The Omnipresence of Violence in the Venezuelan Asylum Seeker Experience

• In Event: International Migration Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 02. Venezuelan immigrants and the migration process

Abstract

Drawing on fifty original in-depth interviews with Venezuelan asylum seekers in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, this paper challenges dominant narratives that frame migration as a linear journey from danger to safety. Instead, migration can constitute a continuum of violence that shifts in form but remains structurally interconnected throughout the migration process and beyond. Venezuelan participants described escaping political and economic violence, only to confront successive forms of violence: deadly conditions in the Darién Gap in Panama, extortion and kidnapping by transnational cartels during the journey, detention in U.S. immigration facilities, and ongoing struggles with policing, surveillance, and barriers to housing, employment, and education after resettlement. This paper demonstrates that immigration policy does not simply regulate movement but actively functions as a mechanism for producing and perpetuating inequality through violence. By analyzing how structural violence persists across borders, this study contributes to critical migration scholarship and calls for a reconceptualization of immigrant and asylum seeker experiences.

Authors

• Katheryn Olmos, American University

• Ernesto Castañeda, American University

• Sarah Iverson, American University