Flows of People to South America Regional Reader for the IMISCOE

Book excerpt: This book examines changing dynamics of intraregional migration in South America in light of on-going political, economic, and social transformations. The book focuses on migration within the region departing from the still-prevalent trend to study South-North direction, particularly migration to Europe and the United States. Indeed, South America has undergone several transformations in the dynamics of its international migration flows. While the second half of the twentieth century was characterized by South-North migration, particularly from the Andean Region to the US and Europe; and by transborder migrations within Latin America, the twenty-first century brought about an important diversification of destinations and added complexity to the structural causes of migration as well as to migrants' motivations and decision-making to migrate. The States' responses to this new situation also evolved in different ways. From 2000 onwards, the region witnessed an important growth of forced migration, particularly from Colombia. They were fleeing from social and political violence that has not ceased. In addition, from 2010 on, Caribbean migration from Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic started arriving in countries it had never reached before, and migration from Asia and Africa increasingly arrived in the region through various means. More recently, the Venezuelan exodus to the whole continent encapsulated the new complexity of migration patterns in South America. Indeed, Venezuelan migration was massive and responded to multiple drivers, from economic scarcity to social violence.