Racialized control policies in the south American border regime: The intensification of “transit migration” in times of COVID-19

Introduction

A “South American border regime” was constituted in the early 2000s, in a context dominated by intraregional migration and emigration to the United States and Europe, marked by the technocratic hegemony of migration governance and principles of regulated opening and inter-state cooperation (Domenech, 2019). What stands out in this regional border regime are mechanisms of regionalization and internationalization based on regional consultative processes (RCPs), subregional integration agreements, as well as the key role played by actors such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (Domenech, 2013). New configurations of “migrant illegality” (De Genova, 2002) emerged in the South American region in the 2010s. As Domenech and Dias (2020) indicate, the South American Border Regime was destabilized by new disputes that took shape in relation to the border crossings and movements of new “extraregional” migrations (from the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa) and massive Venezuelan emigration. Indeed, the political production of illegalized and racialized subjects through selective mechanisms of entrance, “transit,” and residency has become particularly clear in those migrations that altered or transformed the dominant legal and institutional designs of the 2010s (Trabalón, 2021, 2023). The increased of “Black,” “migrant,” and “extraregional” populations particularly reconfigured and complicated the existing racial and migratory dynamics, multiplying the categories of migrants and revealing new structures of power that were translated into distinctive ways of experiencing inequality in relation to access and conditions in which movement is produced in the South American space.

It is in this scenario that the so-called “extraregional” migration from South America through “Darien Gap” on the Colombia-Panama border acquires more political and social visibility (Álvarez Velasco, 2022; Álvarez Velasco et al., 2021). Furthermore, between 2010 and 2021, this migration is characterized by being primarily (and almost exclusively) made up of migrants from certain countries or regions of the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia (Trabalón, 2024). Despite its historical character, the narrative of South-North “transit migration,” with a longer history and larger presence in places such as Mexico and Central America, remained under a diffuse and fragmented governmental discourse in South America, with more defined political nuances in the cases of Colombia and Ecuador (Álvarez Velasco, 2016, 2022; Clavijo et al., 2022; Herrera and Berg, 2019). However, the category achieves greater clarity upon addressing the processes of regionalization and internationalization of migration policies in the South American space and its progressive incorporation into the institutional language of migration governance.

In fact, an initial workshop organized in 2010 by the Organization of American States (OAS), entitled “Extracontinental Migration in the Americas” has been identified as a fundamental precedent for understanding how, subsequently, concerns about the struggle against trafficking, migrant trafficking, and the “irregular” character of new “extraregional” migration transformed multilateral control policies (Domenech and Dias, 2020). Indeed, as the document published about this event reveals, it refers to a recent and relatively unknown phenomenon, at the same time as it highlighted the “problems” caused by new migration flows in certain countries in the Americas (Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Mexico) through their “transit” toward the North (OAS, 2010). This workshop, organized in conjunction with the IOM and UNHCR was followed, in 2011, by a report entitled “Extracontinental Migrants in South America,” prepared for a meeting between the Regional Conference on Migration (RCM) and the South American Conference of Migration (SACM) whose objective was to create dialogue “in regards to extracontintental transit migration flows through the Americas” (IOM, 2011: 1). In subsequent years, this “management” agenda would incorporate migrants from Cuba and Haiti as objects of political interest and establish an inseparable nexus between the categories of “extracontinental” migration (from Asia and Africa) and “extraregional” migration (from the Caribbean), the use of which terms would persist throughout the 2010s (IOM, 2016, 2017, 2019; OAS-IOM, 2016). However, in the beginning of the following decade, this distinction “proposed from the South American point of view” would be shifted toward the unified category of “extraregional migrants,” which not only includes migrants from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, but also their children with South American nationality (IOM, 2022a).

During this period, the dynamic established in regards to data exchange, identifying “problems,” and guidelines for bilateral and regional cooperation was selectively oriented around “extraregional” transit migration toward the United States and the difficulties arising from it: the constitution of Andean countries as “transit countries,” the increase in “transit migrants,” and, more generally, the constitution of South America as a “transit region” (IOM 2011, 2016, 2017;OAS-IOM, 2016). In 2015, the Cuban migration was politically constructed in terms of “migration crisis” to the North (Álvarez Velasco, 2016, 2022; Domenech and Dias, 2020).Consequently, in 2015 and 2016, the migratory phenomenon was institutionally described as a “humanitarian crisis” on the Colombia-Panama border caused by a “massive wave” of migrants from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean in general and migrants from Cuba and Haiti in particular, with a total estimated 35,000 and 24,000 border crossings in each year respectively (IOM, 2018). Later, toward the end of the decade, another IOM report (2019) would warn of the increase in Haitian migration from Chile and Brazil toward the United States based on 18,179 “irregular entries” detected in Panama up until August of that year. This report focused on Haitians’ “re-emigration” processes and identified “three transit points” in the “migration route” that it classified as: South America (first leg), Central America (second leg), and Mexico (third leg). This institutional and political categorization not only explicitly connected the three regions of the Americas, but also anticipated the border conflicts and disputes that would be unleashed and exacerbated from the South to the North and from the North to the South during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As shown in the “(In)mobility in the Americas and COVID-19” Project, ¹ the emergence of COVID-19 in March 2020 led to the progressive and generalized worsening of South American economies and living conditions and the implementation of extraordinary measures, such as border closures, the suspension of asylum procedures, and interruption of regularization processes. Those circumstances not only had differential impacts that deepened existing inequalities for certain groups of migrants (Herrera, 2021), but also generated new border disputes in the South American border regime (Domenech, 2020). Thus, during the pandemic, immobility as a state measure for containing the virus paradoxically produces a multiplication of migrant mobilities in the Americas (Álvarez Velasco, 2020). Starting in the middle of 2020, and taking on particular force throughout 2021, these new tensions include the “massive” and unprecedented mobility of thousands migrants of “Haitian origin” that, after having stayed for various lengths of time in one or several Southern Cone countries (Brazil, Chile, and, to lesser extent, Argentina), decide, in groups or in family, to start the route toward the United States.

