human security: The migration-development-security nexus. Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 3–22.  doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-12757-1.

[2] Dahinden, J. (2016) ‘A Plea for the ‘de-migranticization’ of Research on Migration and Integration,’ Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39(13), pp. 2207-2225. doi: 10.1080/01419870.2015.1124129.

[3] Gundermann Kröll, H. (2018) ‘Los Pueblos Originarios Del Norte De Chile Y El Estado,’ Diálogo andino, 55(55), pp. 93–109.

[4] Leal, R. (2021) COVID-19, the migration crisis and Chile’s new immigration legislation: Chile’s powerful get richer and its poor more outraged. Penrith, N.S.W.: Western Sydney University. doi: 10.26183/0j4y-jy05.

[5] Glick Schiller, N. and Salazar, N.B. (2013) ‘Regimes of mobility across the globe,’ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 39(2), pp. 183–200. doi: 10.1080/1369183X.2013.723253.

Read the other topics on the migration series:

How does a place become (less) hostile? Looking at everyday encounters between migrants and non-migrants as acts and processes of bordering.

From caminantes to community builders: how migrants in Ecuador support each other in their journeys.

From branding to bottom-up ‘sheltering’: How CSOs are helping to address migration governance gaps in the shelter city of Granada

Precarity along the Colombia–Panama border: How providing healthcare services to transit migrants can foster new logics of inclusion and exclusion

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Mariela Miranda van Iersel is a social scientist, economist, and researcher dedicated to ethically responsible mixed-methods research and currently working as an Intern at the Division for Gender Affairs of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Santiago, Chile. She graduated in December 2022 from the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), specializing in Human Rights, Gender and Conflict Studies: Social Justice Perspectives, where she received the Best Research Paper Award of the academic year 2021/2022.

 

Are you looking for more content about Global Development and Social Justice? Subscribe to Bliss, the official blog of the International Institute of Social Studies, and stay updated about interesting topics our researchers are working on.

 

Migration Series | From branding to bottom-up ‘sheltering’: How CSOs are helping to address migration governance gaps in the shelter city of Granada

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Granada is one of the few Spanish cities that established itself as a ‘shelter city’ for migrants, but despite the city administration’s pledge in 2015 to improve migration governance, bridge divides, and promote community building between migrant and non-migrant communities, selective indifference towards migrants persists. In light of several governance gaps caused by the failure of local authorities in Granada to go beyond the mere branding and enactment of the concept of shelter cities, various civil-society organizations (CSOs) have launched initiatives aimed at alleviating these tensions and are filling the gaps left by local authorities, writes former ISS MA student Christy Gamboa.

Government of Granada shelter city campaign “Granada, ciudad solidaria y de abrazos abiertos” (Granada, city of solidarity and open hugs).

During the ‘refugee crisis’ in 2015, some cities in Spain declared themselves shelter cities, which are supposed to be places in which migrants and refugees can safely reside and receive assistance from the local government. They did so in a bid to counter the restrictive policies on migrants and refugees that the Spanish government had instituted in response to this ‘crisis’. These initiatives besides offering immediate housing and basic support were also aimed at improving the day-to-day governance of migration by addressing governance gaps at the national level and promoting community building between migrant and non-migrant communities at the local level.

Granada, a city in southern Spain with around 230,000 residents, became a ‘shelter city’ following pressure placed on the local government by RedGra (Red Granadina por el Refugio y la Acogida—Granada Network for Shelter and Reception), a network of around 40 CSOs advocating for migrant rights who identified the need to create a safety net for migrants. Because the city’s actions since it started to call itself a ‘shelter city’ have been focused merely on providing temporary support in some cases to migrants and on creating public campaigns focusing on the ‘shelter city’ brand, the various active CSOs in Granada forming part of RedGra provide bottom-up shelter to migrants in different ways.

Research I conducted last year as part of my master’s degree examined the extent of coexistence of solidarity, tensions, and conviviality within Granada as a shelter city, focusing on the actions of CSOs working with migrants. When conducting my fieldwork in Granada as part of my research, I interviewed several organizations within RedGra that help migrants and refugees from primarily Northern Africa. I identified persistent tensions within the city and witnessed bottom-up actions by CSOs to counteract them, such as by providing material support such as food and housing, promoting inclusive spaces, reporting discriminatory actions, and raising awareness among residents of Granada about the challenges that migrants face. These are described in more detail below.

 

Tensions in the ‘shelter city’

The city of Granada has a reputation for peaceful coexistence among people of diverse origins and religions, supposedly due to the harmonious living together of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities during the time of Al-Ándalus in medieval Spain. However, the CSO representatives I spoke to revealed that rising racism in the city is a major concern, and that the perceived reputation of enabling peaceful coexistence is nothing but an illusion. Particularly, my interviews with Dar Al Anwar and AMANI revealed that there is significant tension among residents of Granada due to unwelcoming attitudes local residents hold towards migrants who originate from Muslim-majority countries.

