Description
In the early 2000s, South America embarked in the ‘post-neoliberal turn’ which amongst integration endeavours sought to liberalise migration policy. This move enabled the unprecedented recognition of migrants’ human rights. Accordingly, Ecuador, the lead receiving country of asylum seekers, underwent several legal and institutional changes to recognise asylum seekers and refugees’ rights. The constitution included universal citizenship as a principle and recognised the rights to migrate and seek asylum, and equality between Ecuadorians and foreigners. This ‘open doors’ perspective occurred in efforts to challenge the previously dominant securitisation approach. Drawing from Lene Hansen’s (2012) desecuritisation through rearticulation, this paper explores how Colombian asylum seekers were desecuritised in Ecuador in 2007-2010. To this end, it analyses legal instruments, official documents, speeches, and transcripts from governmental elite interviews. Applying desecuritisation to a non-Western case study demonstrates how securitisation practices can be rearticulated into a framework of protection through which previously antagonistic identities are rearticulated. Analysing desecuritisation, how it manifests and under which contextual circumstances emerged, could offer an alternative to mainstream approaches of control. In this way, desecuritisation in this South American country offers comparative avenues for other regions.