The intensification of South-North “transit migration” in general, and of Haitian migration in particular, was reflected in 2021 data from Servicio Nacional de Migración Panamá (2021) that recorded a total of 129,993 border crossings (more than the sum of all those between 2010 and 2020 ² ) and of which 79,219 correspond to Haitian migrants and 18,120 to the children of Haitians with Brazilian or Chilean nationality due to being born in those countries. Those migratory journeys primarily take place over land, although they also include maritime segments and, in some cases, aerial ones, through the countries of the Andean Region (Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia), Central America (Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala), and Mexico. The events triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 and its political construction as a “migration crisis” between July and September did not suppose the emergence of a new geography of migrations in South America. However, they did cause a major transformation in it, not only due to the spatial interconnection created between the Southern Cone and the Andean Region, but also due to the accelerated overlap between South-South migrations and South-North migrations in the Americas. In this context, the link between illegalization and racialization became particularly clear in the disputes between mobility and control that arose around “transit” Haitian migration toward the North during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the first, I develop the work’s theoretical framework. In the second, I explain the methodological strategy. In the third, I describe the regional panorama of the Southern Cone in terms of the reasons that led to my interlocutors’ decision to take the route North in 2021. In the fourth section, I analyze the relation between illegalization and racialization in the Andean region through the border negotiations that Haitian migrants engage in with different actors in diverse contexts of “transit migration.” In the fifth, I examine the expansion of South-North “transit migration” as a matrix of political and racial intervention in the South American space through the concrete mechanisms of regionalization and internationalization aimed at containing and deterring these movements. In the sixth, I conclude with final reflections.

Border regimes: “Transit migration”, illegalization, and racialization

Drawing on contributions from the “autonomy of migration” approach, this article takes up the study of migratory movements and conflicts from a perspective that prioritizes the subjective and political dimension of migration (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2017). That is, the everyday disputes, struggles, and tensions within practices of border crossing and reinforcement (Papadopoulos and Tsianos, 2013). Along this line, I take up the concept of a “border regime” to refer to the heterogeneous set of actors, institutions, practices, knowledges, and discourses that come together, not without contradictions, ambiguities, and conflicts, in processes of border constitution (De Genova et al., 2015). These processes highlight the excess of migratory forces and movements that defy, cross, and reshape borders, as well as how this excess is “subsequently stabilized, controlled, and managed by various state agencies and policy schemes as they seek to invoke the border as a stable, controllable and manageable tool of selective or differential inclusion” (Kasparek et al., 2015: 69). In this context, one of the central features of contemporary border regimes alludes to the inseparable nexus between illegalization and racialization (De Genova, 2002, 2018; Picozza, 2021). As De Genova (2018) argues, when “illegal” migration becomes “spectacularly visible,” the displacement that is produced “of juridical inequalities and border injustices onto the illegalised migrants themselves –including patronising discourses that present migrants as purely passive ‘victims’– inevitably contributes to the migrants’ racialisation” (p. 25).

In the Latin American context, Domenech (2019) conceptualizes the “South American border regime” based on the political effects of the adaptation of the migration governance model on the formation of diverse migration and border control schemes. In dialogue with these formulations, in other texts (Trabalón, 2021), I have referred to the racially mediated articulation between certain historical apparatuses of the state’s regulation of migration and different accounts, categories, and practices framed in processes of the regionalization and internationalization of migration policies. Racialization is understood in terms of the “coloniality of power” (Quijano, 2000), that is, as a product of colonial history and violence linked to the capitalist mode of production and the establishment of “race” as a practice of government that shapes geopolitical, economic, social, and legal hierarchies based on divisions between “white” and “non-white.” In migration studies, research on the formation of nation-states based on the rejection, subordination, and historical negation of Indigenous and Black populations has allowed for understanding the diverse realities experienced by migrants belonging to “non-white” populations in the Latin American context (Tijoux and Córdova, 2015). The relationship between racialization and border control has also been addressed by different research in South America (Liberona, 2015; Stang and Stefoni, 2016; Stefoni et al., 2018; Trabalón, 2021, among others). However, in analytical terms, a state-centric vision has prevailed that focuses research “within” national borders at the expense of the study of the political production of racialization through the intervention of different actors and scales that operate on the movement of migrants across borders and diverse territories and geographies. Therefore, this work proposes understanding the production of racialized subjects based on the active role played by multiple social actors and institutions involved in the dispute over the transformation of migration and border control and, more specifically, in relation to the unequal and discontinuous experiences of mobility that are produced in contexts of “transit migration” and historically situated border regimes.

