Description
Latin America’s long experience in the regional migration governance has been characterized by parallel processes showing fragmentation and differentiation among Central and South America. While the former has shown certain degree of convergence towards a securitizing policy frame supported by important recipient and transit countries, the latter has pursued a rights-based frame. Such frames have been particularly tested after 2015, when both subregions faced two ‘migration crises’: the migration of more than 6 million Venezuelans to other countries in South America and the migration of Central Americans through Mexico on their way to the United States. Certainly, these transboundary crises have added pressure to regulatory governance regimes in both subregions.
How have these subregions responded to these transboundary crises? The paper will empirically and comparatively analyse the various regulatory governance arrangements and thus, examine the institutional setting promoted by the negotiation of regulatory commitments, the nature of the norms (policy frame) endorsed and the various constellations of actors and networks, and their strategies through the mechanisms established. In so doing, the paper will assess how and to what extent Central and South America have converged towards alternative economic or security-based approaches away from liberal and rights-based approaches to migration.