During the ‘crisis’, when the number of migrants surged, these tensions grew. Since then, several instances of open discrimination or harassment of migrants could be witnessed. The discontent of some Granadans has repeatedly been expressed publicly in the past few years, with women being kicked out of public swimming pools for wearing full bathing suits (burkinis). However, I was told that there are other examples of conflicts linked to the freedom of religious expression. For example, the respondents mentioned that local authorities resisted the celebration by Muslims of important religious festivities such as Eid Al Adha in public spaces by not granting them permission to do so. Catholic celebrations on the other hand are widely celebrated in public spaces without any issues.

Another issue in Granada is the inadequate support that has been provided by local authorities to migrants. The local government offers only temporary housing, leaving many people on the streets. Furthermore, tensions among migrants themselves are exacerbated by differential treatment based on their country of origin. A former public servant who volunteers at AMANI for example stated that “the public administration has a bureaucratic system that is a little bit racist that makes it difficult for some foreigners,” referring to the existence of differential treatment based on the migrants’ country of origin. This differential treatment is exemplified by the Municipal Council of Migration’s prompt response and activation of the Shelter City Protocol to accommodate asylum seekers from Ukraine, rapidly giving them access to accommodation and legal documentation to stay in the city. In contrast, people coming from conflict zones outside of Europe have been waiting for more than five years to obtain their documentation to reside legally in the city. These examples demonstrate how ongoing tensions—visible in hostile attitudes and inadequate policies alike—infringe on what a shelter city promises to be.

 

How CSOs are helping to alleviate tensions

In the midst of these widespread tensions in Granada, CSOs in Granada have come to play a crucial role in bringing together the local community, government, and newcomers or migrants. Their proximity to these communities gives these organizations first-hand knowledge of the respective needs of the different groups and allows them to facilitate initiatives that help to prevent disunity and foster understanding and tolerance.

All CSO representatives noted the importance of creating spaces where people can safely get to know each other. For example, the CSO Zona Norte facilitates the Verano Abierto Cartuja (Cartuja’s Open Summer) event, which is held each year in a neighbourhood with a high concentration of people with diverse migration backgrounds, with people coming from Morocco, Romania, Senegal, and Bolivia, amongst others. This event is part of an intercultural strategy to promote conviviality between neighbours in the north of Granada. It allows residents of all ages, origins, and religions to leisurely share knowledge through workshops on healthy drinks, dance, sports, and a language exchange.

Several organizations, including Zona Norte and ASPA, also emphasized the importance of listening to the needs and ideas of the people in the community in which they’re active. For example, ASPA’s community-building project involves young migrants serving as intercultural agents by sharing their migration journey experiences with non-migrants while also promoting intercultural dialogue through art therapy and classes on body language. Another initiative ASPA launched was the creation of a manifesto that was directed at the ombudsman of Granada through a rap song to claim their rights to the city.

The CSOs’ approach of facilitating bottom-up initiatives that involve migrants in the setting of agendas and development of activities offers a meaningful and holistic solution to the lack of support from the municipality. By giving migrants a voice in choosing the activities that they perceive would benefit them more, CSOs promote inclusion and reduce alienation. Their activities focus on building relationships based on shared interests, rather than highlighting differences in origin, thereby creating spaces for interaction between migrants and the host society.

 

How CSOs help contribute to improved migration governance

My study of Granada highlights the often-overlooked significance of civil society in addressing governance gaps, both in academic and policy debates. The presence of bottom-up initiatives showcases the essential role and positive impact that civil society can have in effectively addressing the existing gaps in migration governance. The establishment of Granada as a shelter city was a positive step, but tensions and prejudices towards migrants persist. CSOs take a holistic approach that listens to the diverse needs of migrants, promoting their well-being and strengthening their relationship with the host society. In contrast, the municipality’s commitment falls short as it merely labels the city as a shelter without taking further action to address the underlying issues and actively support migrant communities. Moreover, by creating spaces that encourage intercultural exchange and meaningful participation, CSOs aim to prevent conflicts and reduce social polarization. They promote autonomy, equity, and social inclusion for migrants, going beyond basic needs.

Read the other topics on the migration series:

How does a place become (less) hostile? Looking at everyday encounters between migrants and non-migrants as acts and processes of bordering.

From caminantes to community builders: how migrants in Ecuador support each other in their journeys.

“Us Aymara have no borders”: Differentiated mobilities in the Chilean borderlands

Precarity along the Colombia–Panama border: How providing healthcare services to transit migrants can foster new logics of inclusion and exclusion

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

 

Christy Gamboa holds a MA in Development Studies from the International Institute of Social Studies. She is a recent graduate from the Major in Governance of Migration and Diversity with a specialization in Public Policy and Management. She is currently a Junior Programme Officer in the Rights-Based Justice Team at the Netherlands Helsinki Committee.

