COVID-19, the Migration Crisis and Chile's New Immigration Legislation: Chile's Powerful Get Richer and its Poor More Outraged (original) (raw)
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Frontiers in Human Dynamics, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has put into sharp relief the need for socioeconomic integration of migrants, regardless of their migratory condition. In South America, more than five million Venezuelan citizens have been forced to migrate across the region in the past five years. Alongside other intra-regional migrants and refugees, many find themselves in precarious legal and socioeconomic conditions, as the surge in numbers has led to xenophobic backlashes in some of the main receiving countries, including Chile and Peru. In this paper, we explore in how far the COVID-19 crisis has offered stakeholders an opportunity to politically reframe migration and facilitate immigrant integration or, rather, further propelled xenophobic sentiments and the socioeconomic and legal exclusion of immigrants.
From de Chilean Social Outbreak to the Covid-19 Pandemic: Approaches of a Deep Change
Journal of Quality in Health Care & Economics
In October 2019 Chile began to experience a process of deep social, political and economic crisis that was triggered by the rise in the price of public transport. One of the most frequently quoted phrases during the beginning of the crisis was "it's not 30 pesos, it's 30 years", indicating that the crisis is not only explained by the increase in transport, but by the overwhelming sum of inequalities that the Chilean people have been experiencing for more than 30 years, this is expressed by the extreme indebtedness of households, high defaults and low salaries, the detestable distribution of wealth. In this way, this article will be a descriptive review which aims to review and analyze the main facts that Chile has experienced since the social explosion of October 2019, and how the COVID-19 has shown the inequalities of a political-economic system that needs to be transformed.
Indigenous Border Migrants and (Im)Mobility Policies in Chile in Times of COVID-19
The commodification of healthcare and the structural violence towards the migrant population in the Chilean system materialize in a series of structural barriers to accessing healthcare. In the face of this structural vulnerability, cross-border health mobility is one of the primary resources of indigenous border migrants living in the Tarapacá region (Chile). This involves crossing the border of both people (specialists/patients) and objects (such as ritual supplies or biomedicines), which play a crucial role as, in many cases, it is the only way to satisfy their healthcare needs. The security-orientated geopolitics of border closure (Plan Frontera Segura) has been reinforced by immobility policies linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. While doing so leaves people without the fundamental resource of healthcare mobility or obliges them to cross the border via unauthorized crossings, exposing them to criminalization and abuse by different agents of violence (the military, people smugglers, etc.). In this paper, we will offer a description of these processes of (im)mobility, analyzing their conformation both by the current policies of the Chilean State and by the notorious deficiency in indigenous and migrant rights, denouncing the material impact they have on the health/illness/care process of indigenous migrants.
The Chilean State and the search for a new migration policy
2013
Resumen: Considerar a Chile como un país receptor de inmigrantes es algo definitivamente nuevo. De hecho la migración neta en Chile aún es negativa. Durante los últimos veinte años, sin embargo, se ha observado un cambio en los flujos migratorios al país. Esto ha sido resultado del proceso de democratización luego del fin de la dictadura de Pinochet, un progreso económico continuado durante este período, y a la percepción de un país social y políticamente tranquilo en comparación con sus vecinos. Entre los años 1992 y 2012 el stock migratorio en Chile aumento desde 114 mil personas a unas 352 mil; provenientes principalmente de Perú, Argentina y otros países de las Américas. Los gobiernos democráticos posteriores a la dictadura han tenido desde 1990 un comportamiento errático respecto de este aumento migratorio. Mientras que en el discurso el Estado plantea que los inmigrantes deben ser recibidos con respeto a los tratados internacionales firmados por el país, en la práctica se utilizan las mismas leyes migratorias desarrolladas y aplicadas durante la dictadura. De la misma manera, la implementación de nuevas políticas y leyes ha sido igualmente inconsistente. Mientras algunos organismos del estado crean programas para promover la integración social de los inmigrantes, otros restringen la adaptación e interpretan negativamente las resoluciones judiciales con relación a los inmigrantes. En este contexto burocrático, este artículo examina los últimos intentos que el estado chilena a seguido para construir una nueva ley migratoria, así como su posible implementación y los efectos que estas leyes y políticas puedan tener en los procesos de desarrollo social, político y económico del país. Abstract: Considering Chile an immigration country is a new thing; in fact its net migration is still negative. The last twenty years, however, have seen a change in the migration flows to the country. This has been result of the democratization process after the end of Pinochet’s dictatorship, a continuous economic progress and a perception of a country in social tranquility when compared with its neighbors. Between 1992 and 2012, immigration has increased from about 114,000 people to 352,000, primarily from Peru, Argentina and other South American and Latin American countries. The democratic governments have had since 1990 an erratic approach to this increase in migration. While in the discourse the state argues that migrants must be received with respect to migration international treaties signed by the country; in practice the same migration policies and laws developed during the dictatorship are still in use. Consequently, policy implementation has been equally inconsistent; some departments create programs to encourage social integration, while others attempt to restrict immigrant adaptation and have mismanaged judicatory claims. Within this bureaucratic context, this paper examines Chile’s current attempts to construct migration policies and its implementation, and the possible effects that these policies might have in the social, political and economic development of the country.
