Migrants and transnational families in South America: contemporary tendencies

Abstract

From the economic crises of 2008 and 2012, South America has been at the centre of two immigration booms of different origins: the United States, Western Europe, West Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Families of refugees, economic and environmental migrants and asylum seekers arrived in the territories of the twelve countries of the continent and resignified the role of the terrestrial borders of the Amazon, the Pampa and the Andes, before, routes of inexpressive internal migration, today, inserted in the international and transnational migratory routes. Receiving about one million migrant families, South America and its state policy-makers observed new immigrant groups - in the sense of nationality, ethnicity and religion - contrasting with their local populations. Despite that, the state practices have remained the same as regards the reception and the insertion of these transnational migratory families into society, the labour market and collective integration. In this way, this article will analyse the patterns and trends of the “new” global families arriving in South America, from the following key cases that guide these family migration patterns: Cubans, Haitians, Senegalese, Syrians and from Southeast Asia, which are top-ranking in the aforementioned immigration booms. Furthermore, other relevant internal migratory groups such as Bolivians and Venezuelans will also be considered.