 

Are you looking for more content about Global Development and Social Justice? Subscribe to Bliss, the official blog of the International Institute of Social Studies, and stay updated about interesting topics our researchers are working on.

 

Migration Series | How does a place become (less) hostile? Looking at everyday encounters between migrants and non-migrants as acts and processes of bordering

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What happens if people on the move encounter others who by means of their everyday actions and interactions can render environments hostile or who actively try to prevent this? What are the effects of these encounters on the places migrants inhabit and traverse? This article introduces a blog series that highlights a diversity of encounters between migrants and non-migrants[1] to put the reader in the shoes of those who are migrating, crossing borders and/or settling in. Through the series, we aim to show how both migrants and non-migrants navigate terrain that becomes hostile through modern manifestations and practices of nation-state borders amidst so-called ‘migration crises’.

Photo Credit: Ain’t no Border by Calais Migrant Solidarity

Everyday encounters between migrants and non-migrants in host communities can contribute to or challenge the exclusion and marginalization of people on the move in places they come to inhabit, for instance when both groups simultaneously attempt to access limited social services. Such encounters not only have productive power in terms of reinforcing or resisting the exclusionary mechanisms of migration management – they also expose the different mechanisms that can turn places into hostile terrain through (a lack of) policies, existing marginalizations, and xenophobia.

Moreover, studying these everyday encounters provides insight into experiences of both migrants and non-migrants, how they diverge or may be similar, and what implications their shared experiences may have for taking action on behalf of and/or together with people on the move. A group of recently graduated ISS MA students we supervised looked at such (dis)similar experiences and will share their insights in a series of forthcoming blog articles. In this article, we focus on everyday encounters and bordering to reflect on key links between imaginaries of human mobility, the role of host communities and local implications of migrant presence.

 

How human mobility is imagined affects how migrants are received and places are reconfigured

The productive power of human mobility and attempts to curtail, manage, or stop people from migrating have been at the center of critical migration and border studies that think and write against a supposed or desired “national order of things”[2]. Such national order imaginaries emphasize the prominence of rootedness or staying put and the fixed nature of state borders, and approach migration and migrants as a problem. Acknowledging both the centrality of (cross-border) human mobility for our societies and the inequalities surrounding it, this blog series comprises several reflections by former ISS MA students who have researched multiple forms of mobility and encounters between migrants and other actors, including acts of support and instances of anxiety. In turn, such encounters can make the terrain more, or less, hostile for both residents and those passing through.

They conducted research in various places that are located differently in the ‘geo-bodies’[3] of respective states and emerge as ‘zones of contact’[4] for both local communities and people on the move. While border towns are rather obvious sites for such encounters, involving actors such as INGOs (Aristizábal-Saldarriaga) or mobile border communities (Miranda van Iersel), these field reflections also look at encounters in small rural towns that may be out of sight from a migration management perspective but are situated along key roads for caminantes (González Ronquillo), or in a relatively renowned tourist city that hosts different types of newcomers – including migrants with irregular legal status (Gamboa Bastarrachea). But why do we think these different places and actors should be looked at together? How are they related?

 

Capturing a diversity of border sites, actors, and processes

As part of our ongoing project titled Revisiting the Migration-Development Nexus from a Cross-Border Perspective[5], we are interested in looking closely at encounters that have productive power in terms of reinforcing or resisting the exclusionary mechanisms of migration management. We do so by building on critical scholarship that acknowledges acts and processes of bordering beyond state borders (through concepts such as urban borderscapes[6] or border internalization[7]). This requires us to acknowledge actors beyond those identified as migrants or refugees, as the experiences of migrants and non-migrants are intimately connected[8]. This way, we seek to contribute to the de-migranticization of migration research[9], by questioning a priori categorization of people on the move and nationalist research interests and by reorienting the unit of analysis away from the migrant population to (parts of) the overall population affected.

Previous research we conducted in Greece, Turkey, and Central America shows that everyday encounters in spaces with a bordering function, i.e. spaces that prevent or challenge migrants’ entry and presence physically, legally and/or socially, are instrumental to understanding, on the one hand, how migrant trajectories[10] and translocal livelihoods[11] become illegalized by changing dynamics of border control, and on the other hand, how the geographical location of places where migrants are hosted[12] and the historical and geographical entanglements of neighboring states and communities[13] shape migrant trajectories, translocal livelihoods, and life at the border.

Following this perspective, we suggest turning our gaze to these divisive and connecting aspects of bordering in places beyond territorial nation-state borders. In this series of blog articles, the research of our students illustrates the value of such an approach as they shed light on how particular actors can be instrumental for people on the move as they navigate a diversity of hostile terrains.