OpenDemocracy, 2020
On 18 October 2019, Chile felt the first tremors of a social crisis that would rock the country over the coming months. Although those in power refer to the uprising only in terms of disorder and violence, a study published by the authors in March 2020 (available in Spanish here) found that the events kindled hope for a better future among people the length of the nation. However, conversations with the same individuals several months into the COVID-19 pandemic reveal that this hope is now waning. The less well-off have found themselves once again in a position of “few prospects, torn between religious optimism that God will provide and fear that things will only get worse.” The term el pueblo (“the people”), used to evoke the nation’s shared identity during the uprising, has once again fallen out of regular usage, and the authors noted acute concern among middle-strata people of losing their social status, expressed, for example, in fear of having to choose less expensive or even free education for their children.
When Migrant Pain Does Not Deserve Attention: Institutional Racism in Chile’s Public Health System
Springer eBooks, 2022
The analysis of institutional racism and its links to the abuse of immigrants requires analyzing "race" and racism, concepts seldom used in research on contemporary immigration in Chile. These concepts have, better yet, been resisted and replaced by euphemisms, such as "exclusion", "discrimination", or "criminalization". In view of this and due to the frequent abuses that migrants experience, our research has focused for several years on the forms and manifestations that anti-immigrant racism has acquired in Chile. 1 The centering of racism in the analysis of immigration is an urgent task, especially as the current government implements migration policies that seek to "put the house in order" (Cooperativa.cl, 2018; EFE, 2021). This potent slogan has been used by President Sebastián Piñera since 2018, when he took office for the second time. He has fostered discourses that characterize immigration as a "problem" and that blame immigrants for uncertainties and 1 For more, see Tijoux (2016); Tijoux and Córdova (2015), among other articles and book chapters.
COVID-19 and its effects in Latin America: social crisis, forced migration and hazy perspectives
2021
Latin America became one of the epicentres of the pandemic due to the Sars-Cov-2 virus. One of the serious problems faced by Latin American populations is forced migration, which, like everything that concerns vulnerable populations, has increased in the pandemic. The cases of Central America and Mexico, a country considered one of the largest human corridors in the world, reached unthinkable levels of human rights violations, demonstrate this. This article addresses the political and socioeconomic effects of the pandemic resulting from the Sars-Cov-2 virus (COVID-19) in Latin America. Likewise, we will present, through the press and the reports of civil society organizations, how, in the middle of the pandemic, the criminalization and blaming of migrants in the speeches of the American government agencies was accentuated.
A revolution in Chile. But where is it headed?
Revista Avesso: Pensamento, Memória e Sociedade, 2020
The following essay is an attempt to unify and contextualize much of the media coverage on Chile's protest waves throughout the end of 2019. Information was drawn from Chilean, Brazilian, and international English-speaking publications. After establishing a coherent timeline and narrative to the protests, I set out to understand the composition and dynamics of the protests. Finally, I explore possible causes and precedents to the Chilean crisis in education, healthcare, pensions, poverty and inequality.