Description
The paper investigates the growing connection between logistical thinking and humanitarian responses in current strategies of managing population movements and organizing humanitarian space, particularly in the context of South-South circulations. It analyses the case of Brazil, specifically its response to the current influx of Venezuelan migrants and asylum seekers, arguing that the militarization of humanitarian assistance has infused the protection efforts with a logistical mindset and a specific spatial orientation of containment/movement. It argues that i) the experiences of Venezuelans have been subsumed into a logistical framework, where control over movement in a spatially structured manner has taken precedence over concerns regarding protection and that ii) protection has been subsumed into migratory regularization and flexible yet standardized sets of procedures, organized around administrative and strategic pipelines and infrastructures. It reviews contributions on the connection between the historical evolution of logistics as a science of managing circulations and how it has travelled, in this particular context, to the control of peoples and their movement. The paper is based on fieldwork conducted in the Northern border of Brazil with Venezuela in 2018 as part of a larger interdisciplinary project on lives in displacement and the situation of Venezuelans in Brazil.
