Venezuelans and the regularization squeeze in Ecuador

• In Event: Inmigración venezolana en el Ecuador: acceso a derechos, trabajo y política pública

Abstract

The paper examines the production of highly precarious forms of migration through selective regularization processes in relation to Venezuelans in Ecuador. Ecuador’s official ‘human mobility framework’ provides for an extensive set of rights for migrants. In practice, these are hard to access, particularly for Venezuelans, who are categorized as economic migrants and thus do not qualify for asylum-seeker status. Instead Venezuelan newcomers are directed towards prohibitively expensive work and residency visas, which have documentary requirements that are impossible for most Venezuelans to meet, and typically take at least six months to process. Overstaying the initial 90- or 180-day ‘tourist visa’ is thus highly likely for many Venezuelan newcomers intending to remain in the country. The rate of clandestine entry has also risen given recent measures to stem the influx of Venezuelans through official entry points at the border. Moreover, irregular migration has increasingly been criminalized, in spite of the 2008 Constitutional principle that no one shall be considered ‘illegal’ because of their migratory status. Several civil society organizations have challenged this state of affairs in terms of principles contained in the existing legal and normative framework governing migration. In analyzing the creation of regimes for the regulation, management and government of regularity and irregularity among Venezuelan migrants in Ecuador, the paper seeks to probe the contradictions of rights-based governance in the context of the strategic political interests and security imperatives of the state.

Author

• Christiaan Beyers, Trent University