The theoretical discussion about “transit migration” or the formation of “transit countries” is closely tied to its configuration as a category of intervention according to different political and institutional uses in specific historical and geographical contexts, usually related to practices of containment and externalization of border controls and associated with ideas of “crisis,” “migratory pressure,” or “potential migration” (Collyer et al., 2012; Düvell, 2012; Hess, 2012). In this sense, it is important to connect the discussion of the political uses of “transit migration” with the ways in which, in certain conjunctures, specific migratory movements are defined based on a humanitarian language of “crisis,” which allow for legitimizing and hiding different processes connected to border reinforcement (De Genova and Tazzioli, 2016; Walters, 2010). Similarly, the discussion has been renewed through its inscription in the spatial-temporal frameworks of the uneven systems of (im)mobility that take shape in global capitalism (Sheller and Urry, 2006), in dialogue with the developments of critical geography and its proposal to understand movement as a social and historical practice that produces and transforms space (Lefebvre, 1991). In this way, it has been argued that “transit migration,” traversed by the dialectic between mobility and immobility, creates new, contingent and provisional spatialities based on the information and resources that circulate in migratory networks and the multiple actions involved in forms of contesting control (Álvarez Velasco et al., 2021; Álvarez Velasco, 2022). From this point of view, the study of “transit migration” also makes it possible to highlight the key role played by subjects’ practices and strategies – their knowledge and praxis – in the spatial production of “transit zones” and, therefore, in the constant restructuring of border regimes (Hess, 2012). Precisely, as Düvell (2012) argues, “transit migration” is a political construction that is posed as a “strategic response to the constantly changing control regime and part of the complex interaction between migrants’ autonomy and states’ sovereignty” (p. 422). Along that line, its use and discussion allows for observing the double play that arises between the configuration of “transit migration” as an institutional apparatus of control and the border negotiations that take shape around it.

In the South American context, the field of “transit migration studies,” although clearly growing, is still in its infancy, with prior research mainly addressing South-North migrations and only a few facets connected to South-South migration (Álvarez Velasco et al., 2021). Therefore, without ignoring the heterogeneity of migration processes and the impossibility of spatially and temporally categorizing them a priori (Collyer et al., 2012), this article emphasizes the need to politicize subjects’ practice of mobility and to delve into the critical debate about “transit migration” to understand its performative effects on the configuration of migration and border control policies in the South American space and the complex political, legal, and racial connections that are being established in migratory and border dynamics in the Americas.

Methodological strategy

In terms of methodology, the research adopts a qualitative approach that considers the multi-sited and mobile character of the object of study and takes up the strategy of empirically “following” its connections, relations, and associations (Marcus, 2001). Based on the intersection between migratory trajectories, people in movement, and border conflicts, the investigation re-constructs diverse political scenarios taking into consideration the interactions among different actors and scales of analysis. The research techniques employed in the methodological design included document analysis and online interviews. The document analysis looked at materials produced by the IOM about South-North “transit migration” from its first publications at the beginning of 2010 up until 2022 taking into account this agency’s hegemonic role in producing data about migrant populations in South America and Mesoamerica. Additionally, it analyzed documents published between 2021 and the first months of 2022 that correspond to statistical reports of governmental entities, media reports, statements from international agencies, and official declarations and state regulations in different Latin American countries. In parallel, due to the limitations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, “transit” migrants were approached through digital mediation and the use of the Internet as a research tool (Ardévol et al., 2008). In short, this methodological strategy allowed for synchronously and asynchronously reconstructing the collective travel experiences of Haitian migrants from the Southern Cone toward the United States in 2021 and the political scenarios of control that were reconstructed in relation to them.

The digital spaces for intervention under diverse modalities of “co-presence” (Barajas and Carreño, 2019) were generated through the use of WhatsApp and the exchange of texts, audio messages, and telephone calls. This dialogue was made possible by fieldwork carried out between 2017 and 2019 with migrants from Haiti in Argentina for my doctoral research, completed in 2021, as well as by my progressive and concomitant immersion in their transnational networks of countries of the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile, and the southern region of Brazil. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Brazil and Chile were positioned as the main countries “expelling” Haitian migrants in route toward the North due to the fact that, previously, those countries had become the primary sites of “settlement” of the Haitian diaspora in South America (Moulin and Thomaz, 2016; Joseph, 2017; Montinard, 2020; Miranda, 2021; Stefoni et al., 2018; Trabalón, 2018). Indeed, in the early 2010s, migrants from Haiti began a progressive and, at times, apparently “convulsive,” mobility toward South America that, especially starting in the middle of that decade and later, became intertwined and overlapped with the multidirectionality of their movements among South American countries and from South America toward the United States (Trabalón, 2024).

In methodological terms, these historical circumstances were translated into a constant temporal and spatial reconfiguration of Haitians’ migratory projects, as well as their “transit” nodes in the South American space. Thus, in many cases establishing ties with migrants from Haiti in Argentina involved learning about previous migratory experiences in other South American countries such as Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador. It also meant that, over the course of our interactions in Argentina, my Haitian interlocutors migrated to other South American countries and we would continue our conversations virtually. Finally, it meant that, with the COVID-19 emergency, the bonds of proximity forged with migrants from Haiti and constantly sustained over 4 years, allowed me to expand my networks of interaction through digital mediations in the pandemic context. In this way, my pre-existing contacts fostered the climate of trust under which I entered into dialogue with new Haitian interlocutors, particularly friends and families belonging to their transnational networks in the Southern Cone countries that had gone through or in 2021 were going through the “Darien Gap” in the United States.