These actors are local collectives that are outright supportive of migrants’ rights, as manifested in the CSOs fulfilling the sheltering role that the municipality has formally committed to but is unable to implement in Granada (Spain). They are former migrants taking on the role of hosts for people on the move whereas their own situation remains precarious and their journey unfinished (Ecuador). They can also be the staff of INGOs who need to balance the needs of those on the move with the needs of a local population suffering from chronic disregard by the state (Colombia). Finally, they can be a historically marginalized, mobile indigenous population whose position may shift from solidarity with migrants to suspicion and collaboration with the state as their own mobility and livelihoods are hampered by new migrations and the subsequent militarization of the border (Chile).

 

Acknowledging all those who dwell in a border site

These insights show that while places with very limited resources are fertile grounds for hostilities, exclusion, or indifference towards migrants with irregular legal status, attempts to pass through or stay in these places are experienced quite differently in the presence of people and organizations willing to support newcomers or those on the move. Paying attention to these local encounters and interactions, particularly in spaces with a bordering function, allows us to capture the similarities and convergences between the experiences of migrants and non-migrants. It also invites us to appreciate and learn from these interconnected experiences and take this into account in any further action pertaining to human mobility, be it academia, in policy making processes, or through societal engagement.

[1] We chose these terms for readability though we are aware that this dichotomy does not do justice to the complexity we try to represent here.

[2] Malkki, Liisa. 1992. “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees.” Cultural Anthropology 7 (1) Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference:  24-44.

[3] Winichakul Thongchai. 1997. Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation. Honolulu: Hawaii University Press.

[4] Pratt, Mary Louise (1991). Arts of the Contact Zone. Profession, 33-40. Retrieved October 29, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25595469.

[5] This project is supported by the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (RIF-5/ 18202010.041, year 2020 grant) and runs from January 2021-December 2023. It involves research by both authors, in the Eastern Mediterranean and Central America.

[6] Fauser, Margit. (2019) The Emergence of Urban Border Spaces in Europe, Journal of Borderlands Studies, 34:4, 605-622. doi: 10.1080/08865655.2017.1402195.

[7] Menjívar, Cecilia. (2014). Immigration law beyond borders: Externalizing and internalizing border controls in an era of securitization. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 10, 353-369. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-110413-030842.

[8] Çağlar, Ayşe & Glick Schiller, Nina (2018) Migrants and City-Making. Dispossession, Displacement, and Urban Regeneration. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

[9] Dahinden, Janine. 2016. A plea for the ‘de-migranticization’ of research on migration and integration, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39:13, 2207-2225. doi: 10.1080/01419870.2015.1124129.

[10] Winters, Nanneke. (2023b). Making a Living While on the Move: Migrant Trajectories, Hierarchized Mobilities and Local Labour Landscapes in Central America, in Ilse van Liempt, Joris Schapendonk and Amalia Campos-Delgado (eds), Research Handbook on Irregular Migration. Cheltenham: Elgar, pp. 250–260; Winters, Nanneke. (2021). Following, Othering, Taking Over. Research Participants Redefining the Field through Mobile Communication Technology, Social Analysis, 65:1, 133-142. doi: 10.3167/sa.2020.650109.

[11] Winters, Nanneke. (2023a). Everyday Politics of Mobility: Translocal Livelihoods and Illegalisation in the Global South. Journal of Latin American Studies, 55(1), 77-101. doi: 10.1017/S0022216X23000020.

[12] Ikizoglu Erensu, Aslı, & Kaşlı, Zeynep. (2016). A Tale of Two Cities: Multiple Practices of Bordering and Degrees of ‘Transit’ in and through Turkey, Journal of Refugee Studies, 29(4), 528–548. doi:10.1093/jrs/few037.

[13] Kaşlı, Zeynep. (2023). Migration control entangled with local histories: The case of Greek–Turkish regime of bordering, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 41(1), 14–32. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758221140121.

Read the blogs on the migration series:

How does a place become (less) hostile? Looking at everyday encounters between migrants and non-migrants as acts and processes of bordering.

From caminantes to community builders: how migrants in Ecuador support each other in their journeys.

From branding to bottom-up ‘sheltering’: How CSOs are helping to address migration governance gaps in the shelter city of Granada

“Us Aymara have no borders”: Differentiated mobilities in the Chilean borderlands

Precarity along the Colombia–Panama border: How providing healthcare services to transit migrants can foster new logics of inclusion and exclusion

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Zeynep Kaşlı is Assistant Professor in Migration and Development at ISS, affiliated with the Governance, Law and Social Justice Research Group. Her research interests include mobility, citizenship, borders, transnationalism, power and sovereignty with regional expertise in Turkey, Middle East and Europe.

 

Nanneke Winters is an assistant professor in Migration and Development at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research interests include im/mobility, migrant trajectories, and translocal livelihoods in Central America and beyond.

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