Adapting Citizenship and Immigration Regimes in Latin America

This seminar broadly outlines how Latin American states design and tweak their immigration and citizenship regimes. These regimes entail state-defined rules and procedures that determine a foreign resident’s rights and legal status. Although South America has often been portrayed as liberal and progressive in its immigration approaches—such as supporting the right to migrate, temporary protection, and large-scale regularization—the region’s migration policies started to conform to a global regime of control as early as 2000, including targeting irregular immigration. This talk focuses on established and emerging trends in migration and legal status across the region.

In reaction to new migration flows across Latin America, states have fluctuated between more inclusive versus restrictive policies regarding entry, temporary residence, and long-term stay. Many ad-hoc and ‘crisis’ responses originate with executive power, rather than in the legislature; this allows for faster policy outputs but raises concerns about the short- versus long-term security of legal status. States also decide whether to either lean on existing national and regional policy instruments or to create new categories. Policy and implementation approaches, especially in border areas, have also challenged the clear migrant-versus-refugee dichotomy, contradicting long-established global norms and international law. A policy focus over the last decade on mostly Venezuelan movement has overshadowed attention to many other forced and voluntary migrants throughout the region.

The seminar synthesizes several years of Dr. Victoria Finn’s qualitative research on policymaking, laws, and overall migration governance. In addition, she will outline new relevant global datasets on citizenship (Dyadic Dual Citizenship; the GLOBALCIT Citizenship Law Dataset), migrant voting rights (EVRR: Extraterritorial Rights and Restrictions dataset; MER: Migrant Electoral Rights), and migration policy (the IMISEM Project). Lastly, she will reflect on what these changes in immigration and citizenship regimes mean for migrant rights, political representation, and democracy.

Bio

Victoria Finn is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo. She researches international migration, governance, and democracy in shifting political landscapes. Dr. Finn holds a PhD in political science from Universidad Diego Portales, Chile; a PhD in humanities from Leiden University, the Netherlands; and an MA in international affairs from the Elliott School at the George Washington University.