Between June 2021 and September 2022, I maintained dialogues with 14 Haitian migrants (four women and 10 men) who traveled or were traveling in group from Chile, Argentina, or Brazil toward the North. In this article, I recuperate four “transit-biographies” (Hess, 2012) taking into account data “saturation” and three specific selection criteria. First, I chose to focus on geographically diverse experiences (Haitian migrants leaving from Chile, Brazil, and Argentina) to carry out regional coverage of their migratory journeys and delineate the Southern Cone–Andean Region interface. Second, I chose my interlocutors identifying those with whom I could maintain, with different rhythms and degrees of intensity, a sustained interaction over time (of three to 8 months of dialogue) and whose narratives allow for showing different facets relating to the connection between illegalization and racialization in contexts of “transit migration.” Third, I took into account the heterogeneity of experiences of border negotiation throughout the journey and possibilities of synchronously and asynchronously analyzing and delving into them in the key conjunctures that marked 2021 and, especially, the months of from July to September of that year. In this context, I return to the interaction with four Haitian youth (Alex, Claude, Robert and Jackson ³ ), who, in different groups, left Chile, Brazil and Argentina, in June and July 2021, heading toward the United States.

“Pran wout la”: The political response to the precarization of life from the Southern Cone

The historical backdrop of violence, political instability, and extreme inequality in Haiti, as well as the earthquake in 2010 and the “Global North’s” increasingly restrictive policies are key factors for understanding the growth and expansion of Haitian migration in South America (Moulin and Thomaz, 2016; Montinard, 2020; Miranda, 2021; Trabalón, 2018; Joseph, 2017). In regards to mobility towards the North during 2021, my Haitian interlocutors pointed to the importance of the United States as a “destination” for the Haitian diaspora, the expectations generated by the Biden’s election and the reactivation of Temporary Protection Status for Haiti in the United States in the first half of 2021 and, in more general terms, the worsening of their living conditions due to the COVID-19 situation. At the same time, their narratives alluded to intermittent and varied individual and collective situations of illegalization and racialization that had accumulated over the years. Thus, the border disputes and experiences of my Haitian interlocutors, Alex, Claude, Robert, and Jackson, are positioned in a scenario that is historical and not merely conjunctural. Their journeys across the American continent start in the early or mid 2010s when they migrate from Haiti to South America. In 2021, after having spent time in one or several Southern Cone countries for years and persistently struggling to carry out or sustain their migratory projects, they decide – in groups and families – to travel toward the United States defying the generalized mandate of closed ground borders due to the COVID-19 health emergency.

From Chile, Claude and Robert traveled across the Andean Region, Central America, and Mexico. In Claude’s case, he left with his partner Cristelle and five friends in early June 2021. After spending more than 2 months in the city of Tapachula, Mexico, ⁴ and experiencing different types of needs, anxieties, and violence, they decided to stop waiting for a resolution of their refugee applications. They crossed Mexico, and reached the border with the United States. After exhausting days of waiting and mistreatment, they managed to initiate their asylum process. Claude and Cristelle expressed feeling very grateful for arriving, but also profound sadness at having lost one of their best friends in the trip, who died crossing the Darien Gap at 27 years of age. For his part, Robert traveled with Rose, his 2-year old son, his cousin, and a couple of friends. After a long journey that began in Chile in July 2021, they managed to reach the border with the United States. There, without resources, food, or services, they camped for a week under the bridge between the cities of Acuña (Mexico) and Del Río (United States) while being harassed and attacked by United States border agents. Robert, Rose, and their son (with Chilean nationality) were detained and held for 8 days in deplorable conditions and deported without explanation from the United States to Haiti. From there, after taking on more debt through a loan, they were able to return to Chile, where they are currently living in an extremely difficult situation, attempting to put their migratory and life projects back together.

In Jackson’s case, he left Brazil in September 2021 along with his two sisters, Jerica and Rose, two nieces, and his grandson. Jackson, who migrated to that South American country in 2015, had already made the journey from Brazil to the United States in 2016. That time, upon arriving to the United States after Trump’s presidential victory, he was imprisoned for 3 months and later deported to Haiti. After much sacrifice, he managed to return to Brazil in 2017 where he remained until 2021, when he decided to make a second attempt to travel to the United States. After a journey with many difficulties, Jackson reached the United States border and made his asylum claim and, this time, he was able to enter. However, one of his sisters, Jerica, along with her two sons, was deported to Mexico, where she still remains in precarious conditions, hoping to be able to reunite with her family in the United States as soon as possible. Lastly, Alex departed from Argentina with his girlfriend Fátima and four friends in early July 2021 crossing Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Central America, and Mexico. After being detained and deported from Mexico to Guatemala three times, they finally managed to cross Mexico and reach the border with the United States using different modes of transportation. Although Alex and his friends managed to enter and claim asylum, Fátima did not have the same luck. She was deported from the United States to Haiti where she currently lives in extremely distressing conditions and is unable to return to Argentina since her residency permit expired in 2019.

These “travel fragments” allow us to take note of some of the political scenarios that are shaped around the practice of “taking the route” (in Haitian Creole “pran wout la”) toward the United States. According to Montinard (2020) “pran wout la” is a linguistic expression that emerges in the mid-2010s to designate the multiple itineraries and forms of “making way” that migrants “of Haitian origin” initiate from Brazil toward the United States. Like all migratory journeys, this way of being “in movement” includes diverse strategies, spatial redefinitions, fragmentations, and periods of waiting, mobility, and immobility (Álvarez Velasco, 2022; Miranda, 2021; Schapendonk, 2012). The conditions of its emergence and the transformation that the term “pran wout” undergoes over time is precisely what allows for politically decodifying the struggles for movement in the Americas – and from South America – during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jackson, who arrived to Brazil in 2015 and attempted the route toward the United States for the first time in 2016, stated:

“I did not go to Brazil with the idea of going to the United States. That route existed but nobody knew about it (…). Haitians started making that journey in 2015. I found out out thanks to the Africans. In every city there are Africans who are leaving and they would tell the Haitians that they were leaving Brazil. They started talking about it and explaining and some Haitians were inspired. And then they would send messages to everyone else explaining the route. And that is how all the Haitians discovered it” (Jackson, May 3, 2022, from Pennsylvania, United States).

As revealed in his narrative, the historical circulation of “common goods of mobility” (Papadopoulos and Tsianos, 2013) and its not necessarily coordinated, but to a certain degree cooperative, character among migrant networks allows for understanding how the diversification and expansion of South-North migration in the Americas develops in connection with processes of “re-emigration.” Furthermore, as my Haitian interlocutors comment, toward the end of the 2010s, the expression “pran wout la” begins acquiring a new meaning as it starts to represent the route from different South American countries toward the United States, and not only from Brazil. Thus, “pran wout la” is progressively transnationalized and regionalized, making it possible to understand the power and reach acquired by the border disputes and struggles unleashed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In these circumstances, along with structural racism and labor exploitation in the formal and informalized markets that permeate the South American countries from which my Haitian interlocutors departed (Moulin and Thomaz, 2016; Miranda, 2021; Stefoni et al., 2018; Stang et al., 2020; Trabalón, 2018, 2023), it is important to insist on the regional and historical backdrop of the political production of racialization connected to the “management” of Haitian migration. Throughout the 2010s, the policies associated with the ideas of the “poverty,” “blackness,” and “vulnerability” of Haitian migrants are what has allowed for justifying entry restrictions, ground and air border closures, differential residency criteria, the political exclusion of Haitians from asylum and “humanitarian return” programs, under the premise of “safe, orderly, and regular” migration (Stang et al., 2020; Stefoni et al., 2018; Trabalón, 2018, 2023). During the COVID-19 pandemic, those frameworks of selective illegalization and racialization became complexely and diversely intertwined with the precarization of Haitians’ living conditions described by my Haitiain interlocutors.

In this sense, multiple forms of violence over time and in different spaces are what affect the decisions of Alex, Claude, Robert, and Jackson and their families to take the route toward the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to my interlocutors, despite the fact that it means putting one’s life at risk, taking the route is positioned in regards to the future as a fundamental strategy for the reproduction of life. Thus, “pran wout la” is the collective political response of Haitian migrants and families to this pandemic present, as well as to racialized control policies that have challenged their presence and forms of mobility in South America for over a decade. Therefore, the mobilization of more than 80,000 migrants and families from Haiti from South America toward the United States in 2021, in the context of a health emergency and generalized border closures, represents a radical act of border disobedience in search of more dignified forms of life.

Black bodies: Control, “vwayaj rakèt” and racial stratification in the Andean region

During 2021, the Andean region has been transformed into one of the many political scenes in which disputes over mobility and control are exacerbated, with a notable imprint of Venezuelan migration toward the south and Haitian migration headed northward. ⁵ In historical terms, Haitian migration in the South American space acquired a predominately illegalized character during the 2010s due to the fact that the countries that had previously had visa exemptions for that national group imposed restrictions on entry and consular visas: Peru in 2012, Brazil in 2012, Ecuador in 2015, and Argentina and Chile in 2018 (Trabalón, 2018). Faced with migration policies that selectively restricted Haitians’ legal entrance options in most countries, the response has been the expansion of vwayaj rakèt (“illegal journey” or “informal journey”, in Haitian Creole) to move between different South American countries or to cross South American borders heading toward the United States. As my Haitian interlocutors narrate, the vwayaj rakèt is a historical practice related to transborder mobility to the Haitian diaspora’s different destinations in the world. Involves the participation of “intermediaries” who facilitate movement across borders and whose actions include a wide range of services, such as managing documents, lodging, and food in different “transit points”, transfer from border to border, and physical or virtual accompaniment in border crossings. According to Montinard (2020), while under certain circumstances, the “raketè” (the intermediary who facilitates mobility) can be compared to other figures such as that of the “guía”, “coyote,” “pasador,” or “trochero,” the ambiguity that it holds makes it impossible to equate them in all cases. As Miranda (2021) observes, South-North Haitian migration under this modality becomes particularly notorious in the mid-2010s due to the significance acquired by the route to the United States in the 2016 and 2019 conjunctures. Therefore, as the pandemic advances, the “vwayaj rakèt” became a fundamental resource for taking the route toward the United States despite constituting an extremely costly means of mobility it usually implies the inversion of months or years of time and work in terms of savings, as well as taking on debts through loans from their transnational social and family connections.

According to Claude, Robert, Jackson y Alex’s accounts, travel experiences were very diverse, not only because, as Claude affirms, “it is not the same being a woman as a man, traveling with children,” but also because, as Robert points out, “the possibilities of travel are different.” In some cases, the vwayaj rakèt is planned in advance and includes long stretches of route, as in the case of Robert and his group going to Mexico. However, in other cases, it is more fragmented and spontaneous over the course of the journey, as it was for Claude, Jackson y Alex’s groups. Although nobody is exempt from the multiple forms of violence that traverse illegalized journeys, in the second case, the controls are negotiated section by section and this raises other types of challenges, especially as the increase in the magnitude and speed of movements also generates a constant increase in the costs of the services offered by different – state and non-state – actors involved in shaping of “transit migration”. Travel experiences are also diverse due to the particular ways in which processes of illegalization and racialization are embodied in the bodies in movement. The diverse border landscapes constructed by the very diverse geographies that exist long the “route” produce heterogeneous spatial scenarios of subordination of mobility that respond to multiple and changing racial profiles and, therefore, different forms of racial stratification. In this sense, without being the rule, the experience of moving in an illegalized way across Andean region for migrants identified as “Black” can differ from other groups of “non-white” migrants, that, given the characteristics of mestizaje and under certain circumstances, acquire a grade of (in)visibility distinct from Black bodies in movement, which are socially and politically configured as essentially “suspicious”.

Thus, at certain “transit” points of Andean countries or border zones, my Haitian interlocutors commented that they, in some cases along with groups of migrants of African or Asiatic origin, were forced to hide during the day and not frequent public spaces so as to not be identified by police and migration control. They would remain enclosed in their lodging during the days of forced waiting until able to resume their journeys and only cross the borders by night in order to reduce the chances of being recognized by their physical features. Additionally, in several cases, the “raketè” and police imposed higher payment rates on “Black” migrants alluding to the greater risk involved in transporting them due to the visibility of their bodies and their way of traveling in groups.

Jackson, for example, recounted his entry into Peru through the Amazon jungle at the border crossing between Assis (Brazil) and Iñapari (Peru):

“In Peru, they charge you more for being Black (referring to the “raketè” and the police), you don’t speak the language and they take advantage of you, I don’t know about Bolivia, I didn’t go through Bolivia, my friends say they are worse there. But that’s how it is in Peru, if you do not pay everyone, they take you back to the border. But you don’t go back, once you leave, you can’t go back, you have to keep going forward” (Jackson, June 15, 2022, from Pennsylvania, United States).

Similarly, Alex spoke of this when, after crossing the border with Ecuador, he had to stay in the city of Ipiales (on Colombia’s southern border) for 4 days due to the intensity of the controls:

“We are waiting in a hotel to see when we can travel because right now there are a lot of police, a lot of migration agents, and it is very complicated to travel now, since there are thirteen of us now and there are people with babies, there are pregnant women, we are a group and we are Black” (Alex, July 23, 2021, on route through Ipiales, Colombia).

Sometime later, reflecting on his journey, a new story from Alex shows how that particular experience of immobility and waiting—traversed by the hyper-visibilization of their bodies—was a characteristic feature of their “transit” through countries of the Andean region:

“The route through South America is much more difficult for us Haitians because of the color of our skin and, furthermore, many do not speak Spanish, because other countries that are not African can cross the borders much more easily. And they have a chance to pass as a citizen of that country that they are crossing, you see? Or even as a tourist. After Colombia the routes are also complicated, but the Darien is the most difficult of all, there I don’t think there is any difference between nations” (Alex, February 7, 2022, from Florida, United States).

Jackson and Alex’s tale allows recognizing the tensions arising from the difficulty of reconciling collective travel practices with forms of strategically desired invisibility or imperceptibility and, in that regard, it reveals some situations in which skin color is configured as a fundamental marker of control of travel experiences. Thus, the political production of illegalized migrants, reinforced by the COVID-19 pandemic, although predating it, creates the conditions of possibility for exacerbating the inequalities of mobility based on “race” as a key element for understanding certain border interactions and negotiations in which Haitian migrants engage in different times and places.

Futhermore, over the course of 2021, official documents and declarations, as well as press releases and images that were circulated, progressively construct the figure of the migrant “in transit” toward the United States based on its essentialized association with “Black” (presumably) Haitian bodies. In Bolivia, for example, an a press conference in August 2021, the National Director of Migration claimed that, between January and August 2021, more than 5400 Haitians who entered “irregularly” were “interceded” and that, therefore, they did not manage to comply with the migratory norms and health measures for controlling the pandemic, encouraging them to enter in a “regular, safe, and orderly” way (Dirección General De Migración - Bolivia, 2021). In Peru, operations were carried out in different border zones along Chile and Brazil, as well as in key “transit points”, such as the Carpitas Checkpoint in Tumbes, near the border with Ecuador. The Peruvian National Superintendency of Migrations indicated that, between the beginning of 2021 they had reinforced controls toward the north and the south at that checkpoint and that, on February 7 of that year, they had already “interceded” 300 migrants (mostly Haitians and Cubans) through migration checks in transportation vehicles (Superintendencia Nacional De Migraciones De Perú, 2021). That number reached 8220 Haitian persons between August 1 and November 15. ⁶ In Ecuador, what stand out are the operations carried out by the National Police and the Armed Fores in “irregular” crossing points and transportation vehicles in the city of Tulcan near the border with Colombia, in general coming from the city of Huaquillas, southern border of Ecuador (SWI, 2021). Finally, Colombia’s Director of migration, in reference to the migratory “crisis of Haitians”, maintained that from the beginning of 2021 to August 15 of that year, they identified more than 32,000 irregular migrants, and detained more than 100 coyotes, underscoring the action of the Transit and Transportation Police. ⁷

The intensification of South-North migration in the Andean region during the COVID-19 pandemic thus reflects a “stretching” of the border and, under certain circumstances, its constitution as a “mobile zone” (Walters, 2006). The control practices are not reduced to border crossings, but rather address different “transit points” and the very vehicles in movement through the national territories. As the aforementioned declarations show, the practice of detaining migrants can mean that they are deported “in the heat of the moment” to the border where they entered or, more frequently, demanding their “mandatory departure” from the country through some legal figure of “intervention”, “rejection” or “inadmissibility” in the territory. However, as all my Haitian interlocutors point out, along with the delay in travel, the main concerns revolve around abuse, theft, and having to pay “extra” money to continue their “transit”. This reflects the political production of fear of “detention” through extortion and violence that permeate state mechanisms of control of mobility based on racial arrangements and distinctions.

Racial management of migration: South-North “transit migration” and “migration crisis”

In the months of July and October 2021 the Haitian “transit migration” is politicized at the continental and international levels through the “border spectacle” (De Genova, 2018) built up around the situation of thousands of migrants stranded in Necoclí (Colombia) before crossing into Panama through the institutional installation of the idea of an “migration crisis” (IOM, 2021b). Alex, found himself in Necoclí in August 2021, when the bottlenecks that received international attention occurred. Recounting his 9-day wait before crossing the Darien Gap, he told me how the situation became more complicated by the day. At that time, his group was no longer made up of the six people who had left Argentina, but rather, more than 20. In fact, tactics of dispersion and concentration along the route are some of the “strategies of care in movement” that are deployed in accordance with the challenges of the context (Álvarez Velasco, 2022; Varela Huerta, 2016). The encounter between several groups headed to the United States from different South American countries took place precisely in Colombia and was transnationally planned to collectively face the crossing through the Darien Gap, one of the most dangerous and feared moments of the journey: “together because it is safer, with more people, you see?”. ⁸ The situation of immobility in Necoclí led to different types of complications for Alex and his group that were experienced with anguish, not only due to the unexpected costs of lodging and food during the wait and crossing fees that increased by the day in the face of intense demand, but also due to the negative consequences that they expected from the new political visibility of their presence in Necoclí and their movements toward the United States. In Alex’s words: “[we are] fine, now there are many journalists, but tomorrow we travel. We already paid more to be able to go more quickly because everything could change here at any time.” ⁹ The resolution of Alex and his group anticipated political events that would occur later.

The codification of these events in terms of a “crisis,” without appealing to the political conditions of their production (De Genova and Tazzioli, 2016), enabled Haitian migrants “in transit” from South American countries toward the United States to be configured as an object of conflict or geopolitical interest and, therefore, of intervention. The politicization of Haitians’ South-North “transit migration” took shape in inter-ministry meetings with representatives from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Costa Rica with the goal of coordinating actions to respond to the new “migration crisis” (Ministerio De Relaciones Exteriores De Panamá, 2021). According to the dominant account of “Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration”, the countries on the American continent proposed a new test of “controlled flows” through a system of quotas between Colombia and Panama, according to the president of Colombia: “the most important thing is that each country contain, that each country prevents, that each country avoids allowing this migration to become something massive” (El Espectador, 2021). Likewise, on September 10, 2021, the RCM and SACM issued a joint statement with the objective of “addressing collective challenges related to migration governance, to address irregular flows and extra-regional migration” (RCM and SACM, 2021). This framework enabled the production of better defined political-legal contours in regards to South-North “transit migration” as a matrix of intervention in the South American context. This is reflected in the IOM’s actions through a request for financial resources from the United States for “humanitarian assistance” (IOM, 2021b) and the deployment of diverse practices of the externalization of control based on racial profiles: surveillance and monitoring technologies, media campaigns and the elaboration of several reports.

As Domenech, Basualdo, and Pereira (2022) show, in recent years, the production of “expert” knowledge by international agencies such as the IOM and UNHCR has moved toward the “datification of mobility” through on the use of digital technologies for data production, monitoring “routes,” and cartographic representations of mobile populations in the South American space. The use of the Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) on Venezuelan migration since 2016 as part of the expansion of humanitarianism in the South American region (Domenech et al., 2022) and of the close relationship between the deployment of humanitarianism, externalization, and the production of migratory “crises” (Domenech and Dias, 2020; Herrera and Berg, 2019), allow for understanding the rapid deployment of the DTM and surveillance tools on Haitian migrants in the localities of Desaguadero and Tumbes in Peru (IOM, 2021a) and Huaquillas, Tulcán, and Lago Agrio in Ecuador (IOM, 2022a). Thus, the construct Haitian migrants as the subjects worthy of humanitarian assistance by international agencies such as the IOM, allowed for justifying diverse practices of containment and dissuasion targeted at these migrations and “new transit countries” in South America.

At the same time, taking into account the precedent “warned of” by the IOM in 2019 about the increase in Haitian migration northward from South American countries, in 2020, new “information” campaigns are created that continue the model of internalization based on the use of communication as a control mechanism for the deterrence of “potential migrants” (Pécoud, 2010). Within a more general project, initially oriented toward the Central American region and Mexico, “Pale Verite” (“speak with truth,” in Haitian Creole) emerges, a IOM campaign about the risks of “irregular migration” targeting Haitians in Latin America. This project is financed by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration and is an “adaptation” to “contexts of crisis and emergency” of the “Migrants as Messengers”, a campaign targeted toward migrants from African countries with “intentions” to migration to Europe (IOM, 2022b). In this case, the “primary audience” is the Haitian population with the intent to migrate found in the “transit countries” of Chile and Brazil, but it also reaches Andean countries, and, later, incorporates their country of “origin”: Haiti (IOM, 2022b). According to the IOM, the methodology consists of “intercepting” Haitian migrants in Panama’s “Migration Reception Stations” (ERM), after crossing the Darien Gap and “raising awareness” through the painful and traumatic testimonies of the experiences of the border crossing. Thus, a new control technology emerges based on the visibilization of deaths and disappearances, as well as the depoliticization of suffering and motorization of fear. These types of practices are politically justified through the consolidation of South America as a South-North “transit region” and of new or renewed classifications of “transit countries” such as Chile and Brazil, as well as Andean countries that had not previously played such a central role, such as Bolivia and Peru.

Finally, between November 2021 and January 2022, the IOM produces two new reports as part of its “crisis response plan,” entitled “Large movements of highly vulnerable migrants in the Americas. Destinations in Transit” (IOM, 2021a) and “South to North Migration from South America: Routes, vulnerabilities and contexts on extra regional migrants in transit” (IOM, 2022b). For the first time, the reports elaborated on South American in the framework of South to North migrations include the category of “transit” in their titles, while also especially emphasizing conditions of “vulnerability” and "massiveness". In this case, these categories are especially associated with Haitian migration in the more general context of so-called “extra-regional” migration. Through these essentializing adjectives in the aforementioned reports, Haitian migrants “in transit” come to embody, confusingly but unfailingly, the co-constitutive opposite of the racialized mandate of “safe, orderly, and regular” migration. Thus, these racialized and depoliticizing constructions that present migrants as “passive victims” or alternative objectives of “management” or “compassion” (Picozza, 2021), make up part of the changing ways that announce, anticipate, or promote the elaboration of recommendations based on “necessity” and, in general, the “urgency” of selectively targeted border reinforcement practices. Therefore, the racialization of control is also structured through these contingent empirical configurations that are what allow the mobility of certain groups, certain bodies and certain nationalities to coincide with the need to intervene in their movements in terms of containment, dissuasion, restriction, or subordination (Trabalón, 2021). Thus, the framework of migratory governability allows South American states to distance themselves from explicit racial categories, but the effectiveness of their frames of intervention of “transit migration” continues to depend on racialized constructions.

Conclusions

This article demonstrated the configuration of Racialized Control Policies in the South American Border Regime through the intensification of “transit migration” of Haitians during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, I examined the regional scenario of the Southern Cone based on the experiences and motives expressed by my Haitian interlocutors to understand the conditions in which the collective action of “taking the route” from South American toward the United States takes place and its connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, I showed some significant facets of the relation between illegalization and racialization in the Andean region based on the border negotiations that Haitian migrants and their families engaged in with different actors in the pandemic context and under diverse situations of “transit migration.” Lastly, I analyzed the political effects of the intensification of South-North Haitian migration and its construction as an “migration crisis” based on the development of concrete mechanisms of regionalization and internationalization.

This trajectory demonstrated how the political dimension of racialization traverses the border negotiations of my Haitian interlocutors in a context of the exacerbation of illegalization enabled by the COVID-19 pandemic and the deployment of diverse containment and deterrence mechanisms framed in the expansion of South-North “transit migration” as a matrix of intervention of migration governance in the South American space. Thus, racialized control policies were revealed as a constitutive dimension of the border disputes that Haitian migrants (directly or indirectly) engaged in with diverse actors that intervened in the activation, facilitation, diversion, or obstruction of their mobility. In particular, it highlighted the participation of diverse state agents, governmental entities, means of communication, “raketè” networks, and international agencies. In short, the analysis showed the unique characteristics of the migratory movements of Haitians in 2021 based on the new velocity and magnitude of South-North migration and the reaffirmation of the South American region as an object of geopolitical dispute in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. These processes reveal how the fictitious pretension of an “ordered, secure, and regular migration” is constantly challenged by transnational collective efforts and diverse strategies that, whether more visible or more imperceptible, whether politically organized or not, are deployed through concrete practices that, on an everyday basis, defy the mandate of immobility, waiting, and borders in search of better living conditions. Similarly, based on the multiplication of the processes of “re-emigration” analyzed, this work highlighted some of the particular ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to strengthening the interface of the Southern Cone-Andean Region and the need to deepen analysis of the infrastructures of violence and resistance that spatially and temporally connect the border and migration dynamics of South, Central, and